DASW Mar 19 Anti-War flyers available for download

After the anti-war gathering, I hope everyone puts their energy toward working for Dennis Kucinich because he is the only one who will stop the war. We must unite for Dennis!

Kerry wants to send 40,000 more troops. WE must FIGHT for Dennis Kucinich.

Kucinich lost.

(Now would be a good time to register "Anarchist".)

You are a mind controlled media experiment. Turn off the TV. They are controlling your thoughts and actions. It's not too late.

I remain supportive of this "coalition" that claims to be organizing anti-war actions. But, it is getting kind of stale, "Corporations = Bad / Trust-fund anarchist paraders = Good." This little routine is getting tired and becoming an empty symbol of itself. What is needed is better rhetoric. After reading the flyers and hand-outs, it is hard to determine what the protest group is calling for. What would replace the corporate/military complex that the group decries? What does "beyond voting" mean to someone who subsists on no more than what they earn as a laborer? How to transform the big, one-day protest events into something that actually does challenge corporate and/or military power? How to draft literature and create messages that appeal to actual workers? Please don't take these questions or critiques harshly ... We really have to ask ourselves these questions or we will remain in the largely inneffective niche that we are in.

To this end - this supporter proposes the following:

a.) contact all the competing vanguardists and ask them to submit a prioritized list of things that they would actually implement were they to ever gain power. Include everybody: reform capitalists, rcp-ers that hide behind their various front groups, trust-fund babies that pretend to be anarchists, state-centered vanguard socialists, artists, stoner-doner enviro groups that always work on exotic campaigns and like to claim false victories to keep the 501c3 money going, cadillac construction laborers that support rich candidates every freekin time and still call themselves a union - I mean invite them all - no matter how irrelevant they may seem at the present. Invite them to contribute their idea of a real peoples' platform - to submit a list of what they would do if they actually could. Ask them to high-light their top three. This will get us all into a more pro-active way of thinking. And, perhaps all the competing vanguardists, more radical-than-thou anarchists and other mostly irrelevant, but well intentioned people of the what? ... "post-new left" can actually start to really work for positive social change instead of whining in front of police lines or anemically smashing tid-bits of capitalist property. We have to do this. We have to call for like three things to really happen - no matter who wins - no matter what the right-wingers call back out to distract us (i.e. their single issue campaigns like abortion, which distracted the "left" while rich elites make huge advances with their global trade aggreements, their roll-back of civil rights in general and their bid for military dominance in contested resource-rich regions - like the Caspian Sea or the Middle East.) So, abortion, that is their schtick. Terror attacks - also their purview. We need to develop a people's platform and stick to that ... demand that - in Congress, in State Assemblies, in the workplace, on the streets, on the media (both our independent media ghetto and their flashy corproate-owned thing) - everytime a mic is presented, everytime there is an opportunity to voice something - out comes the top three planks of the peoples' platform. Sure, we have to also respond to whatever the current crisis de jour is ... we have to respond to their threats to take away liberties and rights that have been hard won ... but, this response to their agenda has to become the secondary work of a movement that is focussed on acheiving real goals .. say, universal healthcare, transforming our energy infrastructure to a sustainable model right now, stopping torture, ending the use of weapons (like cluster bombs) that are designed for soft targets and free-ing all nonviolent offenders from our prisons and re-directing those funds to education and care for the impoverished children and elderly in this nation. I mean, until there is a job that can pay me a living wage ... until there are some adults in my neighborhood to do something with the youth besides policing them ... until we are re-tooling our transportation system ... until there is healthcare for everyone - nothing we do really matters.

Universal Health Care - what happened? Get back to being pro-active ... stay focussed. Karl Rove is going to belt out the wedge issues like there is no tomorow - crises is spilling out all over - so, what? Let's create a platform of like three things and stick to them. Let's force our hand now, or remain all divided, with all these separate competing agendas and tactics that we like or don't like. It is all a bunch of hooey ... what do we want? What is going to save the planet and keep the workers out of high-tech enslavement? Bend your minds to this ... submit your platform now.

My Platform:

1.) Universal Health Care

2.) Remove all subsidies from anything to do with dependence on fossil fuels

... my platform continued ...

3.) FREE INFORMATION: a.) pass legislation that ends government secrecy ... b.) demand that all the energy task force documents be released ... c.) demand a real investigation into 9/11 ... d.) demand that Bush release the presidential papers from the time of Reagan and Bush 1 now ... e.) demand that all major broadcast and print media post the logos of their corporate owners all the time, so that we become aware that we no longer have a free and independent press ... f.) remove all subsidies from corporate owned media and redirect all those funds to real independents and community based media producers ... g.) end the pentagon's black budget - make them disclose how much is going to all military expenditures and what corporations are getting the contracts ... h.) make them reveal who they are holding as "terrorist supsects" or as "enemy combatants" and re-instate constitutional rights for everybody that can't be proven, beyond a doubt, to have committed any violent acts against other human beings - if they are guilty of violence - try them publicly now - if they are not - release their names and get them back into what we used to call, "due process." - In other words, end all this secrecy and demand some real democracy at home right now.

I feel that these three planks in my personal version of the peoples's platform would really get things going in a positive direction ... What do others think? Are these steps too soft? Do they ultimately help capitalism to re-adjust itself and thus stay in control? Are these steps impossible to achieve in a climate controlled by fear-mongering war profiteers? Can we take baby steps, or do we have to just smash the state and abolish all capitalism? Is this pandering to the capitalists and thus preventing the ultimate communist/socialist/anarchist (insert your favorite "ist" from the 19th century here) revolution? I'm afraid that if we wait for that, we will all be in prison and the world will continue to spiral into wide-spread environmental catastrophe - while the rich hide in nice, high-tech, "gated communities" - most of the people of earth, will be left with very ugly options for survival indeed. It really is that time.

So, to that end, I say, next time you start recruiting people for mass rallies and drafting up literature that is designed to have a broad appeal - dump the cheerleader rhetoric and ask some actual workers what is maybe appealing to them as well. Heck, maybe even spend some of the grant money involving actual workers in the process. And, at a minimum, come up with some demands that sound like demands - not like lofty, new-agey and vague chants that sound patronizing and are maybe just boreing. Get specific and get some authenticity ... the sooner the better.

Thank you, supporter

Perhaps you could come to a meeting and help to implement your very trenchant analysis? What you say seems to me right on target, but since there are no "grants" DASW is working on, it needs more people making their smarts manifest in a group situation, and less people giving vitriolic critique from afar. Welcome to the downfall of the left.

hello ... supporter here again ... so, I didn't see any of the claims addressed and nothing specific proposed. So, I ask you, who is sitting on the sidelines? An invitation to just "come to our meeting" is also sort of arrogant. It's like we can't take the time to respond to some simple questions. We will label what we don't like from our worker, supporters - we will call everything that is not just gloating, not just more praise on us .. we will call it "negative," "disruptive" or even "vitriolic." Well, I don't know if you've noticed, but people do sometimes criticize what they genuinely care about. The opposite of Love is not Hate - its neglect.

And, saying that you are "negative" is completely positive if one is talking about AIDS, for example. Conversly, "positive" ions don't feel so nice - try going to L.A. during the Santa Ana winds. The beach feels much better with the waves crashing on the shore, generating all those "negative" ions. So, in this world, we need both negative and positive. So, my questions, my criticisms are done in a true spirit of helpfullness. It's just that some people can't take advice or questions so well. For them, the Shaman must resort to sometimes less pleasant measures in order to induce a healing crisis. That is what is needed - a healing crisis. Arrogance is one affliction that often calls for some sort of crisis. It is unfortunate. But the only way to bring about a healing of this chasm (mostly white, upper-middle class kids from everywhere but here ... and the distrustful Latino workers of the Mission District, let's just say, as an example of one chasm) - What is going to bridge this chasm? ... and, ultimately make us all more relevant and powerful in the face of a true corporate, media, military junta - the likes of which the planet has never seen? We need something different to respond to this one ... to respond this time. That is all I am saying. For me, my suggestion is to get specific and focus on like 5-to-7 or so planks in a people's platform ... to start the outreach to the community - BEFORE THE AGENDA HAS BEEN SET AND THE OFFICIAL RHETORIC ADOPTED. O.K. ... That is all I'm saying. O.K. you can hate on me and ignore my questions, or return them with an invitation to come to another of your long meetings. Or you could get in touch with something deep, something nasty even - and write what you truly think. You could stop for a minute to examine your own assumptions and relations and ask yourself - what will make it better? How to make what I say and do more appealing to actual workers? How about listening first, calling a caminata - then after the listening and the caminata - then, we draft some slogans and literature together. So, the real question is - is how to outreach to the Mission District before another big, exotic, global event? How to get involved in the community on a daily basis and retain the support of the Renee Saucedo's that are out there - instead of alienating them everytime? What's happening here now? Are people still being displaced? Ever heard of the The Nuisance Eviction Ordinance (NEO) of Oakland? The I-Hotel? These are just questions my friends ... just questions ... as you fade off into the pleasant ether of sleep inside tonight, and you picture the perfect the protest happening ... look around ... who is there? Who is talking and who is listening?