I'm going to answer a bunch of people not just Carrol but will start with the above:
1)Purism: criticism of black bloccers (will use this as term whether or not disruptive elements call themselves black bloc or not) is not criticism of Occupy Oakland as a whole.
2) Disproportion. Moving beyond Carrol a lot of people noted that we don't criticize Democratic attempts at co-option as much. That is because no-one on list is defending the Democrats. If as many people defended them as defended window breaking, you would see as much time devoted to criticizing them. Calling criticism "hysteria" is an attempt to shut down the discussion .
3) Policing, sectarianism. if someone walks in off the street and shits on my porch and I catch them I will take strong action to "police" them. If it happens repeatedly I will put some effort into prevention. It may be inevitable that some people will take dumps where it is not wanted but that does not mean it is futile to try to minimize it
4) Public opinion - I doubt those talking about public opinion are addressing some generalized amorphous opinion but specific opinion of those demonstrating. We have local Manarchists in my podunk town of Olympia, Wa. ("Manarchis" is a term for exaggeratedly macho male dominated anarchist factions.) Every time they pull their shit of graffiti and window smashing we see drops in attendance at meetings, and lower attendance at demonstrations. Part of the creation of a movement is short term movement of people who are sympathetic or even identify as leftists but are inactive into action. By identifying people who do stupid shit as "other" and acting against the wishes of the majority on the spot, you can minimize harm done to the movement by assholes and police agents. Incidentally the idea that police are always completely inner-directed and never have lines they wait for you to cross before comitting violence is nonsense. Sometimes they have orders to break heads no matter what, but on other occasions they are looking for an excuse will reluctantly do nothing if not given one. Depends on their orders. At any rate, if asshole behaviour make movement building harder, that helps the police regardless, because the police are generally readier to use violence against a small turnout than against a larger one.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
> On Behalf Of Tayssir John Gabbour
> Sent: Sunday, November 06, 2011 9:44 AM
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Occupy Oakland's imminent implosion and the
> widereffects
>
> On Sun, Nov 6, 2011 at 3:18 AM, Bhaskar Sunkara
> <bhaskar.sunkara at gmail.com> wrote:
>> What's striking in that video is the liberals are so ready to brawl
>> with the anarchists to defend some Whole Foods. Where were these
>> folks when low income neighborhoods were having their houses stormed
>> by foreclosure agents? Oh, probably at Whole Foods buying some free
>> range.
>
> Yes, looking at those three videos posted here, the only violence came
> from the liberals tackling the fellows who were spraypainting/smashing
> windows. With ageist slurs like calling them "teenagers" and
> "childish". Creepy.
>
> (I was perfectly ready to believe the window-smashers were wrong. Like
> if the protestors were surrounded by twitchy police, and suddenly some
> black-clad villains swooped in from nowhere with molotov cocktails to
> make the police go nuts. But this wasn't the case in the videos.)
>
> Employee theft greatly exceeds the cost of this rare property damage.
> Many estimate that "25 to 40 percent of all employees steal from their
> employers" [1], resulting in costs of $50 billion/year. (Businesses
> often do nothing until employee theft goes above X% of revenue,
> assuming it as a cost of business.)
>
> So, if 25-40% of employees steal, what is the reaction of a
> significant segment of the working class, when Whole Foods must pay a
> rounding-error for new windows?
>
> (Those of us cushy professionals who eat "free-range" and sip merrily
> from the chalice of life may understandably wonder why so many people
> steal. But simply imagine working at a fastfood place
> day-in-and-day-out, bored as hell, ordered to sometimes clean up after
> someone defecated all over the bathroom, or there's that manager who
> takes psychological comfort in making you his marionette, or they
> stiff you on your paycheck... So you take some extra food to lower
> your costs or whatever.)
>
>
> All the best,
> Tj
>
> [1] http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/small/Di-Eq/Employee-Theft.html
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 6, 2011 at 3:18 AM, Bhaskar Sunkara
> <bhaskar.sunkara at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Sounded like the OP was shedding some tears for "local and independent"
>> businesses, as if they aren't even more exploitative to their employees
>> than your average chain store. What's striking in that video is the
>> liberals are so ready to brawl with the anarchists to defend some Whole
>> Foods. Where were these folks when low income neighborhoods were having
>> their houses stormed by foreclosure agents? Oh, probably at Whole Foods
>> buying some free range.
>>
>> I just feel like this condemnation feeds into the media narrative that
>> places extra emphasis on the actions of these few. Anarchists have always
>> been around breaking shit at protests. This is nothing new. I'm all for
> red
>> shirted cadre of some future Party formation guarding the flanks of
>> protests a la what some of the organized Left does in Greece, but we're
> not
>> at that point yet. I don't see what happened in Oakland as a disaster. Nor
>> do I think these Black Bloc tactics will spark "widespread looting" in the
>> city. If it did it might be vindication for the anarchists.
>>
>> On Sat, Nov 5, 2011 at 10:06 PM, // ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org> wrote:
>>
>>> On Nov 5, 2011, at 10:00 PM, Bhaskar Sunkara wrote:
>>> > Regardless, this whole analysis seems out of touch. The property
>>> destruction
>>> > * was* trivial. Yes, the moment needs self-policing. Yes, tactically
>>> > attacks on property are counterproductive. But I don't have any tears
> for
>>> > Whole Food windows or "local and independent businesses."
>>>
>>>
>>> But why “out of touch”? That this is tactically a bad thing, not an issue
>>> of shedding tears for Whole Foods etc, is pretty much the bulk of the
>>> analysis thus far. No?
>>>
>>> —ravi
>
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