Re: [Leica] Covering Anti-War protest in Philly

[Matthew Powell <mlpowell@directvinternet.com>]

On Saturday, February 15, 2003, at 07:53 PM, Marc James Small wrote:
> At 04:47 PM 2/15/03 -0600, Matthew Powell wrote:
>> Not quite. Civil rights, women's rights, women's suffrage, the labor
>> movement - each of these succeeded by working outside of the 
>> government,
>> and quite often in direct opposition to the government. They forced the
>> state to change, it didn't change itself.
>>
>> The truth is that there has never been a real progressive movement (in
>> the US) that was successful by solely or even mostly working within the
>> system.
>
> This is bunk.  Each of these issues became politically sensitive before 
> any
> sort of mass public protests were conducted, and each of them would have
> been handled by Congress as they were had a single march never occurred.

Excuse me, but you're not serious are you?

Labor rights "would have been handled by Congress" without strikes, 
without protests and without the work of labor unions, who often had to 
fight government thugs as well as strike-breaking thugs? Please.

Civil Rights - when did Congress "handle" things of its own accord? 
Where was Congress backing up Brown v. Topeka? Where was Congress 
working to bring about equal rights and end Jim Crow before the civil 
rights movement? Now, while I'm sure anti-lynching legislation qualifies 
as radical civil rights progress in some areas of the South, I don't 
consider it a great leap forward for mankind.

Women's suffrage - you had fifty years of action by women before 
Congress and the states allowed women to vote. Where was Congress 
working on its own there?

Women's rights? Ha, women's rights still barely gets a nod from 
Congress - where's the ERA? The best they can claim is Title IX, and 
even now they're talking about scaling that back.

> Yes, protests do obtain newspaper coverage but, in the end, what
> accomplishes change is change within the system, not outside of it.
> (Protesters didn't get the civil rights bills of the middle 1960's 
> passed:
> a coalition of liberal Democrats and mainstream Republicans did that.)
>
> I realize Zimm disagrees with this take, but the record is pretty clear.

Why did "liberal Democrats and mainstream Republicans" finally get 
around to it after almost a century? Because of protests. Because of the 
civil rights movement, because of court actions by civil rights lawyers, 
because people outside of the government made it an issue, and because 
Congress had to respond.

That's what protests and mass actions do. They raise the issue. They 
make the people in power respond, one way or another.

> Marc

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