HIAW visits WCW

I just got back from the World Can't Wait's Organizing conference Forum. The subject was "Driving out the Bush Regime - Why we must, how we can, and what will replace it?" Before I go any farther, I'd like to support whatever people are doing, people acting is a good thing, and whatever criticisms I have doesn't mean that I don't think people should actively participate in this work (I'll include the links of the various groups below).
It was slated to serve as a forum semi-separate from the rest of the conference for the unconvinced.
I'm one of the unconvinced. I had to re-write this because I had descriptions of what the various panelists said, but I don't think it is as constructive for me to voice their statements. I'm not that good of a writer and, more importantly, I was unimpressed and this would reflect.
I asked two questions, both of which I feel were left unanswered. The first was that for someone with family in Panama and who has been participating in left circles as an adult for the last ten or so years, it is difficult for me to swallow that their charges against the Bush Regime aren't, in fact, actually issues with U.S. capitalism. From the war on the poor to torture, U.S. capitalism has been doing everything Bush is charged with since before his parents were born. I heard a black woman point out that the reason she wasn't so enraged about the Patriot Act was because everything in it has been happening in the black ghettoes for years and whites were just beginning to complain when it got focused on them. My concern was that by framing these problems as products of the "Bush administration/regime," we're turning this into an election issue. So I asked what is the advantage of this choice? (One woman came up to me to argue afterwards and said she went and saw Krugman speak last night and how he said Bush is headed out and that Liberals should just wait until the next election. She said the room full of incensed liberals went along with that. I said "Yeah, so you agree with me?")
My second question was about the lacking vision of strategy. People are identifying the problem, but not talking about the vehicle for change (the second question of the forum title: "How we can"). A lot of people know something is wrong, but nothing is offered to change it. I did a lot of activism in the late nineties and we did everything proposed by the speakers: sold papers, marched in washington, lobbied, performed street theater, and what did it get us? The Bush administration!
I said people stopped going, because after their second and third march, they wanted to see some type of identifiable results (At this point, I was getting positive response and was getting a little heated). So I wanted to know, I hear about an Ad in the paper, buses, and drowning out the bush regime and then revolutionary communism, but the question is what is the in-between? What are the middle steps? (At that point a snide comment was thrown about the answer had better not be getting people to listen to some Bob Avakian because people will just tell you to get out of their face...).
But all jokes aside, I think this second question is one of the most serious crises facing people right now: what is the model? Now that we're angered, how do we change this? What're we not doing right? How do we move beyond identifying the problem to working out the solution?
Sunsara said something about new norms (reconstructive hymen surgery going from being primarily done for immigrants to something American christians were now getting) being ushered in, this is in response to the first question, and needing to respond to the heightened situation. One of the students talked about upswings and downswings, but I didn't hear a real response from anyone. I was left disappointed. Afterwards, I got mobbed by a bunch of people. Some who wanted to have a real discussion, but a lot who seemed to be trying to convince me that my problem was that I didn't seem to understand that, no, Bush is really bad. When I pointed out that he certainly didn't begin the examples they gave me and that his ultra-badness didn't change the absence of a vehicle for change, they'd just kind of repeat themselves a little slower like I didn't understand that Bush is Really bad. Even these answers were centered on the issues of Bush being really bad and not on the needing a vehicle for change. Some of the things people said to me were just silly. I assumed that people would think that I might be from another group sent in to piss people off and recruit (which I most certainly am not), but when the third person in a row told me that I just didn't get that Bush was just this bad, I turned to him and said that Bush was so bad that he's going to require a better strategy to deal with him. It is frustrating because I know that if I wasn't so dyed in the wool and had pointed out the silliness of suggesting Bush will be out in six months, these people's condescending responses would've sent me out the door and never back. Instead, I'm going to email this to one of them to see if they have a better answer.
End of the day, I feel like my question wasn't answered, but that it also probably wasn't the place for it (to be fair to myself, I thought that the seven o'clock forum was for people who wouldn't be at the rest of the conference whereas I think I might have been the only new person). I still want the answers.
Here is everyone's links:
Democracy Cell Project | Sunsara's Blog | World Can't Wait | National Progressive Student & Youth Organization | Bob Avakian