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Next Left Notes Is A News Magazine Devoted To Direct Action
By Eric Bagai, DAT Western District
The DAT principles of unity are quite explicit about criticism: make it
positive and start with yourself. As a life-long elitist (how's that for
confession) as well as class critic, I have a strong preference for quality
goods. This probably puts me in the same category (though hardly in the same
class) as George Orwell, but he had difficulty being a good Socialist, too.
I understand the need to do some things just to keep the world from
changing yourself (like the Utah Phillips story about Amnon Hennacy, all by
himself, day after day, picketing some prison in the middle of nowhere), but
it's also necessary to ask what effect your action will have on the world,
and on your particular issue.
Example: A few years before the movie Cool Hand Luke, where Paul Newman
portrayed a guy who went to prison for using a pipe cutter on parking
meters, I put glue in all the parking meters along the Hollywood section of
Sunset Blvd. His was the Southern, drunk-ass version of self-expression and
rebellion against a hostile and humorless world. Mine was an LSD-assisted
version of Digger direct action, some testing of glue properties, an
analysis of the L.A. budget for probable effect, and a rebellion against a
hostile and humorless world. The meters were removed and not replaced
(though I haven't checked recently) because they were simply too expensive.
Moral: Some shit gets you killed, or worse. Some shit changes the
parking laws and the social structure. If you can master your anger and
frustration, do a little homework, and take the time to think for a bit, you
get to chose.
Whether civil disobedience or ruckus-like direct action, quality counts.
It would be a pity to go to jail over an action that seemed to the rest of
the world as being merely childish, no matter how good it made you feel to
do it. Like it or not, some actions really are better left in the closet,
and not all direct actions bring the r/evolution any closer.
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(c) 2004,2006 Thomas Good
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