As a witness to some of the events this past week in St Paul, I wanted to write about it. As well as having friends who were arrested, in jail and looking at prison sentences, I took it more personal.
I’ve thought about the fact of how many have brought up how they’ve been arrested and/or fellow comrades and how that may take away from the movement and any issues going on in the world. However, I think that bringing that up is so important because of the police repression that happened in Minnesota this past week, simply for organizing, protesting with a WIDE variety of tactics (whether that is deemed legal or not) and other things that “apparently” people arrested did.
The Welcoming Committee brought up the diversity of tactics for other groups of all kinds on the left to sign on to, as a lesson to the WTO Protests in 1999 in Seattle. Of course, not everyone is going to agree on what Anarchists do and what Liberal kids do … I certainly don’t agree that voting is the change of everything or signing petitions in mass numbers will do much. However, I can agree it may work better at a local level.
An article from May of 2008 (about Diversity of Tactics):
Simply put, “diversity of tactics” means that activists will respect each others’ methods of protesting, allowing each other time and space in which to conduct their protests. Many cited the World Trade Organization demonstrations in Seattle as a successful protest from which lessons on mass mobilization should be drawn. Others spoke of their experience as anti-war activists during the Vietnam War.