Ooohhh a political debate. Don’t mind if I do.

There was an interesting debate amongst the greens forum I contribute to regarding the anti-war protest on Saturday. There was a bit of finger pointing going on (which is rare amongst the greens) about lack of publicity and green triangles which was seemingly blamed for the lack of numbers there. Incidentally the 20,000-30,000 people (including children, families and old people – bless them) that were there was a pretty good turn out but it got considerably less press than the violent protests at Monash.

Does this justify violent direct action? Is the message lost in the action? What’s interesting is that in Australia non-violent action is taken as a moral imperatives. “It’s not good busting down doors because you’ll just get bad press and besides, we all live in the wake of Ghandi.” In fact a non-violent position is often assumed (and it’s a really bugger when not everyone makes that assumption).

I guess my point is two fold. Firstly that if you’re a relatively small group of people you need to make a lot more noise and violence/occupation and so on are probably the most effective way of doing this. Incidentally when I say violent direct action I usually mean violence against property (because all property is theft) or cops because they aren’t human – right on! The press are sensationalist and love a good bit of creative direct action be that painting the opera house or using a desk as a battering ram. The alternative is a good 100,000 plus people before you get a similar amount of coverage and lets face it, awareness raising in a key motivation for direction action/protest.

My second point is that you need to be pretty passionate about the issue to engage in criminal behaviour. Yes there is a bit of the old sheep mentality but I find this to be fairly limited. When direct action becomes violent against a person it is usually either initiated by the cops/military (depends where you are) or subversives that have either infiltrated your group (this has happened more often than you realise – boy can I tell you a few stories) or by fuckwit young liberals like the ones who sat on the steps of parliament house on Saturday and heckled the crowd of peaceful protesters.

Finally I’d just like to say that if we were in another country we’d probably not even question the use of violence and be throwing Molotov cocktails because it’s really cool they way burning tar sticks to cop cars.

Oh, and one other thing. Even if it doesn’t change anything does that matter? Is it better to just stand back and say – “oh well, there’s nothing I can do to change it anyway”? No, you stand up and say “fuck you, the only reason you are in power is because I gave you that power and I don’t think the job you’re doing is good enough any more.” Silence is compliance.