[CTRL] [radtimes] # 144

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[radtimes] # 144

An informally produced compendium of vital irregularities.

"We're living in rad times!"
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How to assist RadTimes--> (See ** at end.)
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Contents:

--Event Summary and Analysis of RAAB at J20
--The Illegitimate Son
--Thousands protest Bush's Inauguration
--Bursting bubbles
--Award-Winning Reporter Resigns On-Air from Pacifica

===================================================================

Event Summary and Analysis of RAAB at J20

Excerpt from February issue of Barricada
(Analysis follows below Summary)
----

Over 600 people took part in the Revolutionary Anti-Authoritarian Bloc in
Washington DC on Saturday, January 20th, inauguration day, marching for over
one hour through the streets of Washington before embarking on a day of
direct action against the state, including the smashing of a parade route
checkpoint.

The impressive and energetic march, which attempted to re-create the German
Autonome Antifa style of marching by organizing itself into tight lines of
affinity groups and surrounding itself with banners reading, amongst others,
Class War...For a Classless, Stateless Society...Autonomous Resistance,
Not Chaos, Not Violence...Freedom, and Whoever They Elect, We are
Ungovernable, initially headed towards the Presidential parade route. A
police checkpoint was passed without incident and the RAAB then marched one
block parallel to the parade route. However, given that there were still
several hours until the parade began, it was decided to move on.

The RAAB then headed back in the direction of the initial starting point,
but this time with the intention of exposing the role of the corporate media
in sustaining the dictatorship of capital called representative democracy.
To this end the RAAB headed to the central offices of the Washington Post.
Once there several people decorated the front of the Post building with
anarchist symbols and paint bombs, while the hundreds behind them chanted,
Fuck the Corporate Media. This action was merely a warning to the
Washington Post and all other media outlets that choose to defame social
movements, anarchists and other revolutionaries in particular, and
constantly show themselves to be the enemies of the people. Had it not been
for the need to keep moving due to police presence and the dissuasive set-up
of Washington's wide streets, they would be lamenting a lot more than some
graffiti. Next time they may not be so lucky.

It was however decided to move on as the bicycle scouts tracking police
movements informed those handling communications for the bloc that police
units were beginning to assemble and follow the bloc. In response to this
people began to drag newspaper boxes and construction fences into the
streets as they passed in order to halt the advance of the police.

At approximately 11 am a line of police managed to assemble in front of the
bloc at 14th and I despite the efforts of the scouts. However, the bloc
decided, possibly mistakenly (for analysis read The DC RAAB: Self Criticism
and Self Congratulation), that it was not necessary at this point to engage
the police as they could be avoided by simply heading up the intersecting
street. Once arrived at the parallel street, 14th and K, the bloc was again
stopped by a line of police and this time surrounded. A brief scuffle ensued
during which an unsuccessful half-hearted attempt to break through the still
quite thin police lines was made. Meanwhile, a group of about 60 entered an
alley and attempted, again unsuccessfully, to maneuver a dumpster into the
street in order to use it as a battering ram against the line of police.
However, the dumpster proved to be too heavy and difficult to maneuver,
never making it out of the alley.

The end result of this was that about 250 members of the bloc were encircled
by police, while those who had managed to escape, either through the alley
or by breaking through police lines (which about 30 managed to do) were
dispersed around the surrounding area. Most people immediately began heading
towards the first designated re-assembly point, the Navy memorial. However,
word soon came in through the communications people that the International
Action Center march, along with NOW and the Justice Action Movement, was
headed in the direction of the trapped RAAB marchers. Finally, as word
spread about the situation it was the police themselves that found
themselves being slowly surrounded by demonstrators and unable to move those
surrounded into the arrest busses already on the scene.

In the meantime those in the RAAB who had not been surrounded were able to
re-assemble in the park across the street from the police corral, which was
now five lines thick. In order to attempt to put more pressure on police to
release the trapped demonstrators several charges against the police were
carried out in order to take the street, block traffic, and further surround
police. However, the police lines held and the furthest the bloc and allies
made it was halfway across the street. In the meantime a RAAB member perched
atop a streetlight set fire to an American flag and showed those trapped
that they were not alone by raising the black flag. Police then tried to
arrest him but he escaped by jumping into the crowd.

At approximately 12pm police succumbed to the pressure of the thousands of
protestors and released all the trapped RAAB members, as well as those who
had joined them in solidarity. The RAAB then quickly re-assembled, now lower
on numbers and banners, but no longer isolated and now as part of a larger
march.

As the march progressed the bloc decided to not repeat the errors of the
morning and better arm itself in case of a future confrontation with police.
Therefore, when passing by a construction site members of the bloc took a
large, and heavy, construction wagon and began filling it with cones,
plastic barrels, and large wooden poles. In order to avoid having all this
confiscated the wagon was placed in the middle of the bloc and surrounded by
banners and people on all sides.

Several blocks later the march arrived at one of the controversial police
checkpoints leading to the parade route. However, scouts informed the bloc
that there was a weaker checkpoint only one block further down, so it was
decided to head there. Once arrived members of the RAAB began asking the
crowd assembled in front of the police barricade to move out of the way as
it had been decided to show the police, in no uncertain terms, that the RAAB
had no intentions of submitting itself to searches, or any other of the
polices wishes.

Once the road was cleared of all bystanders and only a metal barricade, some
policemen, and some secret service agents stood between the RAAB and access
to the parade route, the banner in the front was moved out of the way and
the bloc charged. In once of the several inspiring moments of the day police
and secret service scattered for their lives and the metal barricades of the
state were toppled by the power and determination of the RAAB as hundreds of
anarchists and revolutionaries, not 30 as the corporate press reported, as
well as newly empowered and emboldened reformists, surged past the no longer
existent checkpoint. However, in the rush to pass the checkpoint the bloc
lost some of its compactness, leading to several individuals suffering
close calls at the hands of plainclothes policemen and secret service
agents, such as the individual seen being rescued thanks to the efforts of a
barrel wielding RAAB member.

Once past the checkpoint and properly re-assembled the RAAB, now numbering
approximately 200 and aided by a group of Revolutionary Communist Party
Youth, found itself less than one block, one line of metal barricades, and
one line of police, away from breaking into the parade route itself. Rest
assured that had it not been for a quick thinking secret service agent who
thrust his car in front of the wagon that had been used to destroy the
checkpoint, the RAAB would have had no problems storming through the final
line of defense and pouring into the parade route, thus forcing its
cancellation and succeeding in its attempt to disrupt the ceremony of the
ruling class and proving that, regardless of how many thousands of police
are on hand to defend them, the ruling elite will never be safe.

Unfortunately, the sad fact is that the Secret Service agent did react
quickly and manage to rob the bloc of a great weapon, not without losing a
window and earning a nice dent however. Eventually the bloc, once again led
by the Whoever They Vote For, We Are Ungovernable banner made it to the
front of the crowd and found itself face to face with the final line of
police guarding the parade route. A half-hearted attempt to charge through
was made as people began kicking at the metal barricades. However, the
snipers visible on virtually every rooftop and the concerns of many about
getting shot took away from peoples conviction.

At this point the RAAB found itself in a rather odd position in that
retreating was no longer an option, nor did it seem desirable given the
sacrifices made to arrive so close to the parade, yet advancing no longer
seemed possible (by now the final line of police had swelled to five). The
group then assembled into a large circle in order to discuss what to do
next. Eventually, after much discussion, it was decided that it would be
best, given the large number of protestors in the area, to do one of the
things which the bloc does best and try to build allegiances with other
protestors and work them up by being as vocal as possible, while temporarily
staying away from some of the more radical chants and searching for common
ground. The RAAB thus spent the next hour or so milling around and chanting,
with slogans such as Whose Streets...Our Streets, and Bush Says Death
Row...We Say Hell No, among others.

Eventually though word came in that a group of 15 or so members of the bloc
were at the Navy memorial where the NOW protestors where, and that they had
expressed an interest in having the rest of the bloc join them. It was
therefore decided to head in that direction. Once there the RAAB, emboldened
by the presence and support of quite a few members of the Revolutionary
Communist Party Youth and other protestors, began burning US flags to chants
to Yankee, Yankee Go Home. The RAAB then turned its attention to the Navy
Memorial Mast and began taking down all the flags on it as members of the
black bloc and the RCP climbed on it waved the black flag and the red flag,
respectively. Once all the flags had been taken down a black flag, a red and
black flag, and an upside down US flag were hoisted. Seeing this the police
responded by sending a squad into the crowd to defend the memorial. Once the
police had penetrated the crowd they proceeded to surround the memorial,
leaving two unfortunate RAAB members who did not get off in time stranded,
one of which has now been dubbed Super Anarchist because of his apparent
ability to fly (see cover). However, Super Anarchist did land, and
fortunately safely into the midst of the black bloc who wrestled him away
from the hands of the police.

Immediately after this all the protestors, many less radical elements
included, banded together to surround the police and begin advancing on
them. It was again an inspiring sight to behold the force of the people as
the police retreated, looking terrified and tripping over themselves.

What followed was approximately an hour and a half of charges back and forth
between the RAAB and different law enforcement agencies, ranging from
plainclothes police, to shielded riot police, to secret service, as well as
several members of the extreme-right who attempted to pepper spray members
of the RAAB. One of the most violent battles came after plainclothes police
charged into the crowd attempting to arrest several demonstrators, only to
have the RAAB successfully unarrest them. However, despite the many
unarrests, a constant during the day, the police did manage to arrest two
people during the course of the events at the Navy Memorial.

During this time the presidential limousine went by, however it was going so
fast that people barely had time to react before it had whizzed by. It was
regardless met with a decent stream of rotten fruit, bottles, eggs, and
rocks. This also came after the parade was forced to stop for several
minutes before the secret service was convinced that it was safe for the
President to drive by. Regardless, we can only hope that Mr. President saw
the red and black flag flying high as he drove by, and let it be a warning
to him of what to expect these next four years.

Once the parade had gone by it became evident that there was no real purpose
to remaining on the spot, and, with the President gone and the crowds
beginning to dwindle, it was becoming a safety threat to remain on the spot
as it was only a matter of time before polices attention became focused
solely on the bloc. It was therefore decided to de-bloc and re-group at
another location at 5pm in order to discuss paying a visit to the inaugural
balls. However, when the time came the bloc had dwindled, due to exhaustion,
arrests, stragglers, people lost, and people having to leave, to just over
60. It was therefore decided to call it a day and go back to advancing the
class struggle in our local communities and workplaces until the next large
gathering in Quebec City in April.

All in all, the inauguration day bloc, which was definitely not without its
mistakes and misjudgments (discussed in other article), can be considered a
smashing success for anarchism, for a variety of reasons. A well organized
and well publicized march of 600 strong was put together with only 2 months
notice, the police were handed several important defeats, the bloc showed
once again just how strong it is and how no matter how many police and how
much scare propaganda we can always adjust, a lot of people were radicalized
by the bloc and very supportive of its actions (even some Democrats), and a
lot of important alliances were either built or strengthened.
----

Despite the overwhelmingly positive response to the actions of the
Revolutionary Anti-Authoritarian Bloc on inauguration day, from both bloc
participants and other protestors, it is clear and undeniable that not
everything went well. Therefore, in order to not fall into dangerous
self-congratulation we at the Barricada Collective have decided to analyze
as deeply and honestly as possible, regardless of who it may offend or
please, what in our opinion went well and what didn't, what we should try to
repeat next time, what to avoid, and what to change. In order to make this
as clear and concise as possible, we have decided to take the criticisms and
congratulations on a point by point basis.

Why a Presence at the Presidential Inauguration?

When the call for an organized revolutionary anti-authoritarian contingent
at the inauguration was first made public quite a few people were openly
opposed to it, for a variety of reasons. However, the most commonly heard
reasons were that a bloc without a particular target would be ineffective
and pointless, and that anarchists or revolutionaries should not grace the
presidential inauguration with their presence. Evidently, in both cases, we
disagree.
It seems that because the black bloc in the last year has mainly served as a
tool to achieve a certain goal, such as damage property in Seattle or
attempt to shut down the IMF meeting in Washington, many people have begun
to see it as merely a tool to attack precise targets. However, we see the
black bloc as a lot more than just that. To us black blocs do not always
have to be directed at a specific target. They can also be geared towards
propaganda and simply to present an organized contingent at an event, such
as Millions For Mumia for example.
Regardless of this, we believe that not only was there a clear target for
inauguration day, or several for that matter, but there was every reason to
be at the presidential inauguration.
To us the Presidential Inauguration represents everything that we oppose
about the state and the dictatorship of capital otherwise known as
representative democracy. Thus, by being there we were attacking the root
of all we believe is wrong with our society, the state itself. However, we
also wanted to draw the connection between the state and all those powers
that help to preserve the current order. This is precisely why we decided to
march on the Washington Post.
We also wanted to take the opportunity, given the large numbers of press,
both corporate and independent, from all over the world that would be
present to not only draw attention to everything we oppose about capitalism
and statism, but also to highlight our alternatives to this system. In other
words, the constructive aspect of anarchism. It is for this reason that we
chose to lead with banners reading Class War..For A Classless, Stateless
Society, and Not Chaos, Not Violence...Freedom. We also attempted to
de-centralize as much as possible the propaganda efforts in order to
maximize the amount of fliers, pamphlets, and other propaganda materials.
However, we must recognize that one of the Barricada Collectives worst
mistakes was that we, literally, forgot to make the fliers. They were ready
to go and a member of the Collective was on the way to making the
photocopies but got sidetracked and never made it to the copy shop.
Regarding the clear target, well, nothing would have been better than to
have shut down the ceremony of the ruling class. Many people thought it was
suicidal and not within our means, but as anybody who was there saw, we
weren't far from succeeding.

The Call and the Two Months of Organizing

As has already been established, organizing for the RAAB got off to a rather
turbulent start. The first point of conflict came when some people objected
to the language of the call. This in our opinion was not a major concern, as
if people disagreed with the call they were more than free to write one of
their own, as that is the nature of a call. One, or more, groups writes it
and others are free to endorse it or not.
A more important point of conflict arose in that several people objected to
a Boston based group putting out a call for a demonstration in Washington
without, as they believed, consulting local people. In fact Barricada did
try to contact somebody in Washington several months before making the call
public, but never received an answer as the mails were lost in cyberspace.
This was quickly straightened out fortunately after the call was made public
and we were put in contact with a group of very dedicated and serious
Washington organizers who we worked with extensively and without whom a lot
of what was accomplished would have been impossible.
Once this link was established the next two months were essentially a blur
of outreach and logistical work, with us handling communications with other
groups planning to attend, keeping people up to date as to what was
happening, organizing the pre-march meeting, and essentially doing the most
we could at a distance. Meanwhile, the people in Washington took care of the
logistical aspect of the mobilization and made certain that everything
necessary for a smooth bloc was provided for, such as communications,
scouts, a meeting place, and everything else that goes with a mobilization
of this sort.
All this being said though, and without for one second denying that having a
local group put out and organize an event in a particular city is preferable
and ideal, we do not necessarily believe that this always has to be the
case. If a group wants to take on an initiative in a particular city that no
local group feels the need for and is willing to accept the responsibility
and organize in a serious and responsible manner to make it a success,
taking into account everything that is needed for an initiative to succeed,
why should they not? This turned out to not be an issue in organizing for
the inauguration, but we feel it is something to keep in mind.

The Night Before: The Organizing Meeting

Unknown to many people, even many RAAB participants, an organizing meeting
attended by over 100 people was held the night before in Washington to
discuss issues relevant to the next days action.
Given the precedent of police infiltration at the bloc meetings in
Cincinnati (which has not been confirmed but many suspect) and the high
level of security around the Presidential Inauguration we devised a rather
complex way of getting people to the organizing meeting in order to keep
security as tight as possible. At one point we suspected it might even make
it too complicated and a lot of people would miss the meeting because of
this, however, the high turnout showed this not to have been an issue.
People who were attending were also free to bring with them as many others
as they wanted, provided they were people who they thought were completely
trustworthy.
Once the scheduled time came the doors were promptly locked and the meeting,
at which people were supposed to speak as freely as possible within the
limits of reasonable safety, began. Anybody who was there can vouch for the
fact that the start was slightly on the turbulent side as there was a lot to
be covered, several points of disagreement, a lot of stress, and not much
time to sort everything out. However, we had purposefully decided to make
the meeting as last minute as possible in order to have as many RAAB
participants as possible in the city and so that any particulars that came
up would only have a few hours to be leaked if our security was breached.
Something that we can all congratulate ourselves on is the fact that
everybody seemed to understand the importance of being punctual at the
meeting and only two people arrived after the doors were locked.
The first hour of the meeting was devoted to discussing how best to assemble
without allowing police to arrest people or break up the march before it
even got started, given the lack of a permit. After much discussion back and
forth it was decided to stick with the original plan but to try to be as
punctual as possible in order to bloc up quickly. As was seen the next day,
the discussion as to how best to assemble turned out to not be as important
as we thought it was as police presence at the bloc assembly location was
minimal. It is hard to believe, but to this point the only logical
explanation that we can come up with for this, given that several police
authorities stated that the RAAB was one of their principal security
concerns, but it really does seem as though the police were somehow unaware
that we had changed our meeting location. We say this because, while there
was almost no police were the RAAB assembled, there was quite a bit, and in
riot gear, at Freedom Plaza. It is hard to believe that such a display of
force was for the IAC and other groups of that sort.
The meeting then went on to discuss other issues, such as regulations on
banners and flagpoles, re-assembly points, jail solidarity, the relationship
to JAM and other groups, etc. This brings us to some important mistakes that
we, as organizers, have to take responsibility for.
The first is that we paid too much attention to the scare tactics of the
police. We didn't want them to have any excuse to pick people off or hassle
them when they were on their own. Therefore, we advised people to stay away
from anything at all that might be interpreted as a weapon, as well as
urging them to avoid flagpoles thicker than three-quarters of an inch by
three-quarters of an inch, which the police had promised to not allow past
checkpoints. In reality what happened was that even though police at no time
had any opportunities to give people trouble over these things, most people
didn't have them. We were therefore, despite our large numbers, vastly
unprotected, as we didn't even have a decent amount of flagpoles to work
with. End result is that despite marching tight, we were easy to disperse as
those in the front and on the sides were essentially punching bags for the
police. It is essential that this mistake is not repeated in Quebec City
this April and we are already working to ensure that the bloc is better
prepared for next time.
The second important organizing error for which we have to take
responsibility is what turned out to be a very poor choice of a re-assembly
point. The first re-assembly point which we chose, the Navy memorial, turned
out to be a great choice, and the third re-assembly point, the one latest in
the day, at McPherson square, turned out to be unnecessary. However, our
second re-assembly point choice, the Justice Department, turned out to be,
quite simply, terrible. For some reason we thought that it would be good to
have re-assembly points on both sides of the parade route. However, it
turned out to be a 45 minute walk from where we were on the North side of
the parade route to the Justice Department on the South side. Most people
simply did not bother to go, and those who did found themselves virtually
alone, and quite far from where the rest of the bloc was.
Despite these two, quite serious, errors of judgment on our part, the
meeting in our opinion went quite smoothly given the amount of people
present and all the issues that needed addressing in a span of just over two
hours.

The Morning March

The beginning of the march was probably one of the most well put together
aspects of the demonstration. People were punctual, the banners were
unfurled at precisely 9:45 am as announced, and the march moved off the
square at precisely 10 am, again, as announced. The idea of re-creating the
German Antifa style of marching, while by no means wholly effective, was
decent in our eyes for a first serious try. Rather than marching as one
large mass, as most blocs in the past have in the US, people formed to a
large extent into organized lines of affinity groups. This increases
security for people and helps create an atmosphere of trust.
The banners down the sides also served to help keep people tight, yet, due
to the lack of flagpoles down the sides, it turned out to be more of an
illusion than anything else, as when police charged the banners fell and in
several cases, people scattered. Therefore, while this was a step forward,
for next time, poles on the banners (the stronger the better), helmets, and
padding. For those concerned on how to find it cheap, used soccer, football,
and or hockey equipment makes for great protection, as does, to a lesser
extent, foam. Regarding helmets, construction helmets can usually be found
at a reasonable price. Of course, next time being Quebec there is the issue
of the border to deal with, so it is suggested to arrive early in Quebec and
set about obtaining what you need once in Canada.
We strongly disagree with those who claim that the black bloc tactic is
getting old and outdated. On the contrary, it is still in a growth stage in
North America. The black blocs are getting larger and better organized at
every important mobilization, and the time has now come to start focusing on
how to protect ourselves adequately.
And, since we are growing and still making mistakes, not surprisingly
several were made during the one-hour march through Washington. The first
being that, in our efforts to build bridges with other activists we decided
to head first to the IAC meeting point. However, this meant going through a
narrow and crowded street. When passing by the IAC area quite a few black
bloc stragglers were lost in the crowd.
The second, and probably one of the most significant, mistakes was the
decision to not engage the police in direct confrontation when the first
line of police formed in front of the bloc at 14 and I. Had the bloc charged
the very thin police lines and advanced only one more block we would have
arrived at the park and made it much more difficult for police to encircle
us. However, seeing how we were very close to an intersecting street and it
was still early in the day, we decided to try to avoid the confrontation.
However, it was our detour that allowed police to re-group and gave them a
second chance, which was all they needed, to trap approximately half of the
bloc.
Had Voter March, NOW, the IAC, and all the others not happened to converge
on the scene, chances are we would have been loaded into the arrest busses,
marking the end of the day for many a participant of the black bloc. Which
brings us to the next point to analyze.

The RAAB and Its Relationship to Other Protest Groups

One of the most difficult aspects of organizing the RAAB was trying to work
with the Justice Action Movement. While we wholeheartedly agree that we do
need to avoid isolating ourselves and build working relationships with other
groups, we also need to draw the line somewhere. JAM definitely pushed us
too far. First, they showed a complete lack of solidarity towards anybody
who did not choose the same tactics as they did by releasing the typical we
will not engage in this, that, or the other statement. This in itself is
unfortunately not uncommon. However, JAM, which supposedly functions on
consensus, was able to achieve consensus for this statement by
purposefully bringing it up at a meeting where they knew that those who
disagreed with the statement would be unable to attend.
Additionally, JAM decided to spread demonstrators out across the route in
groups of 25 or less (as groups that size did not need permits to assemble).
We feel this, had it happened, would not only have been a terrible waste of
our large numbers, but would have put many people at risk, from police or
from over-zealous right-wingers.
Furthermore, JAM demonstrated a complete lack of any sort of political
character. This can be seen that the discussion on their list as to why they
were protesting the inauguration yielded nothing, and they even welcomed
Democrats who clearly stated that the only reason they would be protesting
was because Gore did not win the election. Hardly a stance against the
parties of the ruling class.
JAM also insisting on working closely with the police, to the extent of even
paying to take a high ranking police officer to dinner. This cannot be
interpreted as anything but an insult to the thousands of activists who have
been beaten, jailed, and prosecuted over the last year. To further show
their political naivety, they insisted on under-funding the legal
collective, convinced that since they had been so kind to the police, there
would be no reason to expect many arrests or trials.
Yet, it does not end there. The JAM list was also full of comments
suggesting that protestors dress as patriotically as possible in order to
show that they too were proud Americans exercising their first amendment
rights as well as people reacting with horror at the suggestion that
protestors dress in red in order to be more clearly seen as such. These
types of attitudes seem to us to be hardly anything that anarchists and
other revolutionaries should be tolerant of.
All this prompted Barricada to publicly distance itself from JAM, as
honestly, we did not want our name associated with such a group. However, as
the final demonstration of their lack of organization and naivety, based on
some rumors that the inauguration would take place indoors JAM approached
organizers of the RAAB, literally, the night before after having trashed,
disrespected, and attempted to isolate the RAAB in order to ask that the
RAAB act as support for direct actions that they would like to carry out.
Not only was it terribly out of place for them, after realizing that their
organizing was largely deficient, to ask the RAAB to drop all it had been
working on in the last several months because they had a sudden change of
mind, but since when are effective mass direct actions organized in less
than 12 hours?!
Nobody will deny that we need to expand and build alliances with others,
however, we need to be somewhat discerning when we do so in order to not
become simply the shock troops of reformists. We should make it clear to
those that use us at large events and then turn around and denounce us to
the press that we will not tolerate that kind of behavior. We also have to
be careful not to put our aspirations on the backburner simply to please
reformers, and this was essentially what JAM was asking us to do when they
came to us the night before the inauguration. So, in our opinion, the
question was whether we really wanted to serve as the front line for people
calling for reform, or whether we wanted to put our alternatives and our
objectives on the table.
All that said, anybody who was in Washington on inauguration day saw that it
was the solidarity of thousands of other protestors that saved the trapped
participants of the RAAB from certain arrest. And by the same token it was
the actions of the RAAB that allowed many to arrive at the parade route
unsearched and unhindered, teaching everybody a valuable lesson in the
importance of solidarity and mutual aid.

The Re-Assembled RAAB, the Charge on the Checkpoint and the Battles at the
Navy Memorial

Once the RAAB was back on the move, this time as part of a larger march, it
seemed to hit its stride, and from then on the day was mostly composed of
victories.
The first significant victory in our eyes was the charge on the police
checkpoint. In a spectacular show of force by the RAAB the checkpoint was
completely destroyed, hundreds of RAAB participants poured through, hundreds
of others cheered us on as we advanced, and the police and secret service
were handed a humiliating defeat. Not only this, but no arrests had to be
lamented at this point due to the heroic unarresting efforts of many RAAB
participants.
However, we must admit that we were rather disappointed when the bloc
decided that an attempt to charge the final line of police was not
worthwhile, given what many people saw as the risk of being shot at by the
snipers on the rooftops. In most cases the argument centered around not
feeling that the President of the US was worth dying for. However, first of
all we think that the concerns were a little exaggerated, as we have trouble
believing that the forces of repression would dare to start shooting at such
a large crowd with every television camera in the world watching. But,
assuming they had, what better to expose the violence of the state than
having the whole world see unarmed protestors being shot at from rooftops?!
Furthermore, what better way to disrupt the ceremony of the ruling class and
express our rejection of the state and everything it represents than
shutting down the inaugural parade?! And, we have seen in past mobilizations
that other protestors, of which there were many where the RAAB was, are
usually not willing to confront police with us, but when the bloc opens the
path they usually follow, and we believe this would have been the case had
the parade route been breached. Regardless, we decided to respect the
desires of the bloc and go with what most people felt was best, which was to
highlight the common ground between ourselves and the other protestors
present.
Eventually however we moved on to the Navy Memorial where more of the days
successes took place. Again, important alliances were strengthened, such as
with NOW or with the Revolutionary Communist Party Youth Brigade who,
despite the deep ideological differences, it has become evident we can
always depend on in the streets (as was demonstrated in Philadelphia and
inauguration day). Many other protestors were also radicalized as when the
police were first surrounded and forced off the square many people who were
clearly not with the RAAB or the RCP could be seen linking arms and helping
out. Needless to say the raising of the black and red and black flags was a
great inspirational victory for all and the many unarrests and successful
battles with police were also very positive.

The DC RAAB: The Wrap-Up

All in all we believe that the inauguration day mobilization was, despite
the difficulties and setbacks, a smashing success. Over 600 people were
mobilized with only two months preparation, the secure meeting arrangement
proved to be, while certainly not perfect, quite effective, anarchists and
other protestors developed stronger ties and a good working relationship, a
great example of the importance and effectiveness of mutual aid and
solidarity was experienced first hand, several important blows were handed
to the police and the secret service, and we showed that regardless of who
is president, our struggle remains the same, and will only grow larger and
stronger. Finally, important steps were taken towards creating better
organized, better prepared, and stronger, blocs for future actions and, rest
assured that at least we at Barricada will continue to work to re-create the
very effective tactics of the Italian and German autonomes on the North
American continent.
For now however it is back to our local communities and workplaces, back to
taking back our lives every day, and to giving the enemy hell every night.
See you all in Quebec!

The DC RAAB: The Thank Yous

There are a lot of people without whom this mobilization would not have been
the success that we feel it was. First and foremost we would like to thank
the organizers in Washington who worked with us and without whom we would
have been flying blind. Secondly we would like to thank the long list of
groups who came out and endorsed the RAAB call. These are Sabate Anarchist
Collective (NEFAC), Agitate! (Baltimore), The Onward Collective
(Gainesville), ABCF People of Color Caucus, Anarchist Black Cross
Federation-Houston, Radio Sexto Sol (Houston), People Against Racist Terror,
Anarchist Soccer League (New Brunswick), ABCF-Kent, Infoshop.org
(Washington, DC), ARA Columbus, Brighter Days Collective (Lansing), Aron
Pieman Kay/Global Pastry Uprising, Tenant's Voice (Kansas), Free Anarchist
Collective (Detroit)
Grain RAGE (upper Midwest Resistance Against Genetic Engineering,
Minneapolis), Anarchists Anonymous (Minneapolis), GAIA (Green Anarchists
Insurrectionary Anonymous, Minneapolis), Active Transformation Newspaper
Collective (Detroit/Lansing), Brian MacKenzie Center (Washington, DC),
Stenka Razin Anarchist Group, and The Defenestrator. We would also like to
thank www.infoshop.org for providing the RAAB with a webpage, all the people
who acted as scouts, and finally of course, everybody who came out and
helped to swell the ranks of the resistance.

Until We Meet Again!

===================================================================

The Illegitimate Son

<http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=10359>

Geov Parrish, AlterNet
January 22, 2001

Presidential inaugurations are a peculiar combination of civic ecstacy and
the celebration of raw power, like enthralled high school students on field
trips, watching a Soviet May Day-style parade for corporate democracy.
The ostentatious swearing-in ceremonies; the Pennsylvania Avenue procession
of floats, marching bands, and military hardware; the sharpshooters on
roofs; the stretch limos pulling up to bazillion-dollars-per-ticket gala
inaugural balls. All serve not as a humble promise to honor the privilege
of serving the American public, but as (publicly) a self-congratulatory
reminder that We Are The Greatest Government In The History Of The World,
and (privately) a wild party for whichever clique will be pillaging
taxpayers for the next four years.
For more sober observers, it's all a reminder that while you can watch once
every four years for a few hours, Washington power is an ongoing series of
daily, and nightly parties to which you're generally not invited.
All modern day U.S. inaugurations, regardless of victorious party, are like
this. George W. Bush's 2001 party, however, had a third element, an
uninvited and largely unreported one, as studiously ignored by other
partygoers as a loudly drunk neighbor the hosts hope will simply go home.
Among the estimated 300,000 people that gathered in a light, raw rain at
the Capitol and along Pennsylania Avenue, tens of thousands of people
expressed their belief that the whole thing was a fraud.
These were the largest inaugural protests since the days of Nixon. In 1973,
anti-inaugural crowds, assembling far away from the parade, were swelled by
a well-organized movement angered by an unpopular war and Four More Years.
In 2001, there was no such organization, and Dubya hadn't even had a chance
to step in it with his new Oval Office boots yet.
But the protesters came from near and far, and, unlike 1973, they could get
up close to the Pennsylvania Ave. festivities thanks to a 1997 court ruling
allowing anti-abortion groups access to Bill Clinton's parade. This year,
at least 20 different, mostly obscure groups made plans to protest. They
had announced five different, distinct locations (or, just "along
Pennsylvania Avenue") at which the confused anti-Bush citizen was to assemble.
Only five weeks previous, Al Gore's supporters, buoyed by the Florida
Supreme Court ruling, believed they'd be the ones marching and partying.
Instead, they were shivering, waving signs like "Count My Vote" and "Hail
to the Thief," marginalized by the pervasive security apparati and
disinterested networks.
Alongside the protesters angry about Florida and the Supreme Court were
many others, concerned about a wide variety of issues that transcended Gore
and Bush. The dozens of issues all melded into one message, unmistakably
delivered in block after block of the parade route: George W. Bush had no
right to pursue, as President, the policies he wants. He was, according to
the words of one memorable sign, the illegitimate son.
It was difficult to gauge the size of the anti-Bush sentiment, and so
mostly the networks and reporters and pundits didn't even try. They were
content to mention it in passing, like some unfortunate, yet unavoidable,
irritant, and content to get comments from appalled Bush supporters and
adopt the Republican thesis that these were "sore losers." If so, the
losers were everywhere, making up a large, and in many places a majority,
percentage of the crowd.
In Bush's uninspiring, meandering, flatly delivered inaugural speech,
evoking nothing so much as a high school student rendering the speech his
clueless father penned late the previous night, he mentioned citizens
sometimes seeming to "share a continent, not a country," a reference that
could as easily refer to his divisive policy proposals. That was the new
president's only gesture towards bringing back into the fold Americans
embittered by the way he won the election. If anything, the prominent
ceremonial role played by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), husband of a Cabinet
nominee and primary architect of all opposition to campaign finance reform,
suggested instead Dubya's fundamental contempt for the entire topic of
electoral reform, and lack of concern for "healing."
The parade route was littered with people who will remember that lack of
concern. As the Bushes rode and then walked up Pennsylvania Avenue, they
passed solidly pro-Bush bleachers (these were the paid tickets, at $50 and
up), alternating with blocks that were either mixed or, especially nearer
the White House, solidly anti-Bush.
Somehow, this became, according to one radio reporter, "hundreds of
protesters"; according to most others, at best a few thousand. The
Washington Post managed to work in the familiar reference to protesters'
piercings. But the anti-Bush signs were much, much more widespread, and
their bearers more demographically varied than most inaugural coverage
suggested.
Such dismissiveness both missed the point and the significance of the
demonstrations, and showed starkly how difficult it will be for citizen
groups alarmed by one or another Bush policy in the next four years to get
themselves heard. With the exception of the National Organization for
Women, which comprised a boisterous pro-choice cluster between 8th and 9th
Streets, the traditional Democratic Party constituencies one would expect
to protest both the election and Bush's prospective policies were
strikingly absent. Among the protests, there was no labor or environmental
presence at all. Even vocal election critics like Jesse Jackson had taken a
pass; Jackson, before scandal erupted, had planned to be at a rally in
Tallahassee, far away from the cameras.
Instead, the election-themed protesters were mobilized through the Internet
by vaporous "groups" like Votermarch.org and Countercoup.org, entities that
had never met face to face and had come together expressly for the purpose
of protesting the inaugural. Farther to the left, organizers like the
Justice Action Movement (another anonymous acronym), International Action
Center and the media celebrity of Rev. Al Sharpton helped bring people to
D.C., but they themselves sported few, if any, "followers" in the
traditional sense.
The inauguration's unprecedented heavy security, the Secret Service ringed
the parade route with ten security checkpoints all parade-goers had to pass
through, was in large part because nobody knew what to expect. As it turned
out, the massive police presence was unnecessary, and the protests were
exactly as advertised: an almost entirely peaceful display of opposition to
Bush. Somehow, the lack of conflict between police and protesters, and the
lack of prominent names attached to their cause, made the protesters'
message less important to reporters.
But the lack of organizational backing made these protests more, not less,
impressive.  All the "sponsors" did was provide permits; tens of thousands
of dissenters found their way to D.C. on their own volition, and without
any apparent policy goal beyond the desire to display opposition to a
regime that had not yet even taken office.
There was no legislation pending, no war raging, no recession (so far), and
only a few weeks of "organizing" by groups, most of whom nobody has ever
heard of. And yet tens of thousands came, and in cities like Seattle, San
Francisco, and Los Angeles, thousands more also protested.
Opponents of Dubya's policies will remember this; and they will remember
that after having the election yanked out from under them, Congressional
Democrats have displayed almost no opposition to an array of Bush Cabinet
nominees that is anything but moderate and bipartisan. There is a
potentially powerful movement brewing, but nobody is harnessing it, and
nobody in power is championing it.

===================================================================

Thousands protest Bush's Inauguration

<http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/01/20/protests/index.html>

Demonstrators lining the parade route give the new presidential limo an
unwelcome splash on its way to the White House.

By Daryl Lindsey
Jan. 20, 2001
WASHINGTON - Not since Richard Nixon paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue in
1973 has a presidential Inauguration drawn so many protesters, and last
time, people were out to protest the Vietnam War.
Demonstrators turned out in droves on Saturday, a miserably gray and
drizzly day, with temperatures hovering in the mid-30s -- to protest the
Inauguration of President George W. Bush, whose election was contested all
the way to the Supreme Court. Police would not estimate the size of the
crowd, but many thousands of protesters were in evidence.
"The level of people on the streets shows that people are really upset
about lack of democratic process," says Liz Butler of the Justice Action
Movement, the umbrella organizing committee responsible for the protest.
"They took it to the streets. We saw tens of thousands. We saw far more
protesting Bush than supporting him."
They came out in scores, co-existing on the parade route with supporters of
the new president and lining Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol to the
White House.  Interspersed between Bush-Cheney signs and Texas flags were
thousands of protest placards, bearing inscriptions such as "Bush Cheated,"
"Hail to the Thief," "Selected not elected," "Bushwhacked by the Supremes"
and "Golly Jeb, we pulled it off!" There were also plenty of R-rated signs,
like "Dick and Bush" and "George Wanker Bush." One poster included a
caricature of a metaphorically toothless Bush in the image of Alfred E.
Neuman.
The protesters were a who's-who of lefty causes, from feminism and the
pro-choice movement to anti-death penalty protesters (identifiable by their
ubiquitous "Free Mumia" garb), gay rights activists and environmentalists.
There were also dozens of youth wearing the vinegar-soaked, tear gas- and
pepper spray-resistant bandanas that have become a symbol of the protest
movement's anarchist elements. But there was no one rappelling off
buildings, nor any of the random acts of violence against global corporate
outposts that characterized the Battle of Seattle just over a year ago.
One sign underlined the irony of the number of protesters who attended the
parade Saturday: "From nadir to Nader in 2004." Indeed, many of the
protesters were also supporters of Ralph Nader's failed presidential bid.
Where he did succeed, however, was in winning 2 percent of the Florida vote
that arguably would have gone to Gore. In other words, many of the
demonstrators who turned out were actually protesting a president who they
helped to deliver to the White House.
The best explanation for Saturday's relative calm was that protesters were
distributed widely along the parade route the police did an effective job
of isolating protesters and the general public in small clusters along
Pennsylvania Avenue, drastically reducing the threat of riots or violence.
But this also meant there was a steady stream of heckling of Bush and
Cheney as they moved along the broad boulevard toward the White House. And
it wasn't entirely without incident. There were a few minor altercations
between protesters and police. The AP reported that in one incident,
impatient protesters who wanted to get closer to the parade route slashed
tires on cars before getting arrested.
The hatred was palpable. At one particularly dark moment, a
protester lobbed an egg at the presidential limo. Bush remained safely
inside until the final block before reaching his new home.  (In the past,
Bush's father and even Bill Clinton walked large stretches of the parade
route, but not so during this cold and contentious day.)
During Bush's swearing-in, officers briefly detained several thousand
protesters, some who had gathered near the Justice Department for a
National Organization for Women rally and others who had marched with
filmmaker and celebrity Nader endorser Michael Moore from the city's Dupont
Circle neighborhood. The group was ultimately allowed to proceed down to
the parade route, and a crisis was averted.
The biggest single pocket of protesters was at Freedom Plaza, near the
intersection of 14th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.  Hundreds of
protesters gathered there, as did a passel of police wearing padded black
riot gear. There were also Secret Service men, identifiable by their
signature ear pieces, and G-men. But the only real violence appeared in the
fervor with which protesters sought to project their voices.  They chanted
and they chanted. "We won't go back, send Bush back." "U.S. Navy out of
Vieques." "Free Mumia." "We want Bush out of D.C." "Racist, sexist,
anti-gay, Bush and Cheney go away!" "Georgie go home, Georgie go home."
"You're not our president." And so on. Sadly, due to strict regulations set
forth by the feds and Washington police, the oversize puppets that had lent
a sense of street theater to other protests during the past year were
largely absent this time around.
The protesters at Freedom Plaza hissed, howled, booed and jeered at
President Bush as his limousine rolled by at around 3:30 p.m. EST. The
cacophony was deafening, and it was no doubt heard by the President and
first lady Laura Bush.
This Inauguration enlisted the greatest amount of security ever, with
thousands of cops on hand. Officers were called in from every police
department in the District of Columbia, the Supreme Court police, the
National Park police, the Capitol police, the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms and every single officer of Washington's Metropolitan
Police Department. Police officers from Maryland and Virginia were also on
hand to help.
A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police Department said that as of 5:30
p.m. EST, only 9 arrests had been made, all for disorderly conduct. Police
reported no serious injuries, though several officers were hurt when
protesters chucked bottles at them. By contrast, more than 1,300 were
arrested during the IMF and World Bank protests in Washington last April.
About 600 were arrested during the Battle of Seattle on Nov. 20, 1999.
Despite the low number of arrests, protest organizers accused the police
department of acting too aggressively. "They kept protesters from joining
each other. They used intimidation tactics to try to stop the protests. We
see this as an extension of the Bush presidency," says JAM's Butler.
"Ultimately, it's a culmination of corporate control in America."
Nonetheless, Butler says she was pleased with turnout especially as
inclement weather has dampened the overall turnout at Bush's Inaugural
weekend festivities. "This is a historic moment," she said. "We're hearing
reports that this is even larger than the protests against Nixon. We're
incredibly excited at the amount of people who turned out.
"Of course, we're ashamed that Bush has decided to be a 'uniter' by uniting
people against him," Bulter continued. "They all chose to come out in the
freezing rain, even the weather couldn't stop these people."
----
About the writer
Daryl Lindsey is associate editor of Salon News.

===================================================================

January 10, 2001

bay guardian interview

Bursting bubbles

<http://www.sfbg.com/News/35/15/15bgiv.html>

Doug Henwood says mean things about the new economy.

By Christian Parenti

AUTHOR DOUG HENWOOD is something of a cult figure among left-wing brainiacs.
A former part-time merchant marine and toll collector on the New Jersey
Turnpike, Henwood was the first in his family to go to college. From there he
made it to graduate school for literature, dropped out, and almost began a
career on Wall Street ... but something went wrong, terribly wrong. Today
Henwood is America's leading radical economic journalist. His merciless wit,
fluid writing style, and uncompromising analysis have made his newsletter,
Left Business Observer, the intellectual equivalent of uncut dope, subscribed
to religiously by everyone from death row inmates to Canadian finance
ministers. Henwood's last book, Wall Street: How It Works and for Whom
(Verso, 1997), is an irreverent tour de force that demystifies the workings
of high finance. Another book, on the so-called new economy, is on the way. I
interviewed Henwood at his Spartan office in Manhattan, which overlooks one
of the last sweatshops in the garment district. Henwood calls it "a very 'old
economy' view."

Bay Guardian: What do you think of the much used term "globalization"?

Doug Henwood: I think it's very imprecise and used to mean many things. On
the left, "globalization" is used instead of "capitalism," or "imperialism,"
or some combination of the two. In some ways this is an uncritical embrace of
vocabulary that comes out of the ruling class. Look at the World Bank or
mainstream pundits: they all talk about the "inevitability of globalization."
Many on the left just take that term ­ whatever exactly it means ­ and put
negative signs in front of it. They don't really sort through what the term
itself means or what the critical approach of an oppositional movement should
be.
Also, I think "globalization" presumes a past, innocent, "localized" age when
things were nicer. And it identifies the process of internationalization
itself as the enemy rather than the capitalistic, imperialistic, exploitative
aspects of that internationalization.
Internationalism is something progressives should embrace. I thought we liked
cosmopolitanism, and intercourse of all kinds among the people of the world.

BG: So why the use of this term, "globalization"?

DH: People are very timid about using words like "capitalism" and
"imperialism." We're told they're very out of fashion now. But I don't think
a mushy and misleading substitute terminology is acceptable. People should
call things by their names and start thinking of things by their names.
Luckily, I see more of a willingness on the part of troublemakers to do just
that.
Once you start to understand capitalism, you see that it's always been an
international and internationalizing system. Maybe we can say the pace of
that has picked up, but I don't think there is anything particularly newly
international about the political economy today.
For example, levels of capital flows and international trade in the late 19th
century were by some measures higher than they are today. A hundred years ago
you had the age of outright imperialism, which was certainly a sort of
globalization. This has always been a global system, a world system. To posit
this utopia when everything was really groovy and "local" is misleading,
historically and politically.

BG: Some would concede your point but argue that the sheer quantity of
international transactions and communication has led to a qualitative shift.

DH: Certainly things have speeded up. But the shift from a world in which
information and capital could only flow at the speed of weeks ­ transatlantic
ocean voyages, for example ­ to the era of the telegraph was a much bigger
shift than anything we've seen today. That change compressed the whole world
timescale from weeks into seconds. Going from seconds to nanoseconds is
faster, but is it really more radical or important than changes in the past?
We're used to thinking in a global way because of the telegraph. We inherited
a whole way of global thinking that was created ex nihilo then. The same with
the telephone, the photograph, jet travel ­ these all had to do with creating
a proverbial "global village." We're not now entering some new kind of
hyperspace severed from what went before it.
And although the international movement of capital and goods may take
different technical forms today, the basic social relations of the world
economy are still very much the same. There are still owners who employ,
control, and profit from workers. There are still imperial centers dictating
policy to and demanding service from the colonized periphery. There's still
the debtor-creditor relation, which is one of dominance and submission.

BG: Where does wealth come from in capitalism?

DH: I'm very old-fashioned. I think that wealth ­ whatever kinds of
transformations it goes through ­ fundamentally originates in the
exploitation of labor and nature in the production process. So workers
produce wealth that's then expropriated ­ taken ­ by the owners of capital.
It may not be expropriated directly by capitalists the way it was in the 19th
century ­ often you can't point to a single plant owner and say, "I work for
him, and my work makes him rich" ­ but it's still the same set of social
relations.
It's a lot more institutionally complicated now; wealth goes through all
these financial markets, all these transformations from commodities to money
to stocks back to money and commodities and so on. Those who produce wealth,
say, in a sweatshop making clothes for the Gap, are geographically distant
from those who control and accumulate wealth via stocks, bonds, their trust
funds, whatever. But still, fundamentally, workers produce wealth;
capitalists and financiers expropriate it.

BG: You're finishing another book, called New Economy. Could you tell us
about that?

DH: The whole "new economy" discourse of the last three or four years ­ which
may be fading now that the dot-com stocks have collapsed and the economy is
looking a little recessionish ­ holds that computer and communications
technology have so turned the world upside down that all the old rules don't
apply. Supposedly, we've entered a period of "prosperity for all" because
governments are now powerless; finance has been "democratized"; a wonderful
"spontaneity" has moved to center stage; there's been an end to the business
cycle. Supposedly, we've entered a period of tremendous productivity growth,
and there's never been anything like it before.
In fact, there's been a lot of things like it. And the current rhetoric is
very similar to past rhetoric that's come late in long bull markets. There's
something about an exuberant stock market that leads to this euphoria about
"new eras."
The past has seen at least three such periods over the last century. Around
1900, 1901, there was a bubble craze jacked up with all the
turn-of-the-century fever: a sort of calendar superstition mixed with
technophilic exuberance. Likewise in the late 1920s just before the bust and
then in the late 1960s, there was more "new era" hype. At least the current
mania is beginning to wane as the markets sink and the dot-com roadkill
mounts.
The popular writing of all these periods is always remarkably similar. It's
this "technologically driven transformation of life that renders everything
else obsolete." There are always claims of a new era of understanding among
the peoples of the world because of new technologies. Peace, love,
understanding, and commerce.
In the 1960s the chair of the Federal Reserve, Willie McChesney Martin,
viewed the new-era rhetoric as something to worry about, as a dangerous
signal that people were too exuberant. It was too much like 1929. That's a
very antispeculative, old-fashioned central banker kind of temperament. These
days, Alan Greenspan is the leading proponent of the new economy thesis; he
promotes it at every opportunity he can get. So the exuberance has filtered
to much higher levels of the ruling class than in the past.

BG: Given this culture's hallucinatory fixation on finance and speculation,
it is worth asking a very basic question: What fueled the latest stock market
boom?

DH: I would say this bull market has had several stages. It started in August
1982, with fairly little interruption since; there was the '87 crash, but
that didn't last all that long, and by formal standards the recession that
followed wasn't too serious. So the bull market began just as the great
Volcker squeeze was ending. Paul Volcker took over at the Federal Reserve in
1979, and he almost immediately drove interest rates from around 7 percent to
over 18 to 20 percent, which created a very deep recession. The official
reason for this was to end inflation and rising wages.
Recession cured other problems as well. The commodity-producing countries
were forming cartels and driving prices higher. General rebellion was going
on in the southern part of the world. The United States had lost the Vietnam
War. There was a lot of talk of loss of imperial power. At home in the United
States there were a lot of wildcat strikes. It was a time of the "blue collar
blues," when it looked like the working class was saying "fuck you" to work,
"fuck you" to the boss. That sort of attitude was reproduced around the
world. There were strikes in Italy. A lot of worker protest and militant
action going on in Europe.
There was a famous report of inflation put out by the [Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development] some time in the late '60s or early
'70s that described economic inflation as inseparable from the fact that
there were so many people in the streets.

BG: In other words, there was inflation not just of currency but of
expectations.

DH: Exactly! And that's what Volcker dealt with at around the same time
Thatcher took office and did the same in England. He tripled U.S. interest
rates and created a very deep recession. Then Reagan came into office,
breaking unions and promising to rebuild the imperial military machine; he
launched a mass assault on the welfare state. Discipline was reasserted:
unions were broken, and there was a general reassertion of capitalist power
over labor on a national and a global scale. This assertion of ruling-class
power, I would say, was very successful.
The recession in the early '80s scared the hell out of the working class in
the United States and around the world. The tougher attitude on the part of
the Reagan administration ­ the invasion of Grenada being one example ­
really took the starch out of the third world's progressive talk about a "new
economic order." It was clear the United States was going into a big military
buildup and would be much more assertive militarily and politically.
All these things took hold in the early '80s. That had the effect of ending
the long slide in the U.S. profit rate which started in the early '70s. The
profit rate started rising. There was a massive upward redistribution of
income because of that higher profit rate, because of the tax and regulatory
changes here and elsewhere. From the point of view of the stockholding class,
these were getting to be wonderful times.
So the bull market at first was a very rational reaction to all this: profits
were rising, so the market would rise. It was becoming a very good time to be
an owner of capital. That set of circumstances prevailed throughout the 1980s.

BG: To use the mainstream language, stock values rose because stock earnings
rose, thus the stock market of the 1980s was rational?

DH: Yeah. Then you had that period, around '89 to '93, the George Herbert
Walker Bush years, when the economy was pretty flat and the financial markets
were sort of troubled. You had the Gulf War in there. But then after that was
over, the whole thing resumed again. And then when Clinton came to power,
aside from him raising taxes on the top percent of the population, which is
one of the few good things he did, it was clear then that there was no
political challenge at all to the rule of capital. Whatever troublemaking or
social democratic tendencies that remained in the Democratic Party had been
pretty much defeated and purged, thanks in no small part to Clinton, one of
the founders of the Democratic Leadership Council.
There was the end of any threat of a national health insurance program after
Clinton's disaster. And financial orthodoxy completely took over the
Democratic Party, so there was just no institutionalized way of resisting the
agenda of the bull market and the free traders. Wall Street and the
stockholding
classes were very happy about that, so they continued to buy stocks.
But sometime around 1995 or so, things stopped being quite so rational and
started getting irrationally exuberant. The public began investing in a big
way. The upturn in profits slowed down ­ profitability numbers actually
peaked in '96, and they've been going down a little bit since then.
So the last four or five years have been mainly just the bull market feeding
off itself in classic bubble fashion. The market goes up because the market
goes up, and people have just been getting more and more exuberant and more
and more bubblish.

BG: What about the role of so-called flight capital coming from abroad in
fueling the U.S. stock market?

DH: It's certainly had an impact. The Asian economic crisis had a significant
economic role in that a lot of the capital that had been heading toward Asia
pulled out and headed toward the United States. The Mexican crisis of '94 had
a similar effect: a lot of money exited Latin America and came to the U.S.
The stagnation in Japan and western Europe has also contributed to the flow
of money here and thus overvaluation in the markets.
This tremendous inflow of foreign capital ­ two or three hundred billion
dollars a year for the last several years ­ has helped propel our expanding
economy. That's kept markets rising; it has kept consumers being able to
spend beyond their means.
And at a political, rather than a financial, level I think the effects of the
collapse of the Eastern bloc have certainly contributed to the confidence of
the capitalist class. There's no significant challenge to their rule now.
Whatever the faults of the Soviet Union, at least it was an embodiment of the
idea that you could do things differently. The loss of that alternative model
is very cheering to capitalists around the world, who use that collapse to
discredit any kind of state regulation of the economy or any remotely
redistributive policies. So it's been a great ideological boost, and
certainly Russian flight capital has injected a lot of cash: a lot of cash
came out of Asia, Latin America, eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union
and came to the United States' stock markets. All these calamities elsewhere
have produced wonderful results for the American ruling class.

BG: Any last comments?

DH: I guess one of the more depressing aspects of political life in the last
20 years has been this absolute sense of resignation on the part of so much
of the left. But it seems to me in the last couple of years that defeatism is
being reversed. There seems to be a growing confidence. The development of
this anti-World Trade Organization, anti-World Bank movement ­ regardless of
my reservations about the standard analysis among many of the movement's
putative "leaders" ­ is just wonderful to see. And I find that in talking to
people who are involved in protest, they're really open to all kinds of truly
radical ideas. So I think maybe this very long period of reaction that we've
been living through for the last several decades may be finally coming to
an end.
While I'm sort of a temperamental pessimist, I've certainly not felt so
optimistic
about politics in a long, long time.
---
Christian Parenti is the author of Lockdown America (Verso, 1999).

===================================================================

Award-Winning Reporter Resigns On-Air from Pacifica

From: Steve Rendall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Award-Winning Reporter Resigns On-Air from Pacifica...
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2001

FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting)
For Immediate Release, January 31, 2001

MEDIA ADVISORY:
Award-Winning Reporter Resigns On-Air from Pacifica;
Calls for Campaign to Oust Network Leadership

In a dramatic on-air announcement, Juan Gonzalez, the co-host of the
Pacifica Radio Network show "Democracy Now!," resigned this morning from the
network. Citing harassment and muzzling of free speech, Gonzalez said that
"the current management situation at Pacifica has become intolerable...the
last straw being the Christmas Coup at this station, WBAI, last month"--a
reference to the recent unexplained firings and bannings of top staff.

"I've come to the conclusion that the Pacifica board has been hijacked by a
small clique that has more in common with modern-day corporate vultures than
with working-class America," Gonzalez said.

Addressing his co-host at Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman, Gonzalez continued:
"You are a wonderful and committed journalist and you have been subjected to
slanderous personal accusations and constant undermining of your efforts.
And the board of Pacifica has tolerated it and, I think, even encouraged
this."

Gonzalez ended his on-air resignation by announcing a "national corporate
campaign" to oust the Pacifica Foundation's embattled new board leadership,
which he accused of "illegally chang[ing] the Foundation's bylaws." He said
the campaign would call on listeners, instead of donating to Pacifica, to
contribute money to groups challenging the board's legitimacy and working to
democratize the network. (For information about the campaign, phone (212)
879-9322; or email: [EMAIL PROTECTED])

Gonzalez said the current leadership group "does not respect free speech; it
does not respect labor or civil rights; it doesn't even practice due process
for its own managers."

Pacifica's Washington, D.C. station, WPFW, censored most of Gonzalez's
statement, cutting away to taped programming.

Gonzalez, who has co-hosted "Democracy Now!" since 1996, is a staff
columnist with the New York Daily News. He has won numerous awards,
including a George Polk award. His latest book is "Harvest of Empire: A
History of Latinos in America" (Viking 2000). He was a founding member of
the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

FAIR executive director Jeff Cohen commented: "Juan Gonzalez exemplifies the
best in the Pacifica tradition--a journalist who tells the stories of the
powerless and holds the powerful to account. As the two-year-long Pacifica
crisis worsens and the network's survival is seriously in question, FAIR
joins Gonzalez in calling for the national board leadership to step down.
Whatever these individuals' intentions, unless there is a prompt and
thorough transformation in Pacifica's national leadership, it is impossible
to see Pacifica fulfilling its unique, historical mission."

(Juan Gonalez's letter of resignation can be read below.]
----

To: Steve Yasko, Pacifica Director of National Programing
CC: Pacifica Board of Directors
From: Juan Gonzalez

Date: 1/31/01

Re: Resignation

This is to notify you that I am resigning as co-host of Democracy Now!
effective immediately.

I take this action with much regret since, as you know, I have worked
alongside host Amy Goodman from the show's inception nearly five years ago
and am proud of the groundbreaking work we have done to establish a national
radical news magazine. Even more important, I have listened to Pacifica
programs for more than 30 years and understand the critical role the network
has played in reporting important stories the corporate media ignored, thus
helping to shape
progressive thought and popular movements throughout the country.

But the current management situation at Pacifica has become intolerable, and
despite my hope that the majority of the Pacifica Foundation board of
directors would come to its senses, the situation has only gotten worse. The
last straw was the Christmas coup at WBAI last month.

Quite simply, the Pacifica board has been hijacked by a small clique that
has more in common with corporate vultures than with working-class America.
That clique has illegally changed the Foundation's by-laws, and during the
past two years it has methodically sought to squash dissent throughout the
network -- first at KPFA, then at PNN news, then at Democracy Now!, and now
at WBAI. This group does not respect free speech. It does not respect labor
or civil rights. It does not even practice due process for its own managers.
And it is now seeking to radically alter Pacifica's by-laws to pave the way
for the selling of one or more stations.

Furthermore, this clique insults Pacifica's loyal and sophisticated
listeners by  asking them to finance its shenanigans with their donations.

Starting today, I will be joining other Pacifica listeners in a national
corporate campaign that will not rest until every board member who has
orchestrated this hijacking resigns and a new board is in place -- one that
is democratically accountable to the network's listeners, community and
staff.

Our campaign will call for listeners across the country to withhold
donations to Pacifica in a mass referendum against your policies. Instead,
we will urge them to contribute their money to a variety of groups around
the country that are battling the Pacifica board -- including the legal fund
for court suits which are currently challenging the board's legitimacy.

Mr. Murdock, Mr. Acosta, Mr. Palmer, you will soon find out that Pacifica is
listener-sponsored radio.

----
Contact: Rachel Coen, (212) 633-6700 x318
Steve Rendall, (212) 633-6700 x307

===================================================================
"Anarchy doesn't mean out of control. It means out of 'their' control."
        -Jim Dodge
======================================================
"Communications without intelligence is noise;
intelligence without communications is irrelevant."
        -Gen. Alfred. M. Gray, USMC
======================================================
"It is not a sign of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society."
        -J. Krishnamurti
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