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HOLLYWOOD, March 19--MIM distributed an update on the USA Patriot Act and Patriot Act II's assault on civil liberties and immigrant rights at a demonstration marking the second anniversary of the war in Iraq. A lively and overwhelmingly friendly crowd came out on this rainy Saturday, and our flyer drew responses like "oh good, we hate the Patriot Act!" from people as young as high-school age and up into their 70s.
Now, knowing the Patriot Act is a bad thing and agreeing with MIM that it is principally an attack on non-citizens and activists are two different things. After all, the Patriot Act carries plenty of obviously heinous provisions like allowing the FBI to snoop on what books you borrow from the public library, and there are plenty of anti-Patriot Act resolutions that support the law's call to increase funding for assorted policing activities. Those people who express spontaneous sympathy with radical politics are a good reminder that our responsibility for carrying the revolutionary line increases with every day imperialism lives on. If a segment of the most bourgeois people on earth is attracted to any aspect of the communist line, we had best apply ourselves to the task of showing those people how to get from where their politics are to where the international proletariat is.
The Most Entertaining Demonstrators award goes to the Billionaires for Bush(1) -- who came dressed in top hats and tails, carrying a banner and wearing pins that read "Four More Wars." Theirs was the only street theater MIM saw at the demo -- they gave a little speech thanking the audience for supporting the billionaires with their taxes and children's lives, and ended with a chant of "Where s our oil? In Iraq! We gotta bring that oil back, bring it back!"
While watching these guys was a good time and they clearly have some correct things to say, their politics are just another entry in the Bush-is-the-problem catalog. More importantly, "the billionaires" thing, though catchy, ignores the fact that most everyone in this country but prisoners and undocumented laborers is living off the labor of the international proletariat. The idea of a handful of billionaires supported by the rest of our supposedly-productive labor is attractive to the broad and varied u.$. labor aristocracy and petty-bourgeoisie, who would rather not be confronted with the ugly truth of their own interest in their government's crimes. But it is MIM's responsibility to organize from the basis of our material conditions, not to try wishing imperialism out of existence.
Most Amerikans profit from u.$. militarism,(2) of which the Iraq war is only one instance. The buck-passing "he's not my president" and "I didn't vote for his daddy, either" lines are good examples of why MIM needs to be out there insisting that Amerikan anti-war protesters take responsibility for our failure to stop the Iraq war. Take the Carmela Soprano analogy: just because Tony is the one bringing in cash by demanding bribes or killing people, doesn't mean you get to spend it with a clear conscience. Those activists who say the Amerikan people can separate themselves from their government's actions are lying to either themselves or the masses.
Notes:
1. http://billionairesforbush.com/index.php
2. http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/agitation/milit/iraqwar030905.html