Once the march is over, the blockades removed, the tear gas dissipated -- another fight is only just beginning, one that may last for years, require thousands of dollars and endless hours of work, and which may determine whether protestors go to prison or go free.
In the early seventies, while the Black Panthers were making kids breakfast and training with guns, the women's movement began organizing its own kind of survival programs.
At every level of government, campaigns against dissent have tended to focus disproportionately on the activities of the left. The surveillance, harassment, infiltration, arrests, sabotage, slander, disruption, and petty bullshit endured by the left is only rarely matched by a similar level of police action against the right.
A Catholic friend once said to me that he is less concerned with what religion a person practices than where they place themselves within their tradition. Are they more like Dorothy Day, or more like Cardinal Ratzinger? Are they closer to Yankev-Meyer Zalkind or Ariel Sharon? Malala Yousafzai or the Taliban gunman who tried to kill her? Chris Dixon takes a similar approach to understanding the left in his new book.
Before there was a counter-culture, there were bohemians. Never confined to a specific ideology, personal style, or mode of expression, bohemians were nevertheless characterized by their artistic temperament, sexual libertinism, and general left-wing outlook.
A year ago, on February 28, 2013, at an event titled "Patriarchy and the Movement," I watched as a friend of mine attempted to pose several questions based on her experience trying to address domestic violence and other abuse in the context of radical organizing.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019