Edmonton 2010

Hmm,just found out about it looked it up and can't say I'm all that jazzed. Edmonton has some really great grassroots organizing around the workplace, housing, homelessness, and the environment going on and it would be a bloody shame if practical day to day organizing was put on the back burner because of this.

We can build real long term organization, and working class power through unsexy low key activity, or we can build a one-off media spectacle that empowers only media savvy spokespeople. Building ten hour spokescouncil meetings, and encouraging every black clad kid with an axe to grind is not how we build a movement.

Well to me you can do both and use the G8 as a sexy recruiting tool for the longer term mobilization, to me it all depends on how you frame it.

However, axes to grind sometimes end up being ways to inspire; and find people to get into the nitty gritty, i know I was myself influenced and drawn in by the sexy; you just have to learn to split time.

You could try something like this. It was hella fun, confused the media no end and made us the good guys to the local community
http://www.ainfos.ca/04/jun/ainfos00246.html

Exactly.

It's all media hype, highlighting local issues is all fine and good but it isn't direct action. How does this protest build working class self activity and confidence?

Can't we just let Starhawk and Jaggi have this shit? Whatever happened to Warcry? Seriously. I thought we had professionals to run these things for us.

ha ha i saw warcry last year...

I'm not sure there is a best way, i kinda think we have to make links between all struggles and show the interdependency.

Though at the end of the day making sustainable unions, communities and collectives is more important than a protest at a summit; however, that said they can be good times for people to relieve frustration and come together.

I think you are right but so are other methods, we need to combine everyones organizing efforts; learn to tolerate the starhawks and the jaggis for what they are....mouthpieces.

This sucks for Edmonton, it'll be just like SPP here a month ago. Man I still want to bash my head in thinking of that. Another thing to consider though is that 2010 will also have big "mobilisation" around Vancouver Olympics. Some folk came to Ottawa to talk about that. I was actually pretty impressed with them, they seemed like community organisers rather than the wanky activists I associate with this sort of thing.

So I guess the moral is, don't plan a revolution for the summer of 2010 because all the activoids will be tied up.

Actually maybe better off planning it for then....

Believe that was tried for Scotland G8 and failed miserably. Would love to hear stories otherwise but that was my impression. Some hippies went and made some gardens which they didn't attend to after the protest and largely had a big riot in a field.

I think we've already been over this on chat. But nevertheless. People who are recruited via stupid pointless mobilizations are at high risk of becoming "disillusioned" and dropping out when they really how fruitless all their work is. This kind of recruiting is a good way of ensuring the continued dominance of machoist activists in our movements.

I have!!

What's the point?

Well, I would still say most don't stick around, and I wonder how much energy it is worth trying to organize a demographic with retention of one out of every thousand.

Regarding community organizers, and perhaps my defintion is different, but I grew up around a lot of people who organized in their community. Their idea of activism was very different from the stereotype of the white middle class college student that "means well" or whatever.

puppets can be integrated into any action....show a little bit less cynicism.

I think it actually is wondering how do we make action fun but not middle class professionalized on drugs retarded protest and actually fulfill movement goals.

Who says you can't combine anti-globalisation techniques with workplace agitation?

Class solidarity, most of the core workers for the project were actual building trades workers, mostly artisan but a few union folks as well, and the neighborhood is low wage working class. Crossing racial divides, still very important in the deep south. Focusing the protest on local issues, in this case housing. I really can't think of much wrong with the project at least in theory. It was the one good thing to come from SEANET, which folded it's uberbig tent a year or two later having more or less decided that deciding things was authoritarian. We didn't do as much as we might have explainiing our ideas to the community or making the contacts permanent but given the serious limitations of informal network organizational formation, it was a good try.

Oh lord, I can see this. I haven't worked with anarchists much since moving back to the south, but I can see this happening based on the anarchists I do know. I have been meaning to ask after SEANET; can you pm me if you don't mind talking to me about it?