Ravi: > But the claim of the above movie, that Seattle "changed the world" (a claim > made by Chuck on LBO, especially as a contrast to other forms of activism, > without much substantiation) is to me at best a paternalistic "North"ern > one.
Dear Ravi, You know after all these years that I like you. By the way, given that you are also in New York, why don't we get together one day? Let me correct you about Chuck first: he is not Chuck, but Chuck0, whatever that means. I don't follow Doug's list, but I know Chuck0 quite well, because he and I were comoderators of a list way back when: I guess it was the S26 list, that is, the Prague coordination list (remember that "global day of action" in Prague in September 26, 2000?) and it is possible that we shared the moderation of the MAYDAY2000 list, also, although I am not sure since it has been a while. At the time of "Seattle" I was 37 and hardly a Northerner/Westerner. So, I did not qualify as a young Western/Northern activist at all then. I don't even like the word "activist," whatever that means! Chuck0 was not very comfortable with sharing the comoderation of the S26 list with me, I suppose, because he knew that I was not an anarchist. Yet, we had worked together. My main objective in those days was to establish a link between what was going on "globally" and a few people (whom I met later) in Turkey, who were working on similar directions. They were hardly anarchists and some anarchist friends would qualify some of them as Stalinists, if they knew about the politics of Turkey. You know this N30 thing, that is, the "Battle in Seattle". There was a battle in Turkey too in those days: it was about 30-40 men and women who organized a march (as they called it but they were actually traveling from a city bordering Greece to Istanbul by bus, stopping at several cities to talk to the locals). They asked help from some major Turkish Unions and although they got some, they were not supported by the unions that much. But they did it nevertheless. And, believe it or not, most of them were engineers. And that march happened because a small number of people worked on it! Two of them even came to Seattle as observers. Further, a columnist I started to communicate then, who is now a good friend, came to Seattle and broadcasted what happened in Seattle daily from his column in those days. And I know almost all of them: We all aged about ten years! I never thought that what was going on was a revolution, but I thought that what was happening deserved contribution. So, forgive Chuck0 for a while. He is a good guy. Why would I have accepted being a comoderator with him on a few organizational lists, if I did not think so? Best, Sabri _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
