Divsion etc.

Gar Lipow lipowg at sprintmail.com
Fri Apr 14 19:05:45 PDT 2000


To all Carroll and Bodi who responded to the article by Brian Dominick I forwarded:

1) Neither of you seem to be responding to Dominicks main points A) Some affinity groups at the upcoming demo are planning to act as "peackeeeper -- protecting property owners from window smashers. Brian was making the point that this effort could be better spent protecting demonstrators from any police riot that occurs. B) He was asking people not to repeat police and "straight media" probagand against the black block. C) He nonetheless argues against window smashing by the black block as a tatic. His argument is that the act of blocking streets is alone signifcant and likely to provoke any police overreaction that windown smashing will -- in fact the police riot in Seattle began before any windows were smsashed. Window smashing does not cost store owners a great deal, but does cost the lowest paid workers. So he is making a public appeal to the black bloc not to engage in window smashing, not as some sort of moral thing, but as a tacticaal decison. D) You may note that the argument came from him, and was forwarded by me. While I will take full responsibilty for forwarding an article I agree with, and will accept any blame, please give Dominick the credit as actual document authur. e) Last, as to putting thsis forward publicly -- I guess it is an attempt to influence two groups -- one to convice the Black Bloc that minor vandalism is not a useful tactic at this time, and to convince those who want to play police, that actually diverting effort to actually oppose the black block is not a worth while use of time or effort -- that the black block are a small but very valuable group who have a tactical disagreement with the overwhelming majority, and should not be treated as an enemy because of this.



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