A-Infos (en) US, Boston, Anarchist journal BAAM #13 - Discredit Ideas Not People by Cady

Two weeks ago on a Saturday, I attended a panel discussion on anti- electoral 
politics, put together by NEAN, the Northeast Anarchist Network. This panel was 
scheduled to take place on the weekend between the Democratic National 
Convention and the Republican National Convention. The panel was called 
Discrediting Representative Government, and it was to be a discussion between 
four anarchist theorists on both the faults of the two-party electoral system 
and corporate control. Many of us who attended had friends who were in another 
state protesting these same conventions. Certainly, I doubt that most of the 
room intended to vote, with the possible exception of a few socialists who 
attended. I personally had flyered for the event and engaged in some pre-event 
street theater in which a person dressed as a donkey married a person dressed as 
an elephant.

I think it was safe to say that I, and almost
assuredly many of the others who gathered at
the Community Church on Boylston Street,
were expecting to get a thorough explanation
of why voting is bad with helpful suggestions
for what could replace our current system of
"representative government," one which rep-
resents only the small fraction of us who are
extremely wealthy white males.
    There are a few reasons that this didn't
happen. First off, two of the speakers were
unable to speak at the last minute. These two
speakers happened to be those who had rather
loosely been assigned the task of discussing
what real horizontal organization might look
like, so the topic didn't get a lot of discussion.
Second, the two remaining accomplished and
intelligent anarchist speakers weren't really
interested in whether or not people vote.
    Cindy Milstein and her co-presenter Bill
from the Northeast Federation of Anarchist
Communists were certainly invested and
interested in dismantling the systems of op-
pression and of corporate control that are the
result of the two-party system that forces us
to choose between the slightly lesser of two
very-fucking- evils. What they weren't so
sure about was the idea that nobody should
vote while simultaneously attempting to bring
about an anarchist revolution.
    What they were actually interested in
fighting, especially Milstein, who had just
returned from the radical protests that took
place outside the Democratic National Con-
vention in Denver, was pointlessly divisive
dogmatic aggressive separatism on the part
of young white punks who try to compensate
for the fact that they aren't being understood
by yelling louder. What the speakers wanted
to discuss and explain, especially Milstein,
was that there are a lot of people who, with
really good reason, are emotionally affected
by the fact that there is so much support for
Obama as elected official leader in a country
that within many of the delegates' lifetimes
wouldn't let a person of his color go to a
decent elementary school. What they were
trying to get across is that this does in fact
constitute progress and that scolding people
who have been waiting an entire lifetime for
this moment, especially scolding them from
the very privileged position of white children
of the middle-to-upper class that so many an-
archists inhabit, is alienating, insensitive, and
insulting.
    What Cindy Milstein described seeing in
Denver was disheartening. She said that she
saw no literature being handed out to ex-
plain the anarchist position to those who did
not understand who the protestors were. She
described an anarchist speaker calling the
Democratic nominee "Obama bin Laden,"
a racist nickname usually hurled at him by
white supremacists. She talked about a green
and black march in which the chant "Save the
planet, heal the people," was heard as "Save
the planet, kill the people," and not a single
bystander, presumably all more convinced
than ever that anarchists are in fact terrorists,
had the privilege of an explanation from the
marchers, who seemed not to be making any
attempt to engage those watching them. She
described a crowd attending the convention
which was more diverse by nearly all stan-
dards: race, income-level, class, educational
achievement, and age, than the group of pro-
testors who were wandering around the rest
of Denver trying to explain why theirs was
the true anti-oppressive position.
    I didn't hear any of the things I thought I
would hear at the panel. Instead, I came away
with this distinct impression: If a candidate
who chooses for his staff those who helped
engineer the crisis that has led to many peo-
ple of color being forcibly evicted from their
homes, if that candidate can attract more La-
tino union members to his camp than a group
of anarchist IWW members with sincere anti-
racist politics, then we need to work on our
damn outreach. While people involved in
mainstream politics hold dear many things
that we as anarchists recognize as self-de-
structive and/or authoritarian, we will never
gain any momentum as a movement by mock-
ing or shaming or admonishing anybody.
    Not only is it mean to piss on a religious
person's god with no provocation, to tell
people who are very much in love that they
made the wrong decision by getting married,
to tell women that there's no difference be-
tween a pro-choice and anti-choice candidate,
to shout at people not to vote at the top of
our lungs when we've already admitted that
voting or not makes very little difference,
is all counterproductive. It's a conceit that a
bunch of kids are using as an excuse to feel
superior and refer to themselves as somehow
more evolved than the rest of this country. It
needs to stop.

-----------------------------
See also:
http://baamboston.org (not allways avilable)
Email: wordup (nospam) riseup.net

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