This from David Harris "Dreams Die Hard" is absolutely on point. I know I've posted a lot from this book, but it really really should be read by anyone who gives a damn... If 1968 was the year when everything seemed to come together, 1969 would be a year in which a lot of it... Continue Reading →
“well-intentioned but hollow rhetoric” about organisation longevity once it has been decapitated…
I said it was the price I had to pay to be my own persona and that I was prepared to pay it. The Resistance, I claimed, would carry on its struggle in jail and also out. Our bodies might be locked up, but we would continue to organize. I claimed that when I was... Continue Reading →
You stay put, circumstances change around you… #schismogenesis #FieldDynamics
What seemed "radical" a couple of years previously gets overtaken by 'events' and - frankly, by other people needing to stake out more extreme/holier-than-thou edgelord positions in order to distinguish themselves from 'the pack.' This dynamic is well understood - see Irving Janis on "groupthink", or "Chaos of Disciplines" by Andrew Abbott. Bateson probably wrote... Continue Reading →
Judges refusing to let defendants explain their motives is nowt new. #JustStopOil #VietnamWar
"This isn't a court of justice, son, this is a court of law"... and all that. This below from David Harris's memoir "Dreams Die Hard" is worth remembering as Just Stop Oil people get done for contempt of court for simply explaining to juries what they did, or rather, why they did it. As a... Continue Reading →
Awesomely effective manipulation technique
This, from "Dreams Die Hard" by the late David Harris, is a chilling look at love-bombing followed by setting someone up to fail... If they taught this stuff in school - "how elites and charlatans manipulate you", alongside courses in understanding corporate and state propaganda and lies, we might not be in quite the same... Continue Reading →
Consistency against hypocrisy, or on a martyrdom trip?
Another age-old debate. In this clip below, from "Dreams Die Hard" David Harris recounts a debate about strategy/what next with his friend Dennis Sweeney “I don’t believe you’re saying this, Dennis. If I felt that way I’d still have a deferment. I've given all kinds of speeches telling people they ought to join The Resistance,... Continue Reading →
“strategies given six months to succeed, then abandoned…”
This below from David Harris' "Dreams Die Hard" seems crucial. Although I was not privy to them at the time, other conversations of Dennis’s after his return from Washington made it apparent that his enthusiasm for The Resistance strategy was waning. The idea, he said, had been to break the peace movement out of its... Continue Reading →
“Prolier than thou” bullshit, 1967…
Two quotes from the excellent book "Dreams Die Hard" by David Harris... He'd co-founded a draft resistance outfit (called "The Resistance" and within a year it was being outflanked by groups wanting/needing to edge-lord it. Steve, holding the fort in Berkeley, favoured the latter. Before leaving for the Northwest, we had agreed with him to... Continue Reading →
“Dealing with bureaucracy like wrestling with a vat of jello…”
"Frankly, it had also pretty much peaked. Dealing with the university bureaucracy was like wrestling with a vat of jello, and my “radical” proposals were all soon lost in a morass of committees and commissions, being “studied” into oblivion." Harris, D. 1982) Dreams Die Hard, p.157 Yep. Again, a feature not a bug. See also... Continue Reading →
Serious consequences for dissent having a chilling effect? That’s a feature, not a bug…
But we keep being surprised, it seems... The discussion that followed was somber, even frightening. The first thing on everyone’s mind was the penalties involved. The Selective Service Act of 1948 called for up to five years in prison for simply not having a draft card in your possession. Induction refusal carried a five-year maximum... Continue Reading →
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