DIRECT ACTION AS A MEANS OF ACCOMPLISHING ENDS

What is direct action? It generally applies to the citizen or person exercising her or his rights in a direct action that may or may not be strictly illegal.

So the refusal to pay a tax or the decision to deliberately violate an unjust legal prohibition are two kinds of direct action. One may commit all sorts of "property crimes" to protest "crimes against people". Generally this term implies a nonviolent orientation.

Howard Zinn suggests that direct action is a prerequisite for progressive measures to come out of an Obama administration.

He refers to the direct action of workers who seized substantial
fulcrums of the economic base and held it hostage until they got at least some of what they wanted.

We know there were substantial working class radicalisms and revolutionary or quasi-revolutionary groups at the time he refers to
in 1932. The opportunity to build such radical ideas and social change organizations exists today as people really do wonder how the whole capitalist supertanker has capsized.

His call for direct action to protect the victims of foreclosure is one well within the capability of the rank and file progressives in many neighborhoods.

The first response of the capitalists system was to care for the foxes in the chicken coups and then to throw us or at least our money to these same clever con artists.

We will have to defend our own. The working class must defend its own, no one else will do it for the working class.