The LA riots and the Cincinnati riots were quite different in the demographics of rioters: the former were multiracial (the largest majority of the arrested were Latinos, with a significant white participation) whereas the latter were practically all-black. It says something about the difference between Los Angeles and Cincinnati. The Cincinnati riots prompted much discussion of non-participation of non-blacks in the riots, among anarchists and other leftists in Ohio. Non-black anarchists and other leftists did mobilize in response to police brutality, but not during the three days of riots in the midst of Over-the-Rhine in Cincinnati.
At 8:05 PM -0800 1/2/03, Brian O. Sheppard x349393 wrote:
>Historically, as even you have conceded, the anarchist movement
>developed most fully in Latin nations - Spain, Italy, Mexico, on the
>periphery of white European capitalism. In these peripheral areas
>where anarchism developed, the peoples were regarded as "swarthy" or
>Mediterranean and just downright inferior by the eugenics-influenced
>whites of the time. The well-known anarchist figures from that era -
>Sacco and Vanzetti, Ricardo Flores Magon, Praxedis G Guerrero,
>Enrique Magon, buttressed the commonly held idea that anarchism was
>an "immigrant's" philosophy, a dangerous foreigner idea that
>threatened Americanism.
Those were the days when anarchists were mainly anarcho-syndicalists. Outside the USA, anarcho-syndicalism may be still the main form of anarchism. Within the USA, though, syndicalism does not appear to be the dominant tendency -- nay, it appears to be a marginal tendency in anarchism. That may be in itself a problem.
At 8:05 PM -0800 1/2/03, Brian O. Sheppard x349393 wrote:
> > Folks in the black bloc appear to show up at demos mainly populated
>> by others who don't share their ideology and use the crowds as cover
>> for their vandalizing, maneuvering themselves so they won't
>> (hopefully) get arrested, leaving the crowds to fend for themselves
>> when the police riot. It's the non-anarchist crowds who are left
>> holding the bag. The boy who was killed in Genoa, Carlo Giuliani,
>> was not a member of the black bloc.
>
>What you say is true (I share this criticism of black blocs, that
>they often parasitically use the mass of the protest as a
>springboard for their own unaccountable activites) - except for the
>absurd insinuation that black blocs caused Guiliani's death.
>Guiliani was killed by violent Italian cops, not black boc'ers.
I didn't mean to imply that the black bloc _caused_ Giuliani's death. The police riot all the time -- even in response to non-political crowds, like out-of-control party-goers after OSU football games here -- with or without provocation from the crowds. I'm just saying that black-bloc-style maneuvers didn't help, when the police meant business. Black blockers and other anarchists might have to reconsider their tactics. Are their tactics related to any long-term goal and strategy for social change at all? -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/>