STRIKE!
Yesterday in Albuquerque and across the globe students walked out of class in the cause of saving Planet Earth. Students marched out of school here, sometimes with their teachers, to fill a rally in a downtown park. Most had permission. Then a march to the downtown office building that housed two New Mexican Senators (both Democrats), where the rally ended. Only students spoke until they gave the mike to an aid of a US Senator. I wanted to yell “where is the Senator?” When I asked one of the girls what was planned next she said “we have a whole week of climate related activities, beginning with a picnic.”
The New York Review of Books, Sept 26, has a wonderful piece by Adam Hochschild, the Berkeley historian and writer. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/09/26/white-nationalist-family-values/ In it he tells the stories of activists, Wobblies, civil rights workers, and Vietnam war resistors, that slept on people’s couches and were fed by unknown families, just because they were in “the movement.” And he added tellingly, “how many liberals would do this if someone emailed and said “Im against global warming, may I sleep on your couch?” My journey south, would begin in just that way. John Lewis, who I didn’t really know, said “go to Nashville.” And there I was fed and housed by people whose name I do not recall. The same thing had happened in Cairo, and then in Albany Georgia. I was on an adventure and thought I was taking advantage of strangers. In fact I was being drawn into the Movement, a historic uprising that would own me for the next two years. Hockschild writes correctly, that there will be no successful movement to save the Planet until that happens, until a real community of radicles is formed.
Instead of the march ending with a speech, it should have ended with arrests. Where were the students willing to break off and block traffic? When I asked if there was a minute to speak, an organizer told me the rules he the police had laid down. “Fuck the police” I said. Then as the marchers obediently walked back to their park, apparently a few minutes behind the police schedule, an officer on a motorcycle announced through his bull horn, “Let the traffic through.” Then incredibly he yelled through his bullhorn to the 2000 people walking down middle of the street, “if any of you are hit by cars it is your own fault” and roared off away from the marchers on his Harley.
The only hope of the student strike to work is if it spreads to other branches of society, unions, what left of them, first of all. And the movement must be radical and militant. And there needs to be blood in the streets. No ruling group in history has ever given up power without blood being shed, and these monsters that are destroying us, are no different than those that came before them. The only difference is most of them are dead.
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Thumbs up for all of them.
Thumbs up to all of them.