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Re: Re: Re: Iraq Moratorium protests war at Silver Spring Metro

In fact, the idea behind Iraq Moratorium was never to "escalate" in the manner suggested. No material the organization's produced suggests so, anyway. (Indeed, it originally suggested things like wearing black arm bands.) The point, rather, is to engage the majority of people who are privately antiwar but don't demonstrate to do so.

The war will end when there's a serious threat of people serving certain roles in society refusing to serve or even transcending them as a means of resisting the war -- when soldiers refuse to fight, for instance. As I pointed out in response to Mike, this is not the kind of resistance that can be built overnight.

You vandalize a recruiting station. So what? At best you'll do some negligible damage -- do you really think the best-funded military in the world will have trouble replacing a window? More likely, though, you'll provide an excuse for increased repression and possibly turn off some potentially sympathetic people.

Now, if a whole community were to mobilize to shut down a recruiting station -- that's something much different, and very desirable. But there's absolutely no evidence that "propaganda of the deed" would encourage this sort of mobilization. There's a good chance of it making it look like a fringe cause, though.
 
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Iraq Moratorium protests war at Silver Spring Metro

From what I heard it was but I got bad info. whatever. As far as smashing windows it does help send a message to the recruiters that they are not welcome and a lot of times it takes a while to replace them (even though they are so well funded) and seeing a smashed window drives away people. Plus smashing the window is just the start and is not a mobilization or anything, obviously.

I think you have to do whatever action you can and smashing up a recruiting station is really easy and if all you do is organize than nothing will happen but if you have groups organizing the community as well as people destroying the place and harassing the recruiters you can more successfully drive them out. Maybe you underestimate people's anger and willingness to see a smashed recruiting station, just think of the families that lost someone in Iraq or Afghanistan, maybe they won't show it on the outside but on the inside I am sure many of them support it!
 

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