Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/02/15
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 04:47 PM 2/15/03 -0600, Matthew Powell wrote: >Not quite. Civil rights, women's rights, women's suffrage, the labor >movement - each of these succeeded by working outside of the government, >and quite often in direct opposition to the government. They forced the >state to change, it didn't change itself. > >The truth is that there has never been a real progressive movement (in >the US) that was successful by solely or even mostly working within the >system. This is bunk. Each of these issues became politically sensitive before any sort of mass public protests were conducted, and each of them would have been handled by Congress as they were had a single march never occurred. Yes, protests do obtain newspaper coverage but, in the end, what accomplishes change is change within the system, not outside of it. (Protesters didn't get the civil rights bills of the middle 1960's passed: a coalition of liberal Democrats and mainstream Republicans did that.) I realize Zimm disagrees with this take, but the record is pretty clear. Marc msmall@infi.net FAX: +276/343-7315 Cha robh bąs fir gun ghrąs fir! - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html