griffjam
2nd July 2009, 21:34
Mike Boda
Pittsburgh Grassroots Examiner
"They maintain that only a dictatorship -- their dictatorship, of course -- can create the will of the people, while our answer to this is: No dictatorship can have any other aim but that of self-perpetuation, and it can beget only slavery in the people tolerating it; freedom can be created only by freedom, that is, by a universal rebellion on the part of the people and free organization of the toiling masses from the bottom up."
-Mikhail Bakunin
Anyone seeking to participate in, or make a contribution of time or resources to Pittsburgh's efforts to oppose the machinations and the very presence of the upcoming G-20 summit (http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20090630164718820), should take care to ensure that they are in contact with the Pittsburgh G-20 Resistance Project (http://resistg20.org/), and not some opportunistic Stalinist front group. Like the G-20 itself, the unaccountable, authoritarian, New York City-based, Bail Out The People Movement (which is a front group for the International Action Center (http://www.villagevoice.com/related/to/International+Action+Center), which is a front group for the Worker's World Party (http://infoshop.org/page/WWP-FAQ)) is making its own plans for late September, with little or no involvement or input from the people of Pittsburgh. Tellingly, the contacts (http://www.bailoutpeople.org/apr32009orgcents.shtml#pennsylvania) listed on their website, neglect to include anyone in southwestern Pennsylvania.
These dinosaurs from our nightmarish past and their hand-puppet, Cindy Sheehan (http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/11/329480.shtml), have been further granted misplaced legitimacy by the self-described Reuters 'news' agency (http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE55P6A120090626), who apparently could not be bothered to investigate whether local groups and individuals intended to oppose the upcoming invasion by the handful of elite figureheads and their camp-following amen corner and secret police (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09179/980444-482.stm).
The grassroots Pittsburgh G-20 Resistance Project has strong, longstanding community ties and support and lacks the kind of centralized, top-down structure of both the G-20 and the Stalinist front group. Rather than reliance on a discredited, archaic party line, the local Project is based around a set of principles and points of unity (http://resistg20.org/about-us), that were agreed on by the participants in a directly democratic fashion:
Work to end all relationships of domination and subjugation, including but
not limited to those rooted in patriarchy, racism, classism, homophobia,
capitalism, imperialism and the state;
Resistance to the commodification of our shared and living Earth;
Organizing on the principles of decentralization, autonomy, sustainability,
mutual aid and respect;
Opposition the police and prison-industrial complex, and maintaining solidarity
with all targets of state repression;
The use a diversity of tactics to directly confront systems of oppression by
advocating forms of resistance which maximize respect for life and oppressed peoples’ rights, and to construct local alternatives to global capitalism.
Aside from cynically masquerading as a grassroots effort, like the astroturf (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Astroturf), right-wing media and lobbyist owned and operated 'Tea Parties (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Tax_Day_Tea_Party)', the New York City-based (http://bailoutpeople.org/cmnt.shtml) Bailout the People organization is using the occasion of the G-20 summit to solicit donations (to supplement their trust funds established by socialites and the KGB) and engage in a form of a tactic that is common among, but not restricted to, the authoritarian left, (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html) known as "entryism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entryism)", where an existing struggle or organization is willfully, and often deceptively hijacked by members of an outside organization. Another Stalinist front-group, that is better known, is International ANSWER, which discredited and demoralized (http://www.forward.com/articles/1985/) the opponents of the escalation of the long-running US war in Iraq, through its ineffective, permitted, protest parades, its thinly veiled authoritarian politics, its insistence on taking credit for the mobilizations and protests of others, and its continued cooperation with law enforcement. This is no different than what the paper-selling (http://web.archive.org/web/20071227212333/http://www.infoshop.org/texts/ww_guide.html), authoritarian-left alphabet soup has done to discredit and derail popular resistance and grassroots organizations for the past 100 years, with special malice reserved for anarchists, who they tend to shoot in the back the back, both figuratively and literally, whenever possible. This is why people like Emma Goldman (http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/Exhibition/exile.html) and Alexander Berkman (http://libcom.org/library/the-russian-tragedy-alexander-berkman), among others, were publishing condemnations of Lenin and Trotsky's violent excesses, 40-50 years before US liberals would accept that that the 'Worker's Paradise (http://www.infoshop.org/faq/secH6.html)' of the USSR was merely another dictatorship. What began in Petrograd (http://www.infoshop.org/faq/append41.html), continued to Kronstadt (http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bright/berkman/kronstadt/berkkron.html), the Ukraine (http://www.nestormakhno.info/english/gtoct.htm), the Barcelona May Days (http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/spain/souchy_may.html), Hungary (http://libcom.org/tags/hungary-56), and the collusion with the de Gaulle regime (http://libcom.org/library/mass-strike-france-ico), which preserved his (and their) power.
Given their long-standing policy of uncritical support for any dictator or war criminal (http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/1999/06/21/clark/) willing to stick a red star on a national flag and/or taunt the US government, including the dynastic North Korean regime (http://www.workers.org/ww/2000/korea0309.php), Slobodan Milosevic (http://www.workers.org/ww/2001/statement0712.php), and longtime US asset, Saddam Hussein (http://www.diehippiedie.com/maximum/leftyfeb98.html), how sincere can the Workers' World Party (WWP) (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Workers_World_Party) in its opposition to the G-20? The WWP split from the Trotskyist Socialist Workers' Party (SWP) due to the latter's condemnation of Stalin's 1956 invasion of Hungary and subsequently fell in behind any tyrant willing to use leftist rhetoric as a justification for their brand of repression and imperialism. No apologists for the 1989 actions of the Maoist state in Tienanmen Square (http://www.workers.org/ww/tienanmen.html) are worthy of the level of trust and solidarity required for sincere opposition the G-20, who counts the WWP's beloved state capitalist China, among its member nations. Support the local alternatives to the G-20 and the WWP.
Pittsburgh Grassroots Examiner
"They maintain that only a dictatorship -- their dictatorship, of course -- can create the will of the people, while our answer to this is: No dictatorship can have any other aim but that of self-perpetuation, and it can beget only slavery in the people tolerating it; freedom can be created only by freedom, that is, by a universal rebellion on the part of the people and free organization of the toiling masses from the bottom up."
-Mikhail Bakunin
Anyone seeking to participate in, or make a contribution of time or resources to Pittsburgh's efforts to oppose the machinations and the very presence of the upcoming G-20 summit (http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20090630164718820), should take care to ensure that they are in contact with the Pittsburgh G-20 Resistance Project (http://resistg20.org/), and not some opportunistic Stalinist front group. Like the G-20 itself, the unaccountable, authoritarian, New York City-based, Bail Out The People Movement (which is a front group for the International Action Center (http://www.villagevoice.com/related/to/International+Action+Center), which is a front group for the Worker's World Party (http://infoshop.org/page/WWP-FAQ)) is making its own plans for late September, with little or no involvement or input from the people of Pittsburgh. Tellingly, the contacts (http://www.bailoutpeople.org/apr32009orgcents.shtml#pennsylvania) listed on their website, neglect to include anyone in southwestern Pennsylvania.
These dinosaurs from our nightmarish past and their hand-puppet, Cindy Sheehan (http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/11/329480.shtml), have been further granted misplaced legitimacy by the self-described Reuters 'news' agency (http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE55P6A120090626), who apparently could not be bothered to investigate whether local groups and individuals intended to oppose the upcoming invasion by the handful of elite figureheads and their camp-following amen corner and secret police (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09179/980444-482.stm).
The grassroots Pittsburgh G-20 Resistance Project has strong, longstanding community ties and support and lacks the kind of centralized, top-down structure of both the G-20 and the Stalinist front group. Rather than reliance on a discredited, archaic party line, the local Project is based around a set of principles and points of unity (http://resistg20.org/about-us), that were agreed on by the participants in a directly democratic fashion:
Work to end all relationships of domination and subjugation, including but
not limited to those rooted in patriarchy, racism, classism, homophobia,
capitalism, imperialism and the state;
Resistance to the commodification of our shared and living Earth;
Organizing on the principles of decentralization, autonomy, sustainability,
mutual aid and respect;
Opposition the police and prison-industrial complex, and maintaining solidarity
with all targets of state repression;
The use a diversity of tactics to directly confront systems of oppression by
advocating forms of resistance which maximize respect for life and oppressed peoples’ rights, and to construct local alternatives to global capitalism.
Aside from cynically masquerading as a grassroots effort, like the astroturf (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Astroturf), right-wing media and lobbyist owned and operated 'Tea Parties (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Tax_Day_Tea_Party)', the New York City-based (http://bailoutpeople.org/cmnt.shtml) Bailout the People organization is using the occasion of the G-20 summit to solicit donations (to supplement their trust funds established by socialites and the KGB) and engage in a form of a tactic that is common among, but not restricted to, the authoritarian left, (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html) known as "entryism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entryism)", where an existing struggle or organization is willfully, and often deceptively hijacked by members of an outside organization. Another Stalinist front-group, that is better known, is International ANSWER, which discredited and demoralized (http://www.forward.com/articles/1985/) the opponents of the escalation of the long-running US war in Iraq, through its ineffective, permitted, protest parades, its thinly veiled authoritarian politics, its insistence on taking credit for the mobilizations and protests of others, and its continued cooperation with law enforcement. This is no different than what the paper-selling (http://web.archive.org/web/20071227212333/http://www.infoshop.org/texts/ww_guide.html), authoritarian-left alphabet soup has done to discredit and derail popular resistance and grassroots organizations for the past 100 years, with special malice reserved for anarchists, who they tend to shoot in the back the back, both figuratively and literally, whenever possible. This is why people like Emma Goldman (http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/Exhibition/exile.html) and Alexander Berkman (http://libcom.org/library/the-russian-tragedy-alexander-berkman), among others, were publishing condemnations of Lenin and Trotsky's violent excesses, 40-50 years before US liberals would accept that that the 'Worker's Paradise (http://www.infoshop.org/faq/secH6.html)' of the USSR was merely another dictatorship. What began in Petrograd (http://www.infoshop.org/faq/append41.html), continued to Kronstadt (http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bright/berkman/kronstadt/berkkron.html), the Ukraine (http://www.nestormakhno.info/english/gtoct.htm), the Barcelona May Days (http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/spain/souchy_may.html), Hungary (http://libcom.org/tags/hungary-56), and the collusion with the de Gaulle regime (http://libcom.org/library/mass-strike-france-ico), which preserved his (and their) power.
Given their long-standing policy of uncritical support for any dictator or war criminal (http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/1999/06/21/clark/) willing to stick a red star on a national flag and/or taunt the US government, including the dynastic North Korean regime (http://www.workers.org/ww/2000/korea0309.php), Slobodan Milosevic (http://www.workers.org/ww/2001/statement0712.php), and longtime US asset, Saddam Hussein (http://www.diehippiedie.com/maximum/leftyfeb98.html), how sincere can the Workers' World Party (WWP) (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Workers_World_Party) in its opposition to the G-20? The WWP split from the Trotskyist Socialist Workers' Party (SWP) due to the latter's condemnation of Stalin's 1956 invasion of Hungary and subsequently fell in behind any tyrant willing to use leftist rhetoric as a justification for their brand of repression and imperialism. No apologists for the 1989 actions of the Maoist state in Tienanmen Square (http://www.workers.org/ww/tienanmen.html) are worthy of the level of trust and solidarity required for sincere opposition the G-20, who counts the WWP's beloved state capitalist China, among its member nations. Support the local alternatives to the G-20 and the WWP.