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Clay Claiborne claims that since Trump wanted the confrontation to happen (which Clay doesn't demonstrate, only asserts) - it was a mistake for the confrontation to proceed. Rather than seeing Trump as some strategic genius playing 3D chess while we struggle with checkers, it is more likely that Trump is simply a narcissistic fool. It is entirely possible Trump failed to fully anticipate what an open-admission rally on one of the most diverse campuses in the country would look like after he has spent months race-baiting, muslim-baiting, immigrant-baiting and inciting violence at his rallies. Last Fall Trump was stupid enough to try to pander to voters in Downstate Illinois by talking about how nice Chicago is (His audience booed). Trump didn't think enough about his audience's attitudes downstate in the fall and on Friday he didn't anticipate the large number of students opposed to him who would show up when he came to their campus. Trump isn't paying sufficient attention to the details of who and where he speaks. So, when it dawned on him that he would be facing a large opposition inside the UIC pavillion, he cancelled the event. Claiborne is buying into Maddow's portrayal of the event as a brawl. It was not. There were plenty of aggressive words and verbal confrontation, but not many blows were thrown and very few people actually brawled. There were only a handful of arrests and a few injuries. I've seen more violence at smaller demos (like at Trib plaza at start of 2nd Intifada). Maddow and Claiborne are too comfortable tisk tisking the lack of civility among the people willing to confront racist violence inciters in person. Several thousand people just took their first steps into social movement and street politics and Clay wants to browbeat and harangue them about the putative mistake of putting a couple of thousand people inside the UIC Pavilion to chant down Donald Trump. It is better to congratulate the protesters who just stopped a racist piece of shit from speaking on their campus. More experienced activists should be reaching out and coordinating with the newbies. 4/1 will be next big chance to take to the streets against the right, this time against Governor Rauner and Rahm Emanuel. Sean Noonan _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
