Crimethinc.com releases 35,000 word comprehensive analysis of the 2008 DNC/RNC mobilizations
From CrimethInc.: At long last, we’ve completed our 35,000-word full report on last summer’s anarchist mobilizations against the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, complete with chronological maps and painstaking documentation. Updated from the feature in Rolling Thunder #7 and expanded to include the complete text of thirteen different participant narratives, this report offers a comprehensive history of the preparations for, events of, and aftermath following the protests, and an analysis of their context and implications.
Unlike virtually every other analysis yet published from the radical community, this one utilizes subsequent internal government reports, comparing them against a wide variety of other sources. We hope our investigation and the accompanying archive of personal testimonies will prove useful both to participants still trying to understand the events of this past summer and to organizers looking to derive lessons from them for the future. In a nutshell, we hypothesize that the chief significance of the 2008 anti-convention mobilizations was in the precedents they might set for future organizing.
Anarchists took the initiative to determine their own goals and strategies for the protests, establishing decentralized networks throughout the US far in advance. This enabled them to build relationships with other organizing groups and to coordinate their actions, effectively setting the tone for the protests at both conventions. At the same time, the protests were less attended than expected, perhaps as a result of the Obama campaign detracting from street-level participation in the antiwar movement. In this regard, they were the final act of an era that has now passed.
The RNC protests met with an almost unprecedented degree of state repression, which is still playing out today even as the political climate has changed. The federal government continued its strategy of gathering intelligence and entrapping stragglers, already familiar from attacks on environmentalists and animal rights activists. Local authorities focused on infiltration, profiling, and raids, ultimately arresting over 800 people and bringing conspiracy charges against organizers.
Despite all this, they seem to have been remarkably unprepared to maintain order in the streets on the first day of the RNC, and their subsequent overreaction helped discredit them in the public eye. Most arrestees have gotten off scot-free; it remains to be seen how the ongoing felony cases will conclude. The outcome of the RNC 8 conspiracy trial in particular will indicate how sustainable we can expect the organizing model debuted at the 2008 conventions to be.
Comments
no good
im really disturbed by this and find it pretty disapointing, especially the "we are all legal workers" section. what happened to the st paul principles and not talking shit about each other in the media? -lindsey
Crimethinc did not sign the
Crimethinc did not sign the st. paul principles.
And even if they had...how is the "we are all legal workers" section shit talking? The st. paul principles stated that debate and criticism would be left internal to the movement. The publication was made for a magazine that is read by a fraction of the anarchist movement. It is not a corporate news interview but rather an analysis by some of the anarchists that were involved in the various parts of the rnc resistance.
I also dont think that the article was that great but being disturbed by it because of the st. paul principles doesnt really make much since. Especially because the essay praises the principles and even quotes a member of the anti-war committee.
I'm definitely with lindsey
I'm definitely with lindsey here.
I won't address the other stupid ad hominem attack (which hopefully will be removed as obvious trolling), but I would suggest that that particular section is more of an editorial than an analysis. And St. Paul principles notwithstanding, it presents a very particular view of events under the guise of objectivity.
And yeah, there's a little bit of shit-talking.
I see this differently than
I see this differently than the above commenters--there's nothing mean-spirited in it, simply an attempt to derive lessons from the experience of those who organized different aspects of the infrastructure. If we can't do that at least to some extent, then it will be very difficult to inform future organizers about the concrete challenges they may face.
At the same time, I can understand how people in the Twin Cities who worked hard on RNC organizing and had conflicts in the process might still be extremely sensitive about some issues. It's important not to overreact when something isn't intended as an attack, that's all.
freedom
freedom of the press is not an anarchist value. lovely.
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