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.