FROM PROTEST TO RESISTANCE

FROM PROTEST

The millions that have marched against the Bush regime’s plans for a renewed war against Iraq have sent a message to the war planners: A message that can be ignored.

Despite massive global demonstrations, the U.S. is moving ahead with this war. Our opposition must get past simply strolling up Market St. every third Sunday of the month, or we will remain a "focus group" in the minds of the war planners. We must do more than try to be heard in Washington.

TO RESISTANCE

The Vietnam War became untenable as the movement opposed to it evolved from protest to resistance. Conscripts burned their draft cards and people took to the streets and shut down military induction centers. Insubordination among soldiers made the war unwageable on the ground in Vietnam. Officers faced as great a risk of being fragged by their own soldiers as dying in battle. Occupations, strikes, mutinies and riots made the war too volatile to continue. But it didn’t go far enough. The violence and coercion that maintain capitalist "order" was never directly confronted. Resistance was limited to stopping the war itself, never developing into a revolutionary struggle.

The fight against the system takes many forms—we are engaged in it everyday as we struggle to survive as wage slaves. Even isolated working class activity can disrupt the capitalist war drive. Prior to the First Gulf War, in August 1990, 4000 maintenance workers on U.S. bases in Turkey went on strike for higher pay, hampering the war effort. Italians blockaded the Malpanese airport, near Milan, to try to prevent it from being used to refuel B-52s en route to bombing raids in Iraq. Disruption of the transportation of military supplies was used in France, the Netherlands and Germany—trains carrying troops were repeatedly sabotaged and derailed; military depots and barracks were blockaded to prevent mobilizations for the war. Last year, during the war on Afghanistan, 200 dock workers in Nagasaki, Japan refused to load military supplies onto naval vessels headed to assist the U.S.-led war, disrupting the entire Japanese state’s contribution to the war effort. On January 9, 2003, British train drivers refused to move a freight train carrying ammunition for the British forces being deployed in the Gulf.

TO CLASS WAR

The form our revolt takes is determined by where the system’s war efforts are most vulnerable. Our power needs to rupture the social relations that bind us to a state of permanent war across the globe. Every aspect of the economy’s colonization of our daily life must be brought to a halt. The San Francisco Bay Area sits at a vital crossroads, in one of capitalism’s most advanced sites of production and distribution. This makes it a strategic target for rebellious activity. A one-day shutdown of the financial district is powerful, but it must ripple outward to include all of the working class. The ports are among the most crucial points where commerce could be totally paralyzed. The San Francisco General Strike of 1934 exemplified how the strike on the docks spread to the entire city. Ultimately the struggle must be international in scope to transcend capitalism—

NEITHER THEIR WAR NOR THEIR PEACE!

INSANE DIALECTICAL POSSE