Well, first I always enjoy the intersectionality of your writing and I think you bring up a lot of knotty issues that need to be untied. I appreciate Malcolm’s comments in terms of racism within the movement and for the time being want to concentrate on this central question: Should we protest? I would answer to the affirmative.

Indeed, the millions of people who protested the war have a tremendous effect. Yes , the war is still going on, however the terms of the debate shifted and with it public opinion.

At the start of the war close to 80% of the US population supported George Bush and the war effort, but the end of 2007 80% opposed the war and the thought the president was doing a bad job.
This was primarily because there was an articulate, mass protest movement that gave voice to the discontent people felt. I would even go as far to say that Obama’s plan to withdraw the troops from Iraq and the very existence of his presidential campaign is a byproduct of protest. You yourself have stopped concerts by homophobic and racist artists by engaging in protest.
I do, however, agree with you that it’s important that protests have a focus. I’m not for “protest for protest sake” (Though that is fun!) The reason I did bring up the civil right movement was not to score points, because before I read your entry I just so happen to read Dr.King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail (I know, pretty exciting for a Saturday night.) In this essay he outlines 4 basic steps in developing direct action 1) Collection of facts to determine whether injustices are alive 2) Negotiation 3) Self-purication and 4) Direct Action.. Did the protestors in Denver follow these steps. No, primarily because I think that we as a radical left have failed on parts 1 and 2. That is to say, the job of radical artists and public intellectuals is to name the system. In terms of negotiation we can’t because we have not developed organizations. When we do, protest can be used as a leveraging tool.
In other words, the left is correct, but a correct position cannot move people if you are incoherent. Let me also state that I think protest is a means and not an ends. I believe that direct action also manifests itself in “poder” or people’s power. I think that protests are good at commencing a struggle but I also think that we have to build our collective strength in other ways to finally get over this racist, sexist, homophobic system.
This brings me to the second point. You write “ And one could argue that these big protests have now become ways for police departments to justify spending all this money and resources on weapons, ammo and other equipment and staff. And doesn’t actually undo the problem.” Duly noted, however, I must ask, was there a protest just before Sean Bell was murdered? Was there a demo before the NJ 4 were jailed? The nature of the capitalist state isn’t just, it serves as a means of enforcing the class rule of a few over the many. What’s conservative in your argument is the notion that the people brought repression on their own, whereas I would argue that the state itself is repression. In other words, if all protests stopped today, the state as it exists would continue jailing colored folks and stockpile ammo, because of its very nature. A nature, that has changed in the past 20 years from a welfare state to a neoliberal state. We have gone from “New Deal” to “No Deal” and the only way to deal with the contradictions is through repression and fear. It is this very nature, that we need to organize and protest against.

I don’t think what I am saying is conservative, I of course don’t condone the actions of the police in Denver (or in St. Paul)–I think that goes without saying. What I am saying is that the presumptions about police and the state from which these activists start is dead wrong. For them, they don’t understand the fundamental role of the police, except for when they are confronted with its power, which is often only when they protest. And one could argue that these big protests have now become ways for police departments to justify spending all this money and resources on weapons, ammo, and other equipment and staff, and doesn’t actually undo the problem. It actually exacerbates it, which then leaves communities that are under attack by the police in these communties even more vulnerable to police violence, and less resources for other kinds of services. Get where I am going? These protests justify the buildup of the police state, not help undo it.

I am really shocked that you dont see the actions of these kinds of (mostly) white anti-war protests as mostly self-serving and shortsighted in their analysis of the the state and the police–why else would you be screaming “What are you doing? This is America.”?? It presumes that this doesn’t happen in America, but in other far off places–a really racist assumption if you ask me, and a flat out denial of the role of the prison industrial complex that you seem to suggest I don’t understand or am somehow or have turned my gaze from.

I guess your final question, Kazembe is presuming I think that street marches work. I don’t think they do anymore–not really. I think bringing up murderd civil rights activists is kinda, low, really. I think the time and conditions are different in terms of protest politics, and they were a part of a larger movement to, as Ruthie Gilmore once said, “undo the white racial state.”

Is that what you think these activists are doing?

I don’t think that’s a conservative position ( I am not saying I love the cops and hooray for them!).
I think that we’ve come to equate public protest as synonymous with undoing the state and capitalism, and I think that’s why they Left is stuck and isn’t actually transforming or undoing the state at all. So if that’s what it means to be Left( rally and march with no other strategies in place), and not challenge the Left on what they’re doing that is actually perpetuating violence and white supremacy–with no accountability, then no wonder why we’re losing.

‘Mobs’ would ride into Kansas to vote in the polls, kidnap and publicly humiliate candidates, and eventually they actually disbanded the state government at gun point and appointed themselves leaders.

There are reasons why the police are there to protect the convention.

I think the argument could be made that there is merit in sometimes disrupting a system that perpetuates institutional violence with organized violence as an act of self defense. But these people are not saying that at all. They are clinging to some stupid notion that non-violent protest can be effective in a police state. And by protest they do not mean disrupting the incomes of white supremacists by refusing to ride a bus for over a year. No they mean acting like petulant children, throwing a tantrum in front of some police officer, who also has no real individual power, and then getting in their SUV and driving back, as you said, to their gentrified corner of America.

The situation is rife with double standards and hypocracy and it is infused with a deep history of injustice and violence.

That said, as much as I would love to see the two party system torn down, as much as I would prefer an end to the electoral college, I don’t think it should happen for the sake of anarchy and at the expense of the closest thing to a democracy we have going right now.

I am looking for a better thought out solution than ‘let bygones be bygones, man’.