Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Protest the War in San Francisco
Of course, there's not likely to be an outpouring of protest and civil disobedience tomorrow like there was on March 20, 2003. But as it has become increasingly evident that the electoral system is incapable of ending the occupation of Iraq, there is an urgent need for people to express their opposition to it, and the neoliberal policies embedded wtihin it. By challenging the occupation and those institutions that benefit from it through direct action, we take the first small steps towards a different world in which those with money and power no longer achieve their ends through violence. Indeed, the first steps toward eliminating the destructive hierarchies associated with money and power themselves. Implausible? Perhaps. Yet no less so than the amoral brutality of military neoliberalism, that system of global economic and military coercion that we implicitly accept as an immutable feature of our daily lives. As Sam Smith says, you never know how its going to work out when you confront entrenched authority, unless, of course, you don't bother at all. For my perspective on the people that sent out the call for these protests, the people associated with Direct Action to Stop the War, go here. And, if you can't participate, donate.Labels: Activism, Anarchism, Neoliberalism, Occupation of Iraq
