Comments: Perhaps the title of this conference spells it out so much that I have no grounds for complaint—and some things are so complex that it’s not easy to condense my feelings into a small space. I came here as part of a visit with family and part to learn, see what people were doing and thinking. I use Indymedia regularly, and I’m glad that folks are challenging the stronger than ever corporate domination of the media in this country. Radical, authentic change is ongoing and things won’t change overnight. But I find myself wanting much more. There were only one or two tables here—and no speaker that I’m aware of—that had any kind of critique of capitalism or the state (hierarchical social relations). I see those things as being the root causes of a lot of the problems that ‘reform’ seeks to alleviate. Reformism works to juggle around cosmetic (or significant) parts of the surface of our social relations—while leaving the core unchallenged. I’m not naïve about the impact of ‘a minority within a minority’ such as myself on a broad social movement. But I’d like to think that what is unconscious in most people can come out given a challenge, or a disruption, in existing social conditions. More media in the hands of common folks is great! But I also want to issue the challenge for people to really look at some of the deeper sources of our malaise. It’s not just about Bush’s regime! Bush is particularly glaring example of the logic at the heart of capitalism’s predatory core. I may not have the answers for all, but I think by a more broad-based challenge and refusal to capitalism, the state, which includes wage labor, money, political parties, unions, etc—we might then have more of a change of actually solving some of the really serious, lethal problems that are slowly killing us all, and killing some of us much faster.
--Imaginative Agitator