G8 SUMMIT 2006 will u be going ?
- Thread starter rainbowman
- Start date
LLETSA said:
One pretty solid piece of evidence would be the million people in who marched to hyde park in 2003 to protest the war in Iraq. Another would be the great strides that have been made in the cancellation of third world debt.
In the end though theres still plenty of shit to focus on if thats all you want to see. If you can give me one solid reason why I should stop merly being aware of whatever injustice I can, and yet focussing on positive change then I will.
Theres a couple of very compelling reasons for you to look at things in a more positive light though.
1. You'll have more fun being a subversive voice that way.
2. Nobody likes a negative winge bag.
3. If you dont believe you can have an effect wtf are you doing trying or even talking about it. All that'll happen is you'll get depressed.
deeplight said:
Class poltics is not nessescarily about having fun. I think part of the point LETTSA has been making is that this protest violence etc is not representative of people with whom the protestors have some empathy or sympathy for at the least. That it is in Russia will make it difficult for ordinary people to make it over there, as I have been, and continue to go, and it isn't cheap.
To go on about this summit, belies the very real work that ordinary people do in their own communities, that have a better effect in allowing people to become interested in poltics.
deeplight said:Theres feeling equal. And theres knowing that we are all equal. The former is conderably more difficult than the latter. If you learn the secret of it let me know.I do see alot of people with knowledge of the latter though nowadays.
It isn't difficult for most working class people to realise that we aren't all equal. Middle class youth catchs such a concept late on, through some radical phase, and then just can't wait to tell everyone about it.
If I'm wrong, then why do so many of your arguments seem to contain something like "it is more noble to believe..." or "Wouldn't it make you much happier to believe..."?deeplight said:
I doubt it, I'm even more irritating in person (not too mention foul mouthed)I'd probably like you in real life.
In Bloom said:If I'm wrong, then why do so many of your arguments seem to contain something like "it is more noble to believe..." or "Wouldn't it make you much happier to believe..."?
I doubt it, I'm even more irritating in person (not too mention foul mouthed)
Many of my arguments are like that but its only part of the truth of how I look at things.
Well if you dont want to be liked.
I nominate you as my bullitin board enemy. You can be Doctor Cynical or DC for short. I'll be Opimist Man.
Your negative shenanigans have gone on long enough.
Sorry, my poor phrasing.LLETSA said:
I was trying to get across that I pretty much agree that rts was fairly pointless, but you can't judge the success of the group based on whether or not they "changed society" in the sense that you seemed to mean, because that was not their aim.
Why not go and read some actual RTS material and engage with that?LLETSA said:
For example:
http://rts.gn.apc.org/ideas.htm
or
http://www.eco-action.org/dod/no6/rts.htm
or
http://www.infoshop.org/octo/j18_reflections.html
It wasn't defeated.LLETSA said:
"Doesn't a campaign whose success is apparently judged by its members as primarily having given them 'a good laugh' say a lot about the state of supposedly radical politics today?" - This is clearly making a statement about RTS. Therefore engage with it! You will find some links above.
aurora green
Tectonic
LLETSA said:
If you judge the sucess of rts on these terms, then yes they failed. Society wasn't changed.. Car culture is more rampant than ever, barely any road schemes were halted, although a few were actually.
But rts grew from a tiny handful of mates to a worldwide network astonishingly quickly. It was a great influence on Naomi Klein and her seminal book 'No Logo'
In fact the anti-capitalist movement itself can be traced directly back to Reclaim the Streets...
So to say they were unsuccessful is just ridiculous.
There is also the whole aspect of RTS where the point was "doing" - ie the aim was to reoccupy and use a space. On these terms pretty much every event was successful.
I could go on, but first of all LLETSA has to actualy make some effort to engage with what RTS - in its own terms - was about rather than sit and bitch about it from a distance and using a different yardstick of success, for what I suspect are sectarian reasons.
I could go on, but first of all LLETSA has to actualy make some effort to engage with what RTS - in its own terms - was about rather than sit and bitch about it from a distance and using a different yardstick of success, for what I suspect are sectarian reasons.
I think you might be getting confused because of the nature of what RTS was/is. Things happened in the 90s ... things have happened since 2000 ... one set of things has moved into another set of things ...LLETSA said:
You seem to want to put RTS into a box, stick a neat label on it and make measurements of success or failure. Maybe this betrays your perspective on things more than anything else? Am I right in thinking you are connected to the IWCA btw?
ffs - *you* are setting your own parametres here. If you choose to define things in a certain way then you can make *anything* be a failure. Like I said, this seems to be saying as much about you and your perspective than anything else.LLETSA said:
If you think it "says" something then won't you be kind enough to articulate what you think this is? Or are you just going to keep asking wierd questions until someone says something you want to hear (whatever that is)?
TeeJay said:
Yes , but these 'things' tend to move into 'another set of things', while ignoring the fact that they are based on weak social forces (or, in some cases no real social forces at all), have little or no sense of historical perspective and are organised around demands that are unattainable in the short to medium term. Hence the stumbling from one spectular defeat to another. (Spectacular in the eyes of the participants, that is.)
What has the IWCA got to do with anything? This is solely my opinion.
It sounds like you are using a Marxist analysis of 'social forces', 'historical processes'?LLETSA said:
You have chosen to frame RTS events in terms of "demands" - could you point to what these demands were for each event? I'm not sure why you use the term "spectacular" - it seems you are conflating ther term "the spectical" (sometimes used about actions) with the size of defeat (ie spectacular as an adjective) - but yet again you are plucking the criteria of success or failure out of your own head by the sound of it - and then attributing this to RTS "members". The fact that you talk about "members" betrays some confusion as well.
I think it is better to be up front about what perspective you are coming from and what you think is a better approach than an RTS one.
I'd assume that if you are part of IWCA then you see that as something that avoids the problems that you see with RTS as you have outlined above? Is this a fair comment?
I'd take your critique more seriously if you actually showed some evidence of engaging with actual RTS texts or statements, rather than using this as a sounding board for your own preoccupations.
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