Here at ANSWER LA, we’ve been organizing for Saturday’s antiwar march and rally for over three months.
We’ve printed and distributed over 90,000 flyers, pasted up thousands of posters, done outreach at dozens of events, worked with many other organizations, made 1,500 phone calls, sent numerous emails out on the listserv, faxed and called several dozen media outlets, and held many organizing and planning meetings.
That’s what it takes to put on a major demonstration – months of planning and work. No, we’re not paid. What we’re doing in L.A. is being repeated in over 200 other cities, with dedicated activists working to end the insanity of these wars for empire and oil, planning mass protests for this weekend.
Will it rain here on Saturday? Maybe. It did last year, and thousands still came. Lives are being destroyed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet neocons want more invasions and war, like in Iran – North Korea and Venezuela too. So, what’s a little rain when innocents in Badhdad are getting their homes blown up?
Join us. The national site has a list of US demos, ANSWER LA has logistics for Saturday.
PS The Net is great for spreading information. But it is not, and can never be, a substitute for real life organizing. Nor can it bring about change by itself. The change comes from elsewhere, the Net can only help to transmit it. Signing net petitions and leaving comments on blogs will never bring about the real change this country needs. Bloggers need to take that energy and get into the streets and communities and organize.
So is there anything about America that you find favorable?
Bloggers need to take that energy and get into the streets
Not to mention the energy you get back from being in the streets with thousands of others. I think there’s actually a law of physics being broken.
gitardood: Ah, so you disagree with our right of free assembly and protest, so therefore we must hate America. Hey, that’s some nice twisted, deliberately deceptive thinking. Big Brother would be proud of you.
Eli: Yes, being in the streets with thousands of others does energize and helps one realize just how many of us there really are. Well, we’re the majority now, as the majority now opposes the war.
Blogging too often is a self-referential echo chamber. Posts commenting on posts commenting on posts with hundreds, sometimes thousands of comments. But what is accomplished by all this? Not much in terms of actual change. It’s a good start, but real organizing and change can only occur in the real world, not in cyberspace.
Too much of the huge energy and committment that is in blogging just stays in blogging, spinning around in self-referential circles.