> What are you, some kind of peace nazi?
Opposing breaking windows means I'm a Nazi. Not bad. Burson Marsteller could use a smart guy like you: you could be making big bucks persuading us that the way to protect the old growth is to cut it down, and that we can guarantee access to health care by raising the price of prescription drugs.
> There are perfectly legitimate reasons to throw bricks at windows. This tactic
> can be part of a short term or long time strategy.
I am sometimes in favor of well thought out destruction of property when the "competing harms" defense might logically be employed. I won't say that throwing bricks at windows is never in that category, but I've never seen nor heard of a compelling example.
I suspect that if people were truly throwing bricks through windows in order to advance a struggle, they would do it as I used to commit somewhat lesser acts of vandalism: under cover of night, and without subjecting unwilling participants to the possibility of police overreaction.
> Of course, most of those that do the black are younger, but in my experience
> the hotheads tend to be older.
In my experience, those old hotheads tend to be in the employ of the cops.
> Let me describe what your attitude really represents: a patronizing ageist
> attitude based on your comfortable life as a citizen in an advanced Western
> country.
Hey, it's the classic white guilt double-bind! Cool. Haven't seen that one in the wild for a while.
Here's one back at you: assuming that those poor benighted people in unadvanced nonWestern countries aren't smart enough to come up with productive tactics, and are thus obliged to break windows, is pretty damn patronizing as well. Assuming that because their situation is far more desperate they're less likely to react rashly and counterproductively is also patronizing, if a bit more subtly.
Ageism: Most young activists don't throw bricks.
> I dare you to take your "lesson in history" to the Philippines and
> Argentina and explain to those people who are trashing banks and
> capitalist outlets that they need to grow up.
Ah, that takes me back. I used to use the same strawman, except back then it was "El Salvador." It wasn't very convincing then, either.
My work is here in the US. My comments are based on living and working in the US. Conditions may be different somewhere else, and I'm not about to criticize people routinely for using tactics in a situation I'm not familiar with. I tend toward pacifism, and I sure as hell didn't oppose the Sandinistas for shooting at the Contras - though I did oppose their treatment of the Miskito.
I'm not about to turn off my conscience just because the tactic you endorse is used by some officially approved quasianarchist cadre somewhere. I guess my youthful exposure to the RCP inoculated me against that particular practice.
-- Chris Clarke | Editor, Faultline http://www.faultline.org | California's Environmental Magazine