Press Action ::: Try Paris or Prague, Not Chicago

Monday, August 23, 2004

Try Paris or Prague, Not Chicago

By Jordy Cummings

If there is anything that proves American provincialism, even on the Left, it is their frame of reference for political protest. No sooner are protests announced, liberals cave, coalitions formed and the like, the oldsters talk about “Chicago 68,” while more than a few ultras think, hey, that don’t sound like a bad idea, thinking only positive came out of Chicago, not remembering that it was perhaps the beginning of the Co-Intelpro era. Two other great protests came off that year, neither with any more short-term gains than Chicago, but with a memory and attitude that shaped a generation. In Paris, the soixant-huitards nearly overthrew the government. In Prague, a reformist student movement almost did the same.

Even in recent American history, Seattle is the signifier, when the LA riots were perhaps far more of a statement of proletarian anger, as was, in a sense, the American right’s organizing around Waco. Leviathan takes many shapes and sizes.

Regardless, though, the signifier stays the same. In reality, as Giambattista Vico either discovered or revealed nearly half a millennium ago, there is no frame of reference for anything anywhere. There is intuition, deduction, schools like dialectics or Kaballah that make a lot of sense, but short of those remote viewers that the CIA should have used to find Osama bin Laden, no one can predict this sort of thing. It is especially ironic to see Todd Gitlin, who regularly consorts with open NED-friend (read government agent) George Packer and continues to be on the “patriotic left,” would have the chutzpah to talk about spooks in the movement. Like you, buddy. But then again, after reading Anonymous’s book Imperial Hubris, I get the feeling that the spooks are on our side anyhow.

There is something happening here though, and what it is can be made clear… the kernel of truth here is that unlike the Parisian revolutionaries, Guy Debord and pals, or to an extent the Prague bunch, the Yippies were not nearly as adept at media manipulation. Abbie Hoffman and Dave Dellinger, Alavah Shalom, could not hold a candle in terms of practical skills and obfuscation and intelligence gathering that today’s organizers have. So if Toddy Gitlin is being sincere, he should know that they are more likely to see something absurd, like the spectacle of a well-respected Canadian anarchist getting carted away from the FTAA protests in Quebec City after lobbing a teddy-bear at the “wall” that cordoned off those fucking shit up.

Jean et Francoise or Joe and Jane Sixpack saw the power of the state and capitalism send a bunch of hippy-looking, even dreadlocked poe-poes to bust a damned good organizer who was throwing stuffed animals. Similarly, there is the recent spate—actually covered responsibly by some elements of the U.S. media—of FBI agents visiting even Canadian as well as American activists, some of whom by their appearances in the media and through discussion with friends are simply left-leaning citizens with no ties to any conspiratorial brand of Quakers, Anarchists or other antinomians. Even your Dale Earnhardt “Everyone should see Fahrenheit 911” types will remember how they rued Waco and that some lefties (like Radicals) were on their side in regards to Waco. Police repression, even if it does take place, in short, will embarrass the state.

One has the feeling, however, that there will be no repression, that instead, there will be an immense, even overpowering spectacle. Jimmy Breslin is well-connected among New York’s landed gentry, including many the auld copper, and he seems riling for a fight. It is no coincidence, or does not seem to be, that New York cops and firefighters are facing pay cuts and new overtime rules. Do these guys, union-card holders, really want to contribute to a government that doesn’t appreciate their fine work after September 11? I doubt that the city of New York will officially support the Miami model. Breslin’s close friendship with union officialdom seems to indicate at least this much.

Much more intriguing is the very real opportunity that through nonviolent direct action, the Republican Convention may well not work out as planned, and since nobody knows anything about what is going to happen, to quote an old MCA record I bought for 50 cents at a garage sale, “The Man can’t keep us down.” And Rudy Bakhtiar will absolutely love it, as will Anderson Cooper. As the shitstorm clears, worst case scenario, you have an oppressive police presence in a democracy. Even Cheney won’t be able to talk his way out of this one, with an awakened media, and the right style of earnest liberalism mixed with purist radicalism in terms of talking to bourgeois journalists who love sympathizing with “activists.”

Don’t “Take Back” the city. Remind people it was yours all along!

Jordy Cummings, editor of Pure Polemics, lives in Toronto and can be reached at yorgos33ca@yahoo.ca.

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