-I think this is broadly recognised which is part of the reason -the protesters divided Quebec into Green, Yellow and Red zones -to facilitate people who wanted to take part but not to get -arrested or tear gassed. Unfortuantly the police didn't -recognise that division.
Of course they didn't, which is why the laissez-faire "everyone do their own thing" approach to coalition activism does not really make sense in the long term. It is in the interest of the state to undermine such divisions, to use the actions of the most militant minority to justify repression against the less militant activists.
The more militant activists may not like being held responsible for these results, but consequential foresight is a different question from moral blame, and militant activists have to deal with those criticisms. Similarly, I don't have a problem with reasoned arguments that too timid tactics will not accomplish the social change needed for justice.
But splitting the difference and saying each group do it's own thing is just a ridiculous naive approach to politics. The issue is not militancy versus passive action but of collective responsibility for how one's actions effect others. What I object to among some of the Black Bloc is not really that they break windows, because there are windows in the world deserving breaking, but that they are so fundamentally anti-solidaristic towards other activists, that they oppose democratic accountability and coordination as a movement.
In the short term, such laissez-faire activism can look spectacular on TV but leaves little chance to building the long-term strategy it takes to challenge corporate-backed state power. I recognize that this is the core political disagreement between socialists and anarchists, in that socialists generally believe that majority votes should be binding and that it takes broad-based organization to challenge power.
Anarchists just think it's recreating the same oppressive structure with a nicer face, which is true to a certain extent, but the anarchist alternative of voluntarism, despite lots of noise and drama, doesn't deliver real change over the long term. It's too easy to divide and conquer, since it can't plan for the future since there is little long term accountability.
-- Nathan Newman