> Seeing as I am a Palo Alto resident, I am planning on
> attending the next City Council meeting to complain.
> I intend to make the point that the person in your
> letter makes: I dont want my property tax money being
> spent this way! It will feel weird to make that point
> for once!!! They must have spent well over 100,000 on
> the police for this march..all because they were
> scared that an "anarchist" might break a store-front
> window. How much do one of those cost anyhow?
Please complain. Every bit of reaction to the police state carves out room for future protests.
Yesterday I just started editing the new expanded edition of the "Black Bloc Papers." The damn thing is clocking in at nearly 500 pages and it doesn't even cover everything. Thomas' comments remind me of the reason why I started pushing the black bloc as a tactic in the late 90s. I had been to way too many tame protests in Washington where the cops just pushed people around and generally terrorized peaceful protesters. During one march down a sidewalk, the police threatened me with arrest if I so much as stepped off the sidewalk. In a crazy atmosphere like that, the black bloc is the logical choice for retaliation. As we know, at some point you gotta stand up to the bully.
Chuck