a defense of san diego organizers
there's a lot of bashing of san diego organizers going on, so i wanted
to point out a few things:
1) "the organizers" is a very very broad term. anyone who went to a san
diego coalition meeting saw that the organizers were not at all unified
on quite a few issues, especially the one of civil disobedience and
direct action. so to say "fuck the organizers" is very shortsighted,
because a lot of the organizers are totally down for the bloc and
direct action.
2) i was in the interesting position of both being one of the organizers
and in the bloc... quite a few of the "harmony keepers" were black
bloc kids who decided to be harmony keepers since they were so sick
of peackeepers who were anti-bloc... harmony keepers were giving the
bloc all the information we had about police presence, logistics, the
legal situation, the medical situation, etc. we got legal observers and
medics for the march (when it was going to be just the bloc and rcpyb),
and stickers to put on bandanas when the cops were threatening to arrest
people for wearing masks. on the march back, the cops told the police
liason, "i like you, stay away from the black bloc" ... so she came
running over to tell us this, and started telling everyone else to stay
near us. on the march to the border, the people had one lane and the
cops had the other, and when the police started to try to come into our
lane and push us further south, she went up to the cops and said "hey,
get back in your own lane!" then one of the black bloc kids pushed her
and called her a fucking cop. this is the same girl who is quoted in
the indymedia article as telling us that we have to wait till 2:30 to
leave... she actually said that we should wait till art and revolution
was ready to come with us (about 1 minute)... and someone in the bloc
yelled "yeah, there's strength in numbers" and we left on the march
when art and rev. was ready. now, i don't know if any of you who were
calling her a cop or a liberal or whatever, and making all sorts of
assumptions about her because she was an organizer noticed this, but
she can't move her neck. this is 'cuz she got beat up at a16 trying to
block a jail van with her a.g... this is someone who is totally down for
the bloc and direct action, but was attacked and criticized because she
was an organizer, and they assumed that automatically means that
she is a liberal.
3) i don't know where the idea that there was a march that was cancelled
came from... the original plan was to drive to border field state park,
but that got cancelled because the road washed out. there was never a
cancelled march.
4) jumping back to the divisions withint he coalition, the story behind
the action guidelines is this:
there's an organization called la red de globalfobicos, which, we found
out later, was formed by global exchange, who came down to tijuana and
handpicked which nice little liberal groups and people they want to
work with. (global exchange are also the ones who called this action
without talking to anyone from san diego or tijuana first, by the way...)
so anyway... the san diego coalition meetings were 4 hour long fights over
things like consensus vs. voting, spokescouncil vs. stacking meetings,
etc. the globalfobics are claiming to speak for all of mexico, the
iso is bringing 7-10 members to every meeting and trying to sell papers
afterward, and youth and radicals in the coalition are being yelled at and
disrespected by various older and more "liberal" members. at one meeting,
some americans in the globalfobics show up with the proposed points of
unity, saying "this is what everyone in mexico wants". we fought over
these points of unity for about an hour, with us trying to get rid of the
4) jumping back to the divisions withint he coalition, the story behind
the action guidelines is this:
there's an organization called la red de globalfobicos, which, we found
out later, was formed by global exchange, who came down to tijuana and
handpicked which nice little liberal groups and people they want to
work with. (global exchange are also the ones who called this action
without talking to anyone from san diego or tijuana first, by the way...)
so anyway... the san diego coalition meetings were 4 hour long fights over
things like consensus vs. voting, spokescouncil vs. stacking meetings,
etc. the globalfobics are claiming to speak for all of mexico, the
iso is bringing 7-10 members to every meeting and trying to sell papers
afterward, and youth and radicals in the coalition are being yelled at and
disrespected by various older and more "liberal" members. at one meeting,
some americans in the globalfobics show up with the proposed points of
unity, saying "this is what everyone in mexico wants". we fought over
these points of unity for about an hour, with us trying to get rid of the
no property damage, direct action, or civil disobedience clause, and them
trying to get rid of anyone whose view of social change isn't "so who do
i write a check out to to solve this problem?" the compromise that we end
up with is no planned civil disobedience, and us warning the coalition
that if we have the points of unity include these things, the coalition
is being completely unrealistic, and will come back to haunt us later.
Original: more on the "pacifist" left