May Day, this "Democracy Now" broadcast about it
as the day began,
and the news that Tomas Borge had died the day before all prompt me to share some news and muse.
Here in New York City, it was a glorious day of solidarity
in action. We rallied all afternoon in Union Square, we marched down Broadway,
we stood with the Transport Workers Union in their contract struggle with the
MTA, we stood with immigrant workers, and great numbers of Occupy Wall Street
youths stood with the workers and oppressed, with labor organized and
undocumented, in a mass demonstration of unity. The marchers numbered somewhere
between 50,000 and 100,000, which made it the biggest May Day manifestation
since the vast uprising of immigrant workers in 2006.
 |
| S.E. photo |
In contrast, there's a fake revolutionary of the sort Borge
would easily recognize, for they called them contras in Nicaragua, a guy who's
been going around trying to diminish the Occupy Wall Street movement, seizing
every opportunity to publicly denounce and divide it—all the while, of course,
claiming to be all for it. This is Chris Hedges, writer and journalist beloved
of social democrats, one of the leaders of the anticommunist left-liberal loyal opposition,
those trying to reign in what they call corporate capitalism, as if there were
any other sort, as if some extreme corporate takeover has sullied the system
and can be rolled back to a kindler gentler variety as if that ever existed and
ever could. This fellow throws around the word "revolution" a lot, positioning
himself as a proponent, yet if you listen closely much of the time he's
actually extolling counterrevolution. As in yesterday morning's
"Democracy Now" broadcast, when he was given lots of air time to
continue his crusade of the last couple months, excoriating the "Black
Bloc" tactic sometimes used by some activists. For me, the tipoffs, if any
were needed beyond his actual argument, are in his reference to the German
"revolution" of 1989—better known to any actual revolutionary as the
counterrevolution that overthrew the German Democratic Republic and opened up
eastern Germany for capitalist ruination—and his quoting of Vaclav Havel, scion
of a rich family who organized toward and eventually led the counterrevolution
in Czechoslovakia, bringing his own class back into power and henceforth
functioning as a puppet of U.S. imperialism.
As you'll hear if you listen to the program, Hedges' case is
that somehow wearing black bandanas is an inherently counterproductive tactic
and that this specific tactic somehow invites intervention by agents provocateur.
This is not merely nonsense on a logical, logistical, political and every other
level. It is not merely oppositional contrarianism, precisely the opposite of
the support Hedges professes. It is itself a perfect example of the kind of
undermining destructiveness he claims to be worried about. The so-called
journalist, in other words, is himself the agent provocateur. It is he himself
who's working hard to break up this exciting young movement, trying to turn activists against each other while he masquerades as an ally. That is the
objective reality. Hedges fails the Which Side Are You On test. It's a shame he
got yet another opportunity to do the ruling class's dirty work on May Day
morning.
Luckily, Teresa Gutierrez of the May 1 Coalition for Worker
and Immigrant Rights, who was also on the program although given scant air time
by host Amy Goodman, managed to get in a clear counter to Hedges' baiting. The
real foes, she said, are the cops. The cops are the ones to worry about, not
various militant forces using various tactics. It's the cops who attack, try to
divide marches, isolate groups, and so on. They're the ones to watch out for.
As a comrade of mine noted the other day, I've never seen an OWS
activist of any stripe beat someone with a nightstick or pepper spray someone
or throw someone in jail. This the cops do. Their work is made easier by
contras like Hedges.
Our work is to keep fighting. For real revolution, by the
workers and oppressed against the bosses and bankers, their government and
military, media stooges try as they may to slow our way.
