I think I'd better clarify. One doesn't (I didn't) interrupt one's other
activities and risk jail or injury by participating in marches tolerated to
varying degrees by the police unless one hopes for immediate change of what
one finds intolerable, never mind that the result may in fact take years.
In the Vietnam era I remember a dramatic tipping-point (and it wasn't
Chicago). It must have been 6 in the morning--I'd just made it back from a
march in DC and bought the morning Times and caught a subway towards home.
I wanted to see how the Times covered it. The crowd had been enormous, but
no more so than at all the other marches of the past 6 months at least--it
filled the same space as the others and took as many buses. The Times had
been reporting these large rallies as consisting of 20 to 30 thousand. We
all knew it was a drastic undercount, but a trues count ewas reported only
in the underground media. This time there had been a change in editorial
policy. We were now 300,000. That week the Times at last announced that it
opposed the war. All those undercounted, villified, ineffectual marches had
apparently not been ineffectual. Thereafter we began to feel like, and be
reported as, a burgeoning concensus.

Mark

At 03:39 PM 3/31/2005, you wrote:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Dominic Fox <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
>Date: Thursday, March 31, 2005 9:17 PM
>Subject: Re: "Expressive anti-politics"
>
> >> We are the electorate.
>
> >No, you're not, and that's the problem.
>Of the electorate, an electorate denied the opportunity to vote
>
> >If you, the marchers, were
>coextensive with - or even substantially representative of - the
>electorate, then you wouldn't need to march.
>
>Not substantially representative, no. But what does that have to do with it?
>If we are to have this pluralistic society and if democracy works.
>
>But the electorate is not even given the option in this case.
>
> >I didn't notice the March against Militarism (in about, ooh, 1992)
>having any noticeable effect on Militarism, which has been waxing
>mightily ever since.
>
>Maybe. How do we measure it? Isn't it worth trying? And if more people join
>in it may have more effect
>
> >I don't see how [snip]
>
>I know you don't... I know you say you don't. The quibble arises from your
>triavialising the matter into custard pie throwing. I wonder why you do
>that.
>
> >I am very much more convinced by what I take to be Mark's argument
>that the real purpose of all this street-politics is to build
>coalitions, that its value lies not in its ability to effect immediate
>change but in its ability to bring people together into a cohesive
>political movement.
>
>I have no problem with that
>
>though how we are going to build a cohesive political movement out of people
>who don't have the same aims is a bit of mystery to me