{"article":{"id":119690,"heading":"Boycott the professional left!!","author":"Richard Degen","created":"2004-11-24 04:22:08","modified":"2004-11-24 11:06:38","last_modified":"Wed, 24 Nov 2004 18:06:38","article":"

Boycott the professional left!! Boycott the

professional left!!

Open Letter to the Professional Left

The \"hierarchy\" of the professional left has decided that working class, working poor, homeless, and disabled people should not have a say in leadership or the decision-making process especially when it is related to money in the

movement and what kind of activities are funded. I, for one, am not going to anymore of their marches, teach-ins, or any other events. I urge all real class-conscious activists who believe in class war to boycott all of their events and to stop donating money to these fake left groups. The hierarchy of these groups are the same people who would step over or ignore a homeless person on their way to an anti-war march. The war and other issues of oppression happening outside this country are very important, but they are not the only issue. Why don't these professional left groups ever worry about the oppressed poor and homeless in this country, or for that matter, right in their own hometown. Why? Because then that would require them to actually possibly do something and possibly come face to face with the poor and homeless. Marching, carrying a banner, and crying for the poor Iraqi boy is easy because you don't have to see him. The professional left has had plenty of opportunities over the years to do something real and relevant but instead they choose to live off the images of dead radicals and political prisoners from the 1960`s.

Over the years many events have occured like the assassinations of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and the government's destruction of the militant underground units in the 1960`s. All of these events were tremendous setbacks for the most oppressed groups in society and yet the professional left has failed to provide any radical alternatives for the oppressed.

The only thing the professional left seems to be good at doing these days are their \"once-a-year-liberal-guilt-marches\". The specific groups do not need to be named, they, and everyone else, know who they are. Let's just say that we need to be \"United for Peace and Justice\" on issues within the country as well as seeking an \"A.N.S.W.E.R.\" to problems concerning the poor and homelss who are being oppressed and harassed by the government and law enforcement of this country every day. Every time class-conscious poor and homeless people attend and speakup at their meetings, they are ignored. The poor and homeless are given no media coverage or financial help whatsoever by any of these groups who are supposed to be concerned about the poor. Poor people will no longer be ignored and used as bargaining chips by the professional left. We must organize our own fundraising events. We need to help political prisoners without exploiting them for our own political advantage like the professional left likes to do. We will make sure that the poor and the oppressed are at the forefront and at the head of leadership. We do not need to be lead by professional leftist egomaniacs.

Yours Truly;

Richard Degen

Class War Anarchist Poverty Pimp Busters

<\/p>\n","contact":"","link":"","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/plain","summary":"No more [wanna-be] kings!","numcomment":2,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/","filesize":null,"article_url":"\/news\/2004\/11\/119690.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[{"id":119740,"heading":"boycotts aren'r an answer!","article":"You shoudl sve your beef for the system. the system gets OFF on dividing and conquering people who should be unified in these untied states.\r\n\r\nthey get OFF on seeing people like you turning on the others who might actually stand to push them out of the way. But i understand. they have been using the same fucking tactics for decades and it never fucking works.\r\n\r\nBut at the same time -- the problem is who willyou boycott nexy? after a while you end up boycotting everyone and everything including those ho might have wanted the same things you didn. and the system goes on lying and electing new empty suits who will lie to everyone and WANT you to boycott them. these people who think a simply boycott is gonne affect the Bush adminstration are kidding themselves, short of effective strategies. Their s is teh same aattitude that the Yippies used -0- it drew attenmtion to The Estanblishment and the attention is still there. then they were crushed, slandered fire cannoned, arrested, slandered, infiltrated and scammed until you get the phenomenon you have to day aof mean bitter hippies who are nothing like their open hearted predecessors -- sometimes they are the same. \r\n\r\nboycotts are not accomplishing anything. Too often they are just a footot beig put down saying NO while offering nothing positive -- and you know natue abhors a vaccum. nothing new happens, people bitterly bvlanme the system and a year later theire is another call for another boycott which will accomplish another bucn of nothing. EVERYONE HAS SEEN THIS PATTERN. it can be denied but it can't be erased from the history books..that's what happens.\r\n\r\nfind one fucking boycott that has really worlked and i cvan match it with twenty others that just made the thing being boycotted laughlike something tiny was tickling it and gone right on to business as usual, laughing with arrogant pride at the earnest, but shortsighted intentions of the boycotters.\r\n\r\nthe boycotters may nbot have been wrong in intent -- but wht didn't it work?\r\n\r\nwhy am i even wasting my fucking breath? while i feel you with your criticism of the futility of the left -- and i do -- boycotts are just another way of sticking your head in the sand, saying no without saying yes to anything positive. they aren't a solution.\r\n\r\nRosa Parks is HOW old now? How old? That was a famous boycott. But it didn't abolish racism. Do you see my point?\r\n\r\nBoycott this, boycott that, the monster just laughs at the boycotters and the frustrationand the LACK OF EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES GO ON.\r\n\r\nNow you don't want to be involved with the Left and maybe not with the Right either. \r\n\r\nmy suggestion is based on logic plus experience -- rather than saying no, boycotting and basically applying DENIAL to your hopes for progressive action, the Center, politically and Philosophically is an almost unexplored place of potential and in terms of sheer mathematical logic -- the place to go for a balanced perspective.\r\n\r\nThen you can let the die-hard left wingers and right wingers DO JUST THAT as they have for generations, rigidly, stiffly, stubbornly refusing to see any other way but their way. those who are open to reason and really want change -- from BOTH sides -- because in spite of the actions of many Rightwingers or conservatives, not ALL of them are wholly evil and some people who are on what is TERMED by mani-pulative mass media "the Right wing" want teh same things as many so called "Liberals" want -- safety, security , a way to live without fear of molestation. \r\n\r\nthe center, politically and philosophically, is a place to go. Are you familiar with the teram KOYAANISQATSI? It relates to a Hopi porphecy about life being woefully out of balance, people having lost "the Way" of being in tune withh nature. Life Out Of Balance is what you face. boycotting the left sends a message to people who are left: that they have an anemmy and an adversary in you and you -- we both know that very often some rabid leftwingers could care less about the issues: they are just pissed off and looking for an excuse to fight and the details of the issues and actually resolving situations intelligently and effectively is , in their eyes, never really going to happen. why give them another target for their wild swinging and repetitively ineffective strategies.\r\n\r\ntrhat being said i read you loud and clear.in tehworld at large the idea of leftists being no more righteous -- so to speak -- and just as pronne to oppresor-style tactics - as the Right wing with Plice and Corporarte criminals -- is well known, such as the case of the fake anarchist 'Black Bloc" people in genoa who went to protests PAID by local italian politicos to basically disrupt the whole scene and make sure that the police had an excuse to put the hammer down. When you say that you have reason to distrust the left wing your intuition, your feeling is inot wrong.\r\n\r\nBut if you really want something to happen -- if you really what things o change as a progressive than consider the idea of being proactive instead of reacting to the rigidity and thoughtlessness of a left-wing agfenda which more often than not ends up serving those it claims it is against.\r\n\r\nThat's what progressives, when sincere, are best at. building coalitions rather than set organizations, bilding bridges rather than burning them...\r\n\r\nbecause in all probabliity a lot of the people you express an interest in boycotting whant some of the same things you do and have simply adopted different tactics. You may have some insights that they could use for a unified goal.\r\n\r\nthe Right's leaders in the United States and the world at large play a gmae of divide-and-conquer.\r\n\r\nnaturally i sort of expect this message t9o be ignored. In the immediate future. even if it makes sesnes sadly people who have an agenda, be it left or right wing, get involved and have made relationships and have engendered that famous Pride that precedes a fall into their strategies and won't chnage their minds until they have gottebn utterly disgusted with theri work not working.\r\n\r\nbut there are others who actually WANT progressive initiatives to go through, others -- many others who want to really see positive change and are looking for progressive strategies\r\n\r\nthis is why i advise against application of the old tool of boycotting as a tool.\r\n\r\nCheck for yourself! because people in oourage aere very quick to scream Boycott. Check for yourself in the history of boycott since the sixties -- see how many things that have been boycotted are still doing their thing (McDonalds, procter And Gamble, there are others) that are indifferently plodding ahead -- while on the real tip people who have invested their time and energy in boycotts are just older and shoirter on energy -- and desire to be involved. \r\n\r\namong activists, [progressives and people seeking change energy exerrted that does not get desired results leads to burnout. \r\n\r\ndon't ask me how i know cause it's ugly. i just know.\r\n\r\nand just for the record m,y political philosophy is decidedly left of center. But just a little bitleft. i am tired of political movements that promise the moon and and deliver nothing\r\n\r\nas arem, no doubt, many leftwingers. but peer pressure , the subtle urge to conform and do what everyone else is doing, does a lot to keep people staying where they are...and i have seen it too many times. good luck.\r\n\r\n.","author":"doctor_jones","parent_id":119690,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2004-11-24 07:33:55","modified":"2004-11-24 07:33:55","fileurl":""},{"id":119741,"heading":"boycott math doesn't work out","article":"The impact of a boycott depends on the number of boycotters and the profit margin per item sold.\r\n\r\nTo have an impact, you can either have a lot of boycotters, or boycott a very profitable product.\r\n\r\nThere's a cost to convincing each boycotter. If the product has a lot of customers, it will cost so much to convince enough customers to boycott, that there may never be a real impact. If the profit margins are very slim, then nothing but a huge boycott will impact the bottom line.\r\n\r\nFor example, there's little point in carrying out a boycott on a product sold at the 99c store. Those are close-outs, and only there because the company needed to clear out the product. No profit margins = no boycott impact.\r\n\r\nTherein lies the problem of the boycott: it's one-dollar, one-vote. If you lack dollars, you lack impact. I've boycotted everything from Taco Bell to SUVs, Wal-Mart to McDonalds, but it's not like I was consuming much of most of those products in the first place. It wasn't much of a chore to support the CIW's Taco Bell boycott, because I ate there maybe 2 or 3 times a year.\r\n\r\nA boycott against the Jaguar luxury automobile for appropriating the Clash's London Calling, for example, would have a far greater impact. Unfortunately.\r\n\r\nThat's why there's another kind of direct action that is favored by the working class, poor, and disenfranchised: strikes and lockouts.\r\n\r\nI participated in a picket at a couple different Taco Bells. The impact was tangible and real - customers didn't go in. (And, I'll give credit where it's due. The ISO organized the picket, and people of a range of politics participated.) My effort was multiplied. The public awareness of ag-worker exploitation is increasing. People are already suspicious of cheap labor producing cheap goods, and the picket extended this suspicion to fast food.\r\n\r\nAlso, this particular boycott picket was popular with the working class people in the neighborhood, which was one of the more affluent quadrants of a mixed working-class \/ middle-class area.\r\n\r\nI'm not sure how you strike against an antiwar demonstration, though. As far as lockouts go, the organizers already have a hard time keeping people *in* the demonstration. To hit them where it hurts, I suppose you could collect money for anarchist causes, and thus disrupt the cash flow. You could also create a "platform" of your own, and put your ideas out there. (Many already do this.)","author":"more rational","parent_id":119690,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2004-11-24 11:06:38","modified":"2004-11-24 11:06:38","fileurl":""}]}