The problem with "direct action".

Only mass action makes change.

Read the Avocado Declaration -
http://www.gp.org/articles/camejo_01_05_04.html

And the HUGE power of protests is the image itself that the masses see - a sea of people together in the streets. This is the image they don't want anyone to see because it has huge influence. You'll notice it's the image that is least often shown in newspapers, etc. They do a close up or they cover black bloc, but seeing the real sense of the size of the people is very powerful as an image in the heads of the masses.

This is what the protests are about, on one level. They function on many many other levels.

They don't stop wars. They plant seeds to start something new.

Things aren't really that simple, love vs. hate, bullet or ballot box, peace vs. war, slavery vs. freedom, and on and on.
I find it interesting that people are defining going to demonstrations as direct action. Direct action is about more than just having oppinions, it is about taking action in your life based on your politics. Personal as political. Demonstrations are more a form of symbolic action, DA has traditionally been used to describe actions that actually disrupt the mechanisms of oppresion. Direct Action is also about organizing your coworkers against your boss, these things called unions. Direct action = empowerment, not just having beliefs and going out to the occassional demo.
I love and hate and other emotions big demos, they are total mental idealogical masterbation. But they make me feel a little better, because I walk around with these thoughts and feelings and it is nice to feel less alone. But until people are willing to go deeper in political analysis and bring that shit home, we are going to be strandled with the institutions that thrive off the war and oppression.
Do people walk away from big demos feeling like they have done their democratic duty? Are big demos a gateway to changing how people internalize their resistance?
The christian right has big demos, but they spend alot of their time and money on legislating and attacking the liberal ideals. They have been effective and pretty much run this country right now. What can orgainizers of mass demos learn from their technique?
there are some good questions to be asking right now.

The reactionary nature of oppositism serves to facilitate a seemingly pro-active approach in the forms of protests and sign-waving. But is waving a sign to inform the self-determined informed or ignorant any more effective than waving a flag? The left movement in this country so often resembles their enemy in it's rigidity, fundamentalism, and slogans. Remember, a revolution is a full circle.

The reactionary nature of oppositism serves to facilitate a seemingly pro-active approach in the forms of protests and sign-waving. But is waving a sign to inform the self-determined informed or ignorant any more effective than waving a flag? The left movement in this country so often resembles their enemy in it's rigidity, fundamentalism, and slogans. Remember, a revolution is a full circle.

http://www.earthliberationfront.com

http://www.animalliberation.net/

another post from another dusty ghandite trying to hold on to the same rhetoric that hasnt changed thing since the sixties.
direct action and the legitimacy of political violence has been the main stay to change.
during the indian struggle for independence, muslim groups sabotaged and firebombed economic target that cause millions of dollar each night,coupled with the end of the second world war and the large amount of money lost from ww2 and direct actions of muslim militants,lead to the pull out of england in india. not salt marches or broken skulls and fractured body parts. this is the same with dr.king,at first he was a commie/nigger but after nation of islam(with al hajji malik al shabazz or malcom x) and the bppsd calling for a peoples army and direct action against the state,king went from "commie/nigger" to good ol' boy that the media clutched on to as the "head" of the civil right movement.the state at first feared king as enough to slander him,but when more militant groups realized that the ghandite tactics of another time and another peoples couldn't be logically applied to another people and another time they took a different route,militant humanist resistance, breakfast programs and assault rifles.
if you want to quote al hajji(malcom x for those who only a little of him)-"every black man should own a rifle" and obtain liberation"by any means necessary"
in a time and place,with a different enemy(not the 1940's not india and we are not indian,and we are not fighting the relativly tame england) our tactics must change and evolve with our enemy(what ever you may define enemy as)
lets me say once and for all,ghandi is dead,king is dead their pacifist tactics are also dead. they did not change thing nor will they.
http://www.arissa.org
http://www.raisethefist.com

"In a time and place,with a different enemy(not the 1940's not india and we are not indian,and we are not fighting the relativly tame england) our tactics must change and evolve with our enemy(what ever you may define enemy as)
lets me say once and for all,ghandi is dead,king is dead their pacifist tactics are also dead. they did not change thing nor will they. "
This is a really cynical judgement of history. It is a problem that we all seem to have, this sort of seeing what we want to see from history and building our arguments on our bias interpritations of history.
King made real change, he worked toward the liberation of people. He was a figurehead for a movement that fundamentally changed amerikan society. But some of the changes were just cosmetic changes, leaving the core racist state still intact. But that doesn't discount what he was doing, and why he was killed. His interpritation of direct action is a good one all be it a nonviolent one, but it depended on people having moal outrage toward the treatment of protestors demanding basic human rights. He also influenced alot of people to become more radical and also to help inspire people to dream, that is something you cannot really measure in just looking at his life.
I personally dispise the western ghandi bandwagon. He didn't exsist in a vacuum. It is interesting to look at the movement to get the brits to leave that exsisted before he got all up in the shit. He was definately a moderate in terms of the anti-colonialization movement of his time. If you like ghandi the movie, you should see ben kingsley tearing shit up in Sexy Beast. But that is something else.
The moral of the story is that there is this toolbox called Direct Action, of tactics, of stategy, and of ideas. Each situation is unique, alot of people are so tied to their isms and ists that they can not figure out the right tool for the job. But the trick is to keep all the tools around, learn how to use them, and don't be affraid to make a mistakes.

Lots of people use a second definition of direct action that has diverged from the first meaning. They use it as a synonym for 'eXtreme' or intense protesting, even if describing a more intense form of standing in the street with signs petitioning the government for redress. The first definition of direct action doesn't have to involve violence - but it means directly solving a problem. Food not bombs is direct action. Quite a few things that King did were direct action.

Ridge here. Reading this scintillating debate, I'm reminded of how much I love you guys. As my friend Billy Joel said it:

"Don't go changing to try and please me
You never let me down before
Don't imagine you're too familiar
And I don't see you anymore
I wouldn't leave you in times of trouble
We never could have come this far
I took the good times, I'll take the bad times
I'll take you just the way you are

Don't go trying some new fashion
Don't change the color of your hair
You always have my unspoken passion
Although I might not seem to care

I don't want clever conversation
I never want to work that hard
I just want someone that I can talk to
I want you just the way you are.

I need to know that you will always be
The same old someone that I knew
What will it take till you believe in me
The way that I believe in you.

I said I love you and that's forever
And this I promise fromhe heart
I could not love you any better
I love you just the way you are."

Wow, billy joel worship, to think that someone actually knows the lirics to a billy joel song and would type them out, is truely sad. I am sorry for you

Ridge here. I knew Joel back in the day.

I suggest anyone questioning the effectiveness of their sign waving read Pacifism as Pathology by Ward Churchill. It's an essay critiquing the pseudo praxis known as pacifism and it's available online here http://www.oxygensmith.com/~arc/pacifismaspathology/index.html

I believe a diversity of tactics is always neccesary but it becomes pretty clear what the general american left wants when they denounce tactics that do not comply to their pacifist praxis- further war on foreign soils. If you want to stop a war sign waving won't cut it. I'm not trying to say sign waving doesn't have its place, it does, but everytime some one from the peace movement climbs up on their moral pedestal and denounces people for their "reckless" behavior it makes me sick. Please embrace all forms of resistance and realize what you're up against. This is one of the most unpopular wars in history of the US yet all the political pressure in the world couldn't convince the Bush administration to back down. The war machine, a self perpetuating industry, only listens to economic incentives not political pressure and certainly not the human cost.

the best of luck to you and solidarity to all who resist imperialism