ACTIVATE (Grand Rapids SDS) has endorsed a call to action urging chapters affiliated with Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) to participate in direct actions aimed at disrupting the Democratic National Convention (DNC) this summer in Denver.
From the call:
If we, as a radical movement, are going to attempt to pressure the Democratic Party candidates, the time to do so is before they are elected. We can’t roll over and wait until they are in office. But on the other hand, if we, as a radical movement, seek to utilize direct action to bypass the mechanisms and apparatus of the State, opting in stead to actively (re)create and establish viable, sustainable, decentralized, localized, horizontal, and participatory modes of communal self-governance, we must also challenge the Democrats, sending the message that in pressuring them, we are in no way endorsing or legitimizing their power, authority, or rule. In fact, we seek to abolish it, as well as all other coercive mechanisms of the State. If we think a movement can exist out of electoral politics, then we must reclaim the mantel of dissent. With these things in mind, we have several questions for the Democrats, as well as for ourselves:
* If voters gave control of Congress to Democrats in 2006–rather explicitly (and belatedly) due to dissatisfaction with the Iraq war–why is the United States still in Iraq?
* Why is it that none of the presidential candidates (Democratic Party or otherwise) pay any attention to polls of people in the country the U.S. has made such a mess of, in which overwhelming proportions of the people simply want the U.S. out, now?
* How are any of the elites in the U.S. political mainstream demonstrating any respect for “democracy” when they ignore the opinions not only of their own constituents but of the people who are most directly affected? Who, of these elites, can we acquit of war crimes? And how, if we offer support to any of these elites, do we escape complicity with these war crimes ourselves?
* By resisting (or refusing to participate in) the limiting mechanisms of the electoral process, do we, through inaction, effectively condone war crimes by failing to do everything we can to stop them? Or is it that by refusing to engage in concerted direct action (and failing to recognize that the political mechanisms of the State are both ineffectual and illegitimate), we, through inaction, are effectively complicit in war crimes by failing to do everything we can to stop them?
Across the country, groups have been talking–and talking seriously–about disrupting the DNC by means of direct action. The DNC–like the RNC–is shaping up to be an event that we won’t want to miss. But unlike the RNC, the DNC gives us the additional opportunity of saying NO to the narrow (two party monopoly) options provided by the State. We feel that the DNC is equally as important as the RNC, as neither party represents the people. We also feel that if there is no radical presence at the DNC, radicals at the RNC appear to be supporting the Democrats, when in fact we oppose the whole system. In the face of the last eight years, let us not forget the prior eight year Democratic presidency of Bill Clinton, which brought us NAFTA, 500,000 dead Iraqis, welfare reform, militarization of the US-Mexico border, etc.