[I originally posted this in chapotraphouse, but it was deleted for being “pro-cop” even though that very much wasn’t the case. (I believe PSL was actually involved in organizing the protest if I’m not mistaken.) The mod that deleted it openly broke the sectarian rule too.]
Been seeing a lot of people hating on what the protest marshals did during the pro-Gaza protests at the DNC and I feel they definitely did the right thing. Instigating stuff like going up against the cops under the guise of “revolutionary” action just gets a lot of people arrested and doesn’t accomplish anything.
EDIT: Users who were present at the protests have said, counter to what is claimed in the screenshot, that the protest marshals did NOT call for the police. Thank you for clearing this up, comrades!
The goal isn't to get in fights with cops. The goal is to stop the genocide. If getting in fights with cops is necessary to accomplish that, it should be done, but if getting in fights with cops doesn't move the needle much, it's not some intrinsic good we should be doing anyway.
It's also important to think of how you pipeline people into more radical actions. If someone goes to their very first protest expecting a peaceful march, marchers start fighting the police, and that person ends up tear gassed, beaten, and out of a job because they spent time in jail, they might never do anything like that again. You don't throw someone into the deep end if you want to teach them to swim. You have to bring people along step by step, not all at once.
If the ultimate goal is to stop the genocide, then neither side is approaching it correctly. The Zionist entity is an extension of the US. It's pretty much the 51st state and I would argue it's more important to the US than some states like Montana. So, demonstrating/doing adventurism for the sake of getting the US political class to abandon a de facto US state that they consider more valuable to the US project than Montana is a complete dead end.
Palestine Action shows us the way forward. They don't bother with demonstrating in front of Parliament or their inbred German king. They simply break into factories to smash the drones and vandalize bank offices that closely collaborate with the Zionist entity. I don't think we should completely copy them, but their strategy deserves close study. For one, demonstrations should be focused on the site of production and distribution of weapons (eg factories, ports, railway lines) rather than the site of the political class. A worker strike can shut down a port preventing weapons from being shipped to the Zionist entity. We don't have to imagine it because it has already happened before. Anti-Zionist demonstrators along with sympathetic port workers actually got a port shut down at Oakland. This is great and the way forward.
I think people need to recognize that the US political class is irredeemably Zionist and move forward from there.
Youre acting like the people that organize these arent also doing other stuff while acting above it all.
I read the phrase "51st state" here as the U.S. cares about Israel more than their colony Puerto Rico, and I think that works pretty well
fighting cops is an intrinsic good if you win
Define winning against the cops
break stuff and get away with it
...