[Marxism] Re: About last night's demo

[Louis Proyect]

Mike F. wrote:
>Our local solidarity organization (CUSLAR), organized to picket outside, 
>leaflet at the doors and unfurl banners and "raise questions" inside, 
>principally directed against U.S. -- and Milton Friedman's -- support for 
>the coup that had taken place in Chile. Was this "infantile theatrics"?

Unfurling banners would be understood by the average student as a 
legitimate intervention at a meeting. When cops haul peace activists out of 
an audience for a Bush or Cheney appearance who do such a thing, the 
sympathy will be for those being removed from the meeting. But when you 
scale the stage, you will inevitably be perceived as trying to commandeer 
the event. Columbia is a hotly contested terrain nowadays with Ahmadinejad 
being refused the right to speak at a meeting, etc. The left has to act 
with a great deal of responsibility and wisdom--plus fight the good fight. 
A lot of this involves tactical sophistication but we know that this has 
been a weak spot of the ISO when you recall their spat with Stan Goff about 
the appropriateness of their intervention in the military families 
movement. I am afraid that they are susceptible to the pressures of the 
student movement. I admire the fact that they have grown by recruiting from 
the campus rather than followed some kind of idiotic "workerist" turn. But 
there are dangers as well...

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