LiveBlogging: Workers Revolt in Egypt!

[Update May 4th: I have posted pictures on my blog from this event at this post

Update May 5th: Hossam made it known to me that I wrote down the dirty war in the 1990s was fought against the radical left; in actuality it was fought against the Islamic groups and the radical left happened to also catch the flake and was targeted as well, but the Islamic groups where the main targets.]

All times are in PM.

In a muggy, sweaty, cramped and crowded room (a big long room, but a room none-the-less) in an apartment complex on Capp and 16th Streets I’m LiveBlogging an event called “Workers Revolt in Egypt!” The speakers are Hossam El-Hamalawy (HH), an Egyptian journalist based in Cairo and an activist and a blogger who is in the U.S. as a visiting scholar of journalism at UC Berekely and Ahmed Shawki (AS), an editor at the International Socialist Review and a partipant in the Cairo International Conference in March 2008, just before the explosion in Mahalla, Egypt.

5:11: An International Socialist Organization (ISO) representative introduces Hossam El-Hamalawy (HH) and Ahmed Shawki (AS).

5:20: Crowed getting riled up and doing a unity clap in solidarity to UAW union members and ILWU union members fighting against yellow unionism and imperialism.

5:23: Hossam El-Hamalawy (HH) introduced. His blog is mentioned, “it is one of the reasons why people in the West know what is going on in Egypt…They just recently attempted to go on strike for basic things…decent standard of living…this has been apart of this movement for independent trade unionism in Egypt.”

5:25: Hossam El-Hamalawy (HH): “I’m really honored to be here among you today and I would really like to thank the comrades at ISO for putting this together…I will be sharing some photos with you from Mahalla from the two day bloody uprising we had in the Nile Delta.” The photographer for most of the photos he’s showing was shot with a rubber bullet on the first day on April 6th but continued to limp around and take photos.

5:27: Showing this photo.

In the 1990s Egyptians couldn’t chant against the president and used Suharto as their name to criticize Mubarak as Suharto was in Egypt right before he was toppled in Indonesia.

HH: “A lot of these photos could be mistaken as being the occupied territories in Palestine…The parallels are not ignored by the public, it’s not something that hte political activists are theorizing about.”

5:30: “In the 1990s when student activists started to organize it was almost impossible to organize outside of the campus…as Egypt was fighting a dirty war [mainly against the Islamic groups which in turn affected  the socialists and under ground communists and other dissenters]” but it was because of this atmosphere though dissent started to become more and more profound up until the strikes that were started in Mahalla three two years ago. The dirty war ended around 1999/2000.

“What the dirty war did was to brutalize our security forces even more” because of the widespread torture which caused Mubarak and the security forces to become even more unpopular than he usually had. If you got picked up by the police “and your family did not rush to your case right away to bribe the police” you would be put in jail for crimes you never committed, unsolved murders, drug dealing, etc.

5:34: HH: “However with all of this repression there was also resistance.”

HH: “The journalist community in Egypt is one of the most highly politicized journalists in the region…Journalists go on strikes and you find them in the front lines fighting with the police.” Laughter. “A different kind of journalist

HH: “It wasn’t until 2000 that you started hearing anti-Mubarak chants…People would say the road to” liberate Palestine “is through Egypt” because if you overthrew the dictator Mubarak (U.S. ally) you could cause real change in Palestine.

5:38: In the early 1990s, when Mubarak started his “anti-terror” campaign and dirty war against descent and the socialists in Egypt he also started his neo-liberal policies in liberalizing the economy which was helped by and overseen by the IMF. You had a two front attack on the working class and dissenters. The economy was liberalized which caused a rise in prices and a loss in jobs and political repression through arrests, intimidation, detentions, and killings of activists and socialists.

5:41: Slowly but surely industrial action and protests began increasing in the country starting around 2001/2002 which eventually lead to 222 actions, all across the country, in the year 2006.

HH: “The national minimum wage set by the government has not changed since 1984…3,000 female garment workers started a three day strike and an entire textile plant went on strike…The government panicked…the government surrounded the factory and laid siege” and the workers won. They also went on strike 9 months latter. And in between those 9 months there were over 600 industrial actions because of the strike and victory by the textile workers in Mahalla.

5:44: HH showing a photo of workers celebrating their victory in one of the strikes.

For more information please visit this link as the content is similar from HH’s last speech I lived blogged on. So combining both blog posts you have HH’s entire speech on the situation in Egypt.

5:48: Egypt is a very backward country when it comes to women rights yet “it is contradictory…the organizing is centered around women…and some of the most militant strikers [and organizers] are women.”

5:56: One of the pictures he’s showing.

5:57: HH stops speaking. Ahmed Shawki (AS) is introduced.

AS: “I’m going to be quite brief.”

AS: “I’m Egyptian…I walk like an Egyptian…I’m quite proud of it…I’m an Egyptian who managed to get out of Egypt in the 1960s” to get educated abroad. “I know little about my country from the point of view from living in it…I speak on Egypt as an Arab…abroad…and in the United States.”

6:00: AS: “Egypt has been transformed” since he was there in 1969. “It’s still secular” in the 1970s the secular movement dominated Egypt. “At the time you had the idea that Egypt was” a leader in the Middle East but with the important fact that it was secular.

AS:”These strikes break the image of the Middle East as a clash of civilizations between East and West…the class struggle expresses itself in many different ways and is making a return across the world, not just including Egypt…The process of the class struggle has changed Egypt today.”

6:03: AS was given the task to brining a computer into Egypt as in 1991 it was illegal to bring a computer in Egypt. “Today the situation to attempt [to clamp down on the spread of information] is impossible.”

AS: “In the Cairo Conference there were open calls for the removal of the government…We are talking about the transformation of the most important country in the Middle East…I believe it is our responsibility and our contribution to change the picture of Arabs and Arab workers in the Middle East” from being “Islamo-Fascists” (quite a contradiction in terms) to workers in an international class struggle and allies in the global struggle against neo-liberal policies.

6:09: AS: “The regime is not only scared of acting [against the striking workers], and workers having a more say [in the situation]…Not only do the poor can continue that the regime can continue” in a way of having a “strong economy” with utter poverty, “but the elite are also saying the regime can not continue this way.”

For creating power the Muslim Brotherhood is not an option for a true genuine government, the military is not a true democratic alternative, but instead the alternative is through solidarity work with Egyptian workers and being worker lead.

6:12: AS mentions that there can now be unity, if there is action on both sides, between Arab workers and U.S. and Western workers which in turn will break down the harmful and racist stereotypes that is being perpetrated by the Bush administration through the “War on Terror.”

6:13: AS ends his speech and short applause ensues.

6:15: Questions are being open on the floor. Not only do the speakers answer them but the audience can too.

Question: Egypt being similar to Spain in the 1970s with a strong worker movement and revolutionary movement being strong against Franco. What will be the outcome in Egypt as in Spain the revolution did not happen and the elite manipulated the workers and the citizens by creating a bourgeois parliamentarian government with neo-liberalism now taking over Spain today.

Question: Did the challenging of Israel by Hezbollah create confidence in Egypt?

Question: What is the U.S. response to the crisis that Mubarak is undergoing but a lot of talk in a response to helping Karzai of Afghanistan and Musharraf in Pakistan.

Answers:

HH: “Organizing around Palestine and Iraq is seen as being Islamist influence…However these protests normally benefit the left…The Muslim Brotherhood did not support the students recently in strikes so the left benefited in the Brotherhood making this mistake…”In 2002 the Brotherhood sent a letter to the then groups chairman questioning the Brotherhood’s stance on Palestine, which is a moderate stance in order to get Brotherhood members elected to Egyptian parliament. This crisis pushed the Brotherhood to take to the streets in order to match the radical left in Egypt and this caused a united front with the socialists and the left. “The Muslim Brotherhood made these gains in 2005 followed by Hamas in 2006…Everyone in the radical left was happy that the Muslim Brotherhood made these gains” and the gains of Hamas. With the war in Lebanon it hurt the Stalinist Communist Party who didn’t support Hezbollah (because there are a religious organization) but the radical left and socialists organizing against the government benefited because they supported Hezbollah in their fight against Israel.

HH: “Egypts GDP is more than $100 billion a year” but it is coming from the oil sector and is not trickling to the poor in Egypt. Egypt gets $2 billion a year from the U.S. “while this is nothing compared to $100 billion what it gives you is political capital” because when an Egyptian diplomat goes to Palestine and to Kuwait that diplomat represents the country that receives the second most aid in the world from the U.S. government.

AS: “There was a demonstration…in the main square in downtown” in Egypt, “the square was rung by thousands of police and protesters were coming in up from the subway…There was a group of protesters blocked from the square and they created their own demonstration…and they started walking away from the police” so the police let them in to the protest because they did not want a protest that wasn’t contained by the police. “I don’t think that [the U.S.] sees Mubarak as a failure yet…The idea that they are going to have a father and son show. With the father being the longest running twit [in the Middle East]…I think they think Egypt is the perfect showcase for neo-liberalism” because back in the 1970s Egypt you couldn’t get anything, “now you can get anything you want,” iPods, TV’s, etc. “From that point Egypt is a success!” But it doesn’t help the poor and working class.

6:37

Question: Al Jazeera had coverage of the events and the regime representative on a show blamed the Muslim Brotherhood had to do with the instability and that the police were protecting the protesters. Has these protests changed the rhetoric of the Muslim Brotherhood and how are people talking about the Muslim Brotherhood right now and how radical Islamic views in Egypt are being compared to radical leftists and socialists.

Question: Can you talk more on the “strike committees” that set up the strikes in Mahalla and is there new organizations being built up by the working class.

Question: Could you fill in on the history of women in the labor movement in Egypt in the past.

Question: Suharto fell due to the economy but Indonesia is a capitalist state, South Africa which overthrew apartheid but it is still a capitalist state with poor Blacks still worse off; if you don’t have the social power of the working class what are the other political forces that will create a new government in Egypt?

6:39:

Answers:

AS: “We’ve learned a lot…We used to have a view [socialists] that the move from a dictatorship to an open democracy could not take place without such a convulsion in society that would cause a permanent revolution…and the working class would not stop with just a” liberal bourgeois democracy. “It turned out it did not work that way!”

AS: “The movement is now much smaller now…The secular left is not dominant now in many countries, the religious left is!”

HH: “A workers whom I interviewed…in 2007…the regime tried to blame the Brotherhood for the strikes which was ludicrous…The [religious right] took a reactionary role in breaking the strikes in 1946…The Brotherhood have taken a peculiar position on the strikes…They did not speak out against the strikes as they did in the ’70s, but with statements….Did they do anything on the ground, the haven’t,” as the Brotherhood has 100,000 to 1 million members at any time, “they have many divisions,” especially with the young activists in the Brotherhood. “The only thing that is uniting them are the security crackdowns…and that they are illegal and that they are under court marshal…Does that mean that leftists would not coordinate with the Brotherhood…That is not the case” even when the Brotherhood assaulted socialist students in the 1990s, “I myself was assaulted by the brotherhood.”

HH: Because the socialists were in solidarity with the Brotherhood when the government cracked down on them numerous from the 1990s to now and because the socialists criticized the government and were pushing for a militant agenda “this has caused confusion among their ranks,” which has caused some in the Brotherhood to ally with the socialists and radical left. It has gotten to the point where the Brotherhood, on campus and in other places, can’t plan an action without speaking to and planning with the socialists because of their strong militant stances (despite them being smaller than the Brotherhood). “Those who are leading the strikes are now implementing political demands” in their strike actions and speeches.

HH: “In some places there are underground local unions being organized right now but I can’t get into detail with that right now…In the history of Egypt we never had a feminist movement” but there was an attempt to launch a style of a Western style feminist movement in the 1920s by the Egyptian elite but nothing ever came of it. “Currently we have a middle class feminism centered around the NGO’s” but they are demanding middle class bourgeois reforms, but they never took part in the strikes. “Women took central role int the strikes in places where women were heavily involved” in the work place. There are no organizations being created off of the strike committees yet. “You had 20,000 workers chanting against the president, chanting against his son, chanting against the conditions…But you still don’t have unions” that are apart of the workers movement that are independent from the state controlled unions. “From this we are hoping, from the ground..we will be able to build an independent labor movement…What we are trying to do in Egypt, at least with the radical left, are to win them over from factory to factory.”

6:59:

Question: It seems as though the neo-liberal forces are putting up a veneer that they are creating reforms for democracy to create a breathing space to continue their oppression against the working class and the Third World. Will this bight them in the ass in the future and back fire.

Question: How does the socialist movement relate to the Pan-African movement.

Question: What is Nasser’s legacy in Egypt today due to his anti-imperialism but also on his defeat against Israel and his crackdown on the Communist Party in Egypt.

7:03:

Answers:

AS: You have a component in Egyptian society that is newly rich that doesn’t trust the government, the U.S., and the poor. The government believes that if it does create a big enough middle class it will create stability. On Pan-Africanism “some of the attitudes of Egyptians…is pure racism towards people of Nubian origin and darker skinned people” and it’s the old divide and rule.

HH: “Unfortunately…the attitudes have changed in Egypt from the 1950s and ’60s” on Pan-Arabism and Pan-Africanism, “in daily life if you talk identity, if you ask an Egyptian if they are African they would not digest it well” they consider themselves Muslims, Arabs, Egyptians, even Mediterranean, but not Africa. African Blacks are looked down upon as unwelcomed refugees and are servants and do menial jobs in the society and there has been some attacks, some brutal, against African Black immigrants. “But this has always been different with the radical left” and many Black Nubians have joined the radical left and socialists because of this. “Again, you always find contradictions in people’s heads…the country is going through its worst sectarian strikes in years…but at the same time, in places where there is heavily Christian presence, you find Christians leading the strikes” such as the railway strikes. “You have the two processes happening together.”

HH: “Before becoming a socialist I was a Naserist. I grew up as a Naserist…I knew the torture and the loss of the Israeli war…there always was an explanation…Why would people hold Nasser’s photos in protests…Because of his anti-imperialist rhetoric…and because of the Palestinian cause…It’s more or less like a symbol…Nasser by the public is regarded as a mixed legacy…some of the striking workers to fantasize about the days of Nasser…also among the peasantry…because of agrarian reform…However the memory has become” so detached now due to the gap in history and they don’t remember the oppression under him. Workers back 20 years ago would not want to strike because they viewed the public sector as “Egypt” and it would harm Egypt and Arab unity and nationalism. But now because the public sector has been destroyed this is not the case now. Which is why there have been some many strikes recently.

7:20: Presentation ends.

“What could go wrong did go wrong.”

Cross-posted from The Blog and the Bullet.

The blogger at Lenin’s Tomb posts his thoughts on the latest assembly elections in London:

Anyone who thinks that Labour is about to turn left is kidding themselves. Far more likely is that the government will take a more aggressive stance toward the unions (as it did in 1969, with ‘In Place of Strife’) and make a demonstrative crackdown on immigration (as it did with the Commonwealth Immigrants Act in 1968). Labour doesn’t contain the resources for a regeneration of its battered left, any more than it did when John McDonnell failed to get enough PLP support to even run a campaign against Gordon Brown. The last vaguely leftish credible alternative to Brown was the late Robin Cook, whose standing after his dignified antiwar resignation speech would have made him the obvious candidate. And even he would have struggled. Just because the left-of-Labour vote was poor, just because the Tories have made a decisive recovery, don’t think that we can place our hopes in a New Labour conversion, or that we can avoid continuing to try to build a left-of-Labour alternative. We will be lying to ourselves in quite a dangerous way if we imagine that we can claw back some space by just abandoning the electoral terrain to New Labour. The fact that it is now a more difficult task in the short-term does not mean it can be wished away.

58th Carnival of Feminists

Cross-posted from The Blog and the Bullet.

The 58th Carnival of Feminists is up at Be a Good Human:

Welcome to the 58th edition of the Carnival of Feminists! I’m seriously, seriously thrilled to have you here. If you missed the 57th edition, go check it out at Pandemian.

(And while I have your attention, please take a quick sec and vote for my new blog name over to the right. Thanks!)

So I’m going to break down these excellent submissions based on things my 13 year old sister has said to me. (Translations in parentheses.)

Students, Traffic, and Budget Cuts

As I mentioned in a previous post I was late getting to the May First immigrant rights rally because a bunch of students (well, just fifteen of them, maybe up to twenty-five) decided to block off traffic on 19th and Holloway. Why did they decide to block off traffic you may ask? Well, duh! They were protesting the fee hikes for the California State University system. Because when you think of the CSU system you automatically think of traffic. And as one protester told me.

“We’re causing damage to the economy!”

Uhhhhhhh? Suuuuuuureeeee. Last time I checked the financial district was about five miles northeast of San Francisco State University; but that’s just a fact, and to these people (the yet unnamed but almost always called “Students Against Fee Hikes” group) facts don’t matter. The only thing that matters is inane reactionary action (also known as stupidity).

So what had happened was I was on my way to the May First protest in the Mission-Dolores part of San Francisco when I stopped my car for what I assumed was a red light. After about five minutes of waiting on a long stretch of road (around a few dozen cars in front of me and a dozen or so cars behind me) I got out to see if there was an accident. And while there was no accident what there was was a wreck, a wreck of misplaced human emotion and stupidity colliding together at 19th and Holloway. I remembered that there was suppossed to be a walk out at SFSU which was apparently planned by Students Against Fee Hikes. Yet the thing was that I really only heard people talking about it at school for the past month. The only planning that was going on was just passing out flyers and word of mouth. I had been to many walk outs in the past five years with no subsequent change whatsoever, and I only assumed (it turns out rightly) that this would be not different. In fact, the walk out was an utter failure; at most, and I’m being generous, there was 700 students, more likely thought only a few hundred, but I feel like being generous today. So a few hundred students walked out of class, not shutdown of the school, classes continued as usual, a lot of the students who participated in the walk out decided to go to their next class, and did I mention SFSU has over 30,000 students. Anyways, I digress.

Some of these students decided to block traffic on 19th Ave. and Holloway, and these are the points I want to make:

• The first one is the obvious one. What does blocking off traffic have to do with fighting student fee hikes. Here are some of the answers these “activists” gave me.
  • “It’s slowing down the economy. We’re causing change.”
    • Oh, right, yes. Blocking off traffic in a working class and petty bourgeoisie neighborhood which has nothing but small businesses owned by mainly Russian and Chinese immigrants is causing a massive shift in the economy. Of course! *slaps head* In reality, this did little to the economy. In fact, a guy next to me in his car (after 20 minutes of waiting) was calling his friends to tell him he might miss his flight from San Francisco International Airport because of a bunch of “jackasses blocking off traffic!” If they really wanted to affect change in the economy they could have taken time to plan a massive solidarity move with certain unions, the public school system, City College of San Francisco, the Board of Supervisors, and local parents who send their kids to SFSU, to create a “general strike” or a massive walk-out and protest of support for students. Or something to that extent. But hey, that would take time to plan. And taking time to plan out something thoughtful obviously isn’t something that these mainly white bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie students have in mind. They come from the suburbs and are used to things going there way. They want change now damn it and they’re going to fuck with working class and petty-bourgeoisie people’s commute to make sure they know that they are mad about tuition fee hikes. Speaking of which.
  • “We’re doing this for the working class! In solidarity!”
    • Except the people in their cars had no fucking idea why you guys were blocking off traffic and fucking with their commute. As I ran down the street to argue with these reactionary assholes (as I assumed I would know some of their “leaders,” and I did) people in their cars were asking me. “What’s going on?” and “What are these little fuckers doing!?” So, no, I’m sorry. But the working class have no fucking idea what your are doing. And it’s downright insulting to assume that your (mainly) white (mainly) bourgeois ass knows what’s best for the working class. HEY! HERE’S A NOVEL IDEA! IF YOU WANT TO BE IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE WORKING CLASS THAN GO TO THE WORKING CLASS AND ASK THEM FOR FUCKING ADVICE! Oh my God! So shocking isn’t it! Go to unions, go to the buss stops were the migrant workers hang out and fucking ask them their fucking opinion. Just to make sure I even asked folks at my job (I work at UPS on the night shift and load trucks with heavy boxes and equipment for eight hours straight) and they all thought the protest was a fucking stupid idea; and it don’t get more proletariat and lumpen-proletariat than my job, not only that but its diverse as well, mainly Latino and Black with some Russian and Eastern European immigrants, immigrant Chinese and Vietnamese, and whites.
    • One thing that causes solidarity and sympathy is students being shafted by the state and schools losing money. One thing that doesn’t cause sympathy is a group of fifteen or so idiotic students blocking traffic which in turn causes a one sentence blip in the local newspaper and in turn pisses off a bunch of people and confuses others.
  • “You’re so rude. Stop being mean!”
    • No, fuck you asshole. You’re being an idiot for blocking traffic and thinking you’re making a difference. Go fuck yourself and do other anatomically impossible things in a sexualized manner, such as “Go fuck yourself.”
  • “It was empowering to many people to block traffic.”
    • Empowering!? Empowering you say!? Mutha fuckin’ EMPOWERING!? (Dear Lord please empower me to not fucking strangle this dude).
    • Actually, no, it wasn’t empowering. It was fucking selfish, and that proves how selfish and petty-bourgeois their tendencies are. There was nothing empowering by sitting down in the middle of traffic and blocking people to get where they needed to go (like the airport and a fucking organized protest!). Just because I say, “I’m empowered!” and then I decide to throw a juicy hamburger against the wall doesn’t mean I’m actually being empowered, even if I think I am. It just means my dumb ass just threw a hamburger clear across the room and I now have to clean up the grease and ketchup stains (oh, no, wait, never mind, my mommy or my maid will. HOORAAY EMPOWERMENT!). There was nothing empowering about causing up to 80 or so people to sit in traffic for forty minutes, especially when all you did was alienate them to your cause. What is empowering is building a mass movement and creating sympathy for the movement which in turn brings in more people to cause real change. And, if anything, why didn’t they empower themselves inside the administration building and empower their fist into SFSU President Robert Corrigan’s dis-empowered face causing your empowered fist to have an empowered broken knuckle?
    • But no, they decided to feel “empowered” by blocking off traffic and fucking with people’s commutes. Commuters have nothing to do with the issue of budget cuts. But I’ll tell you who does, the administration at SFSU, as they decide how to implement the cuts that the governor and state legislature are proposing. So why didn’t they litteraly just have a sit-in and cause havoc at the SFSU administration building, that would have made much more sense than blocking off traffic (it would have been just as stupid, but would have made more sense). The reason why is because you had a bunch of idiotic kids who wanted a quickie, and quick high of “empowerment” and “activism” by fucking with people who have no God damn power. The administration building represents real power, but the problem with that is if they confronted real power they would have got their asses arrested. So it shows that: (1) they were too scared to confront real power and decided to confront those who had nothing to do with them and couldn’t harm them, and/or (2) they so fucking dumb they decided to do that sit-in at the last minute while waiting for the MUNI train to pick them up and drop them off at Dolores Park.
  • “It was a last minute thing people decided to do. I didn’t agree with it, but I didn’t want to be authoritarian by imposing my view on them.”
    • OH FOR FUCKING OUT LOUD! WHAT A SHIT LOAD OF FUCK! So this just proves their reactionary and dimwitted nature! They did it at the last minute! Not only that but after yelling at these folks for three minutes they up and left. However, I think it had more to do with the fact that the train came by and they all wanted to get on the train to get to the protest (the same protest I was trying to get to). So not only does this belie their claims of “solidarity to working class folk” but it also shows their elitist tendencies! They were only blocking traffic BECAUSE THEY WERE FUCKING BORED AND NEEDED SOMETHING TO DO UNTIL THE TRAIN CAME AROUND TO PICK THEM UP! Shit! That’s even worse then actually thinking you’re “causing change.”
    • Authoritarian!? You didn’t want to stop these students from making a stupid mistake and harming the movement because you didn’t want to be authoritarian!? Do you even know what that word fucking means?! Here, let’s review courtesy of Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
      • Authoritarian: Function: adjective. Definition: 1 : of, relating to, or favoring blind submission to authority 2 : of, relating to, or favoring a concentration of power in a leader or an elite not constitutionally responsible to the people.
    • What’s so authoritarian by saying, “Hey, you guys. This isn’t a good idea. These folks have nothing to do with the student fees. We’ll get better press if we bring our banners to the rally and have people photograph them and it would make more sense to do direct action at the administration building then here.” That’s not authoritarian that’s FUCKING COMMON SENSE! So what you’re telling me isn’t that you didn’t want to be authoritarian, what you’re telling me is that you didn’t want to make fucking sense.
      • On a side not; apparently a student speaker at the rally in Dolores Park said that “thousands had shut down the school!” Ummmmm….Thousands? Shut down? No, not exactly. At the most, being generous, 700. Shut down? No, not exactly, at the most you had some students poke their heads outside their classroom widows and go, “Huh? Wonder what that commotion is? Oh well, back to my mid-term.” Thus another example of how these folks aren’t real fucking activists as real activists try to acknowledge the truth and not delude themselves into thinking an utter failure was a success.
• And lastly: Nothing good came out of that sit-in. All you had was a bunch of confused and pissed off motorists, a few curios students who were onlookers thinking you guys were a bunch of whiny brats (I know cause I heard people talking), a small one sentence blurb in the newspaper, and nothing to show for it. How many people were you guys able to recruit because of this action? None. How many new folks did you bring into the fold who were previously on the fence about this issue? None, especially after you fuck up on 19th and Holloway (complete with a hippie strumming a guitar). How many people of color and working class folks took part in this traffic jam of idiocy? Barely any! Mostly white folks! I counted two people of color, that was it! No union reps, no teachers, no janitors, nothing! So, if anything. This little pseudo protest actually hurt your fucking cause! GOOD GOIN’ JACKASSES.

Image by:
Scott Fong of [X]Press