the more things change...

[Doug Millison]

...the more they stay the same. Protesters dying in the streets at 
the hands of brutal police thugs, to protect the profits of the 
elite. The letter enclosed below is not unlike much of the rhetoric 
(clumsy though it may be in spots, but the writer's heart is in the 
right place, and the sense of violation and disproportionate violence 
is correct) of the Civil Rights and anti-war movements of the early 
60s which clearly influenced in Pynchon's writings of the era and 
since (in in the 80s he's still working it over, trying to understand 
how the rebellion turned into Reagan, in Vineland; a decade after 
tha, in M&D he's still reworking and seeking to illuminate the 
generational, class, and economic differences that characterized 
those conflicts in the U.S. and globally). Sadder and wiser perhaps, 
Pynchon remains able to make the nuanced presentation of the dance of 
intimidation and complicity, subversion and foolish rebellion, and 
the final resort of the powers-that-be to brute force when only force 
will preserve privilege -- but no more prepared to stand up for the 
right of a police man to kill a protester than an angry Pynchon was 
when he wrote the Watts article and captured the spirit of that time 
and place.  "Keep cool but care" puts the emphasis on the "care", the 
phrase ends with an imperative to a commitment, which I interpret as 
the passion for justice in the face of massive injustice on the part 
of the powerful vis-a-vis the powerless, that threads through all of 
Pynchon's work.

My $.02,
Doug


From: "Michael Albert" <sysop at zmag.org>
Subject: ZNet Update - Genoa
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 21:41:30 -0400

Hello.

As most recipients of ZNet Updates likely know, July 20 began a series
of demonstrations in Genoa Italy against the G8 (major industrialized
nations) meetings. As with demonstrations in Seattle, Prague, and
Quebec, activists seek to explain and reveal global institutions like
the IMF, World Bank, and WTO and to reverse worsening rules of
international cultural and economic exchange, as well as address
domestic sexist, racist, statist, and capitalist injustice. And, indeed,
our steadily growing opposition to "globalization" has brought world
leaders and corporate heads to fear for their most revered agendas.
Bush, Berlusconi, and cohorts know that if a huge mass of humanity gains
sufficient knowledge, hope, and confidence, we will force new and more
participatory relations against the tide of their preferred elitist
globalization. Bush, Berlusoni, et. al. have therefore decided to try
their usual recourse, violence.

In Genoa they sought to send a message. Oppose us and you will pay a
high price. And the simple fact is that we need to recognize that if the
context of our actions leaves world rulers the option to do so, they
most certainly have the military means to make good their threats. In
Genoa they set loose their police, aroused beyond even normal levels of
violence by grotesque fascist imagery, to brutalize dissent via torture
and shooting. They seek to intimidate not solely the dissenters on the
scene from even conceiving of disobeying further, but also the broader
public. Bush, Berlusconi, et. al., are trying to ensure, for example,
that in the next go around in Washington DC, from September 28 to
October 4, there will be a small showing of manageable proportions
rather than the feared immense outpouring of dissent and resistance they
fear. Corporate elites want to reverse our momentum, pure and simple.

So what is our response to their violence?

Fear will exist. It is human. To read about what the police have done in
Genoa can't help but arouse concerns about safety. And it ought to. We
should not be ostriches about their vile capacities. But trembling
should also not exist. Passivity should not exist. And we should not do
their work for them, dwelling so insistently on our physical pains as to
disrupt our mental focus and interfere with our broader messages. Nor
should we react in a kind of dance of danger, thinking we must escalate
our actions in the same terms they think about escalating theirs. The
compelling and powerful answer to addressing state violence rarely
varies from a simple logic. Given our resources and means, we must
educate about the issues at stake more widely. We must attract and
sustain ever wider and more lasting support. Our demonstrations must
include so many people, with so many backgrounds, from so many parts of
society and so many societies, that the effect of elites utilizing wild
and intimidating repression will not be to diminish our size and
capacity, but to enlarge both. We must make Bush and Berlusconi's
favored tatics benefit us, not them. That is the road to victory.

If the state can enter our organizational centers, like the Italian
Indymedia and organizing offices, and can beat to physical submission
our members, if the state can assault our marches and rallies, and if it
can do all this with impunity and without a cry of outrage not only from
us but from much wider circles threatening to join us, then the state
will do so.

In coming days and weeks, our discussion about tactics at our
demonstrations needs to keep forefront a simple logic. What choices on
our part will best widen our base of support and thereby grow our size
and deepen our commitment and knowledge, entrenching our dissent and
even threatening its percolation into other dimensions of social life?
And what choices, at the same time, will best restrain the military
capacities of the state by creating conditions under which for them to
unleash their dogs of war costs them more in lost public support then it
costs us in harshly broken bodies?

This is not a pretty nor even a humane calculus, but it is the logic of
dissent against monstrous violaters of human civility. We need to make
known the state's violence against our dissent, of course. But we need
to retain our priority focus on globalization and capitalism, and on the
vastly more widespread and deeper violence of these ubiquitous systems.
We have to achieve growing popular support, growing more commitment
and insight, and to simultaneously saddle the state's preferred
repressive options.


Michael Albert
Z Magazine / ZNet
sysop at zmag.org
www.zmag.org
-- 
d  o  u  g    m  i  l  l  i  s  o  n  <http://www.online-journalist.com>