This is an interesting question.

As I said, I'm not trying to cast doubt on anyone's motives. I'm sure that NGOs and the like think they're doing the right thing. But that's just the problem: there's always an unfortunate tendency for movement bureaucrats to *identify* the interests of their particular organization with those of the movement as a whole. So you get measures designed basically to keep those bureaucracies alive and kicking: prostration before the Democrats with some mostly harmless and isolated acts of civil disobedience thrown in to pacify the disillusioned.

Now, it's impossible to get rid of the professionals entirely. Realistically, the movements needs at least some paid staff. The problem isn't one of eliminating them, but of eliminating their autonomous weight in movement organizations and their lack of accountability to a constituency.

And it's useless to try to create something better out of thin air. New organizations or existing ones need to emerge out of mass action. The larger and more genuinely militant these actions get, the more movement organizations confronted with an ultimatum: adaptation or decay. It's because of this, I think, that SDS is mostly to be applauded for its M19 action.

If such actions continue, organizational expressions of them will emerge. Whether it will take place within or outside of existing groups remains to be seen.

Sam, you're comments imply that there some sort of "movement as a whole." I haven't seen evidence of any such coherence or general center of gravity.

Also, could you please be more open and direct about the bias you allude to at the beginning of your article. In particular, how about clarifying your employer and its relationship to these events.

I'm a clerical/low-level development worker in the social services sector. My employer was not in any way involved with the day's activities, and is not involved in antiwar causes more generally. I had to take the day off to attend.

I think it's impossible to be completely objective, and downright absurd to suggest that one person -- necessarily only witnessing part of what happened during the day, and predisposed to see things in a way shaped by their own previous experiences -- could present anything approaching a complete and objective picture of what occurred. *That's* the sense in which I'm biased.

As for the matter of there being a "movement as a whole": there are various groups and individuals who want to see the war end, and who have an interest in seeing it end. You can call that a movement or not; I don't see how it really matters.

The important point is that this goal can't be achieved unless you have a movement in the full sense of the word -- a movement that moves. And in many cases, the antiwar groups themselves are responsible for preventing such a thing from emerging.