-------- Original Message -------- Subject: More Seattle stuff (good) -- fwd Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2000 19:56:58 +0000 From: Iain McKay <iain.mckay at zetnet.co.uk> Reply-To: Iain McKay <iain.mckay at zetnet.co.uk> To: anarchy-list <anarchy-list at lists.village.virginia.edu>
> THE VIOLENCE IN SEATTLE
>
> OK: we've heard what you, the professionals (the professional newspaper
> writers, television commentators, politicians and leftist activists) think
> about the violence in Seattle this past week.
>
> Apparently a diverse group -- indeed, the leftist activists among your
> ranks would have it believed that they are not part of and are actually
> opposed to the politics of the mainstream writers, commentators and
> politicians -- you have nevertheless reached consensus, which you are now
> repeating on every occasion and on all channels, as if there could be no
> disagreement: the violence in Seattle was perpetrated by protesters against
> property; the violence was regrettable, counter-productive, stupid and
> ineffective; the violence was caused by a small "isolated" group of
> protesters, upon whom you have poured insults, calumnies and contempt; the
> protesters who self-righteously denounced and tried to detain "the violent
> anarchists" were courageous and brave, even heroes; and the police should
> have reserved their armoured personnel carriers, three-foot-long solid-oak
> clubs, pepper spray, tear gas, and rubber bullets for the violent
> protesters, and let the non-violent protesters alone.
>
> OK: we've heard what you've said; now shut the fuck up, if only for a
> second, and let other voices be heard.
>
> We, like the rioters in Seattle, are sick and tired of your monopolization
> of communication when it comes to the pressing issues of the day. Despite
> what you tell us, we know that you do not speak for us and your opinions do
> not represent what we think. This is especially true for the professional
> leftist activists who actually defended Starbucks and Niketown against
> attack, and now feel no shame in proudly reporting this ignominious fact to
> whomever will listen. These activists, some of whom have in the past
> actually pretended to protest against Starbucks and Nike, have
> nevertheless, at the most basic level, always defended them. But now these
> phony revolutionaries have visibly become what they essentially always
> were. The hypocrisy of the professional newspaper writers, television
> commentators, and politicians -- as well as their eager collaboration with
> the police and special services -- are well known; we intend to make the
> hypocrisy and collaboration of the "anti-violence" leftists infamous.
>
> But, first and foremost, we must declare our unconditional support for the
> anarchists, who came to Seattle armed with a well-thought out form of
> protest that is different from and intended as an explicit alternative to
> those forms of protest practiced by the conventional leftist groups
> (rallies, marches, demonstrations, sit-ins, die-ins, street theater and
> "festival"). The anarchists -- an organic community able to take organized,
> collective and militant action against their real enemies -- formed
> themselves into "black blocks" (so named for the black clothes and masks
> the anarchists wore) and systematically attacked unoccupied corporate chain
> stores such as McDonalds, the Gap, Nike, Nordstrom, Levi, and Disney, as
> well as the notoriously corrupt Bank of America. That is to say, the
> anarchists -- unsatisfied with protesting indirectly against an abstraction
> -- directly attacked the physical manifestations in real space of "the
> global economy" to which the World Trade Organization is committed to
> furthering, not people or "mom and pop" stores.
>
> Adherents to non-violent protest methods have always preached in the most
> self-righteous of tones against the strategy of targeting corporate
> property. We feel that their "morality" is actually an uncritical
> acceptance of the essence of corporate ideology, which elevates fictional
> corporate entities to the status of human beings, violently imposes an
> identity between these two categories of "persons," and thus demands "equal
> protection" under the law for both. Because corporations (only) serve the
> interests of certain individuals, the inevitable result of this "equal
> protection for all" is actually double-protection for corporate "persons"
> and no protection for real ones. The destruction of corporate property is
> the positive affirmation of autonomous human society and its right to be in
> control of its institutions, rather than be controlled by them.
>
> But, this time, in Seattle, the "moral" non-violent protesters did more
> than preach to the unconverted: they actually acted like cops until the
> real cops came and took over. Using their numerical advantage, the
> non-violent protesters surrounded, denounced, un-masked, beat up and
> actually turned over to the police the practitioners of violent protest. In
> doing so, the "moral majority" among the anti-WTO protesters not only
> helped the police and the National Guard do their dirty work, but they also
> assisted in the larger and more long-term effort to criminalize radical
> political philosophies that is taking place all over this country and
> through-out the rest of the world. Ironically, the "moral majority" was
> compensated for its counter-revolutionary efforts with indiscriminate and
> unprovoked beatings, gassings, shootings and arrests.
>
> It is both appalling and quite telling that none of the professionals who
> have denounced the controlled violence of the anarchists -- neither the
> mainstream commentators and politicians nor the leftist activists -- have
> denounced the unrestrained violence against people (not property) committed
> in Seattle by the police forces and the National Guard. According to
> several eyewitness reports, the police tear-gassed "shoppers and people
> getting dinner, as well as protesters," and that they did so both in
> downtown Seattle and in the neighborhoods outside the city limits "where
> the regular people live." In the words of eye-witness Jim Desyllas,
>
> If you were alive, the police gassed you. People got gassed for coming out
> of restaurants and bars and coffee shops. People coming back from work,
> kids, women, everyone. People would go out of their houses to see what was
> happening because these tear gas guns sound like a cannon -- and they would
> get gassed. A block away there was a Texaco gas station -- [the riot
> police] threw tear gas at gas pumps, believe it or not -- they were like
> vandals. They gassed a bus. I saw it with my own eyes. A bus. The driver,
> the riders, the people just abandoned it.
>
> According to Desyllas, a reporter from Portland, Oregon, "this was not, as
> Pres. Clinton claims, a peaceful protest marred by the actions of violent
> protesters. This was a massive, strong but peaceful demonstration which was
> attacked repeatedly by the police with the express purpose of provoking a
> violent response to provide photo opportunities for the Western media" and
> thus "discredit the movement against the WTO because they couldn't dilute
> it." Desyllas believes that, "This whole thing, this police attack, this
> was US foreign policy, not some action decided by some bureaucrat in
> Seattle. This was the State Department." Eye-witness Damon Krane agrees:
> "By repeatedly attacking and torturing non-violent protesters, the Seattle
> police sought to incite a riot and finally succeeded to a small degree."
>
> Thus, the anarchists did not precipitate the vicious crack-down, as all the
> professionals are alleging; rather, the anarchists knew it was coming and
> acted accordingly. That is to say, they refused in advance to let the
> outcome of the inevitable struggle for the streets of Seattle be yet
> another one-sided victory for the forces of order. Though you wouldn't know
> it from the reports of the professionals, the crack-down had the effect of
> radicalizing a great many people, that is, bringing people around the
> anarchist position, not putting them off from it. Jim Desyllas reports that
> , "because they were gassing everybody, the local people got mad too and
> they joined the 100 who had been herded out of the city. So soon there were
> 500 including the neighborhood people and all very angry. Then people set
> up barricades."
>
> For as long as they lasted, those barricades kept out both vicious police
> squads and "morally superior" leftists. For as long as we last, let us not
> forget the clear division that the barricades made between those who are
> truly opposed to this society and those who are not.
>
> NOT BORED!
> 2-5 December 1999
NOT BORED! <notbored at panix.com>