Make Poverty History has called for a mass demo on 2nd July, will dissent argue for its members to join this demo? bearing in mind that MPH is a broad coalition made up of Trade unions, religous and anti debt groups.

i ask this because there seems to be lots of differing groups doing different sort of action.

Dissent is a network: therefore it has no members, and it is therefore highly unlikely that it will endorse any particular form of action. It is a network to facilitate organisation in the run up to the summit. But seeing as the PGA hallmarks that Dissent abides by promote direct action, rather than lobbying, it is unlikely that dissent would get involved in promoting the MPH march - because marching around is akin to lobbying and is not (the march by itself) direct action.

All pretty obvious stuff really.

in reply to the above.

why do people seems to dismiss or down play the importance of the big protests and demo's.
if we go back in time, in 1998, when 50,000 anti-debt protested (jubliee 2000) outside the the birmingham G8 summit, anyone reading the above comments would draw the conclusion that it did f~~k all and did not put any pressure on the governments. this protest did make a difference, fast forward to 2005, you can see it did make a difference. why do you think tony blair and gordan brown have put Africa and the debt question on top of the agenda? it is preciously because of the struggles of the last 7 years.

of course the blairites will not make much of a difference for the poor , but they are on the defencesive because they are scared of our movement. they are being pressured in dropping further debts and supplying the poor with cheap medication. we in the movement have exposed the question of the debt and the profitering drug companies.

the anti-debt movement has grown since 1998 and will continue to grow. millions of ordinary people are angry about the burden of debts and our number one task is to mobilise as many people to the demonstartion. i am afraid to say that if dissent does not help with this mobilisation then it is acting in a secterian manner.

dont get me wrong, i have sympathy for the aims of dissent and their direct action but how many people do you hope to be involved in direct action, how much influence do you think you have??

in conclusion, i afraid to say your anayalisis is wrong, the big demonstations did make a difference by highlighting the burden of debt. dissent has to admit this or it would be quite rightly be accussed of lying.

Dissent itself probably wouldn't take any official 'line' on it - that's not really what it's there for as an organisation. Some people involved in the Dissent network will be on the demo, others will be busy elsewhere. It's an individual decision.

Er - just to be pedantic. 2 million people couldn't stop a war. I think it is red letters argument that is flawed. Advocating marching around and having a picnic in a park is all very well for people who don't want to get involved in something more direct (perhaps they have kids, jobs, are elderly, whatever), but its not anywhere near as effective as a march that has as an aim direct action. And again, even if the analysis is flawed, you speak right past the reply you have been given about Dissent's line on this and spout stuff that you presumably had already formulated in writing or thought; basically it was not worth replying to you, as you were not prepared to address any reply in the first place.

Hmmm, that's interesting - Blair and Brown are "talking the talk" about debt relief and trade justice and helping Africa *because of us*... never thought about that before - it's encouraging if it's true - not that they're going to offer more than spin and rhetoric but it means, like the person said, that they're on the defensive.

I agree that marches DO have an impact.

But so does direct action and I would say that direct action is MORE powerful than a march.

I think it would be counterproductive to tell people that it would be better to stay at home and watch tv than to go on the march.

But to persuade people to do direct action instead of the less militant A to B march - that's a perfectly reasonable position, I reckon.

I think it's authoritarian to be telling Dissent that they "should" or "have to" join in with the Make Poverty History march. If Dissent want to do their own thing then that's absolutely fine. As long as they're going to be there it doesn't matter that they're going to be doing their own (arguably more effective) action than joining in with the mainstream one.

Personally I'll be going on all the different actions I can find out about - I'll take the whole week off and head up to Scotland. (Disclaimer - obviously I wouldn't even dream of doing anything illegal).

I do reckon it would be nice if people who are in Dissent argued the case to eachother that they should go and join in and support the Make Poverty History march - solidarity between different parts of the movement is something it would be nice to aim for. But I imagine there's a lot of people in Dissent who have been on scores of A to B marches and have frankly had enough of them, in which case who has the right to tell them that they should jolly well be there.

Well that's what I reckon anyway.

I *don't* think Make Poverty History is pointless. It's a positive thing that this coalition has come about. It's not in my opinion radical enough to "save the world" but it's not realistic to expect everyone to suddenly become a political extremist. I think it's really encouraging that stuff like Christian Aid had a Punch and Judy show at a recentish Trade Justice rally in which the main characters were (if I remember correctly) Tony Blair, George W Bush and "Mr Multinational Corporation" (who was a crocodile!), and which finished with a song all about the evils of "neo-liberalism". To me that looks like the less radical parts of the movement are becoming more radical! Which is great!

The Make Poverty History march will be the biggest event there. It's great that all those thousands of people will be there, keen to get involved in demanding justice. It's a shame they're not all revolutionaries but then ordinary people usually aren't. It would be great if 2 million people had all used direct action back in February 2002 - that would have maybe even stopped the war. But that's not reality. The reality is that most people *aren't* that radical, so the fact that they're mobilising at all is a positive step :-)