Re: [pf] More on Activism

At 06:26 4/02/00 -0800, Molly wrote:
>When I compare these things, I find them to be born of the same 
>motivation. 
> ... My point has nothing to do with property. 
>It has to do with motivation and behaviour.
>  It's the motivation and warped behaviour behind the actions that I have
>a "horror" about, ... this behaviour, justified and rationalised by its
>perpetrators, is equal to anyone else's destruction of anyone else's
>property, ... 
>
>I don't care what label you give it 
>--- corporate property, private property, communal property; or
>--- corporate giants, grassroots activists, middle America -- 
> doesn't matter what they're called -- it matters what they DO.
> 

**  Earlier you said something about being uncomfortable with the
emotionalism and slogans of marches; they don't (in my limited experience)
get people worked up, though I suppose they might.

**  I very much agree with what you said above: "it matters what they DO".
And I say that's the main distinction in favour of oneself going on a
march: it's something done, visible, real, in contrast to words which might
or might not have any consequent effect in the real world. 

**  Some years ago Bera and I were with a small group of protesters outside
a Commonwealth Heads-of-Government meeting here in Auckland (that Queen
Elizabeth attended); we were mainly protesting the imprisonment of Ken
Saro-Wiwa for voicing the objections of the Ogoni people (in the forested
southern part of Nigeria) to government repression on behalf of Shell Oil.
A few hours later he was executed.
   Apparently our dozen-to-twenty middle-aged people with placards
(including Amnesty International) were of sufficient concern that a
detective came and asked me a lot of questions, mainly about what we were
demonstrating about, and what I knew about Ken Saro-Wiwa.

**  The "puny" demo got quite a lot of attention, and I believe turned the
attention of the local news media onto the Saro-Wiwa case.

**  Bera has quite often been on demos; a few seconds ago she was telling
me about a recent time she and only a couple of others demonstrated outside
the Auckland City Council meeting where they were about to decide whether
to cave in to some developers' demands for a /very/ large contribution to
the costs of a huge waterfront development here. (They didn't cave in, and
the development has been scaled down now a different Council's been voted
in - the demo was only a small, possibly negligible factor.) The local
media had been paying quite a lot of attention to the to-ing and fro-ing on
this development, so Bera's demo did get some publicity. She had to leave
early to give her next physics lecture. Her picture's on:
http://www.emucities.com.au/member/baem/

**  And a year and a half ago, there was a month-long march from both ends
of New Zealand to the capital Wellington, against poverty in NZ. It was
sponsored and some times lead by bishops of the Anglican (Episcopalian)
Church, which has (with other private social agencies like the Salvation
Army) been attempting to pick up the pieces of community support for the
poor, after our National Party government drastically reduced what central
government had been doing up till the '90s. I joined the march as it went
through Takapuna (within walking distance of here); there wasn't any
shouting, and the placards were to-the-point. I later stood holding a
placard near the front of a rally in Auckland's main Aotea Square. Feedback
later (some of it negative) told me that my "putting my body on the line"
/was/ noticed, i.e. had some (tiny) effect in the real world.

**  Talking as I am now is of relatively little value, though not none (I
believe) otherwise I'd stop.

David.
(David MacClement) davd@ihug.co.nz 
www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/3142/Pg1-AD11.html
 or better: http://www.emucities.com.au/member/davd/
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