When the Reluctants [i.e., those who insist on nonviolence] complain about black bloc bogeymen, they’re really talking about this immediate popular content: taking the street or a bridge, resisting the police, smashing up a bank, or occupying a building.
That the Reluctants gather and march at least part of the way, even occasionally getting themselves peaceably arrested, can’t distract from the conflicts that emerge when they encounter anti-capitalists in the street. The communist invariants put the two goals at risk, publicly shaming Reluctants for their bourgeois attachments and threatening to occupy then burn any possible bridge to party politics. Desperate to manage a non-violent mob, they find themselves yelling, shoving, even throwing a punch or two. When it comes down to it, the occupations’ violent ideologues are the ones who define themselves through their rejection of ideological violence. Is there any doubt that if they had the police’s weapons and badges that they wouldn’t use them just as brutally as the cops have?
Watch this quick video from Occupy Oakland: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4uee3M6e4Y&feature=player_embedded
It’s tempting to see a team in black in conflict with “regular folk,” but there are two sides. One is engaged in some vandalism against one branch of an anti-union grocery chain, the other has put themselves in conflict with the first group. In the first scrap, the yellow helmet guy has to be pulled off a kid in black who immediately runs away. While black team mounts an assault on the tiny white picket fence – something we certainly ought not watch without laughing, because it is hilarious – yellow helmet guy shows up again, putting himself once again in between people and property. And not even good property! Shitty insured decorations! He’s immediately directed out of the way by a crowd that’s clearly not there to fight with other demonstrators, or people at all.
As I continue to try and be useful in these posts, I want to end with a suggestion. I know Occupy Wall Street has developed march guidelines in the past, and even if I’m generally opposed to such things, it’s clear now that we should collectively define some best-practices when it comes to how we interact with each other on the street. If these guidelines are supposed to maintain non-violence, then they need to make clear that assaulting someone in order to protect property is unacceptable behavior. Other acts that should violate non-violence declarations include aiding the police in arrests and pushing people onto a prescribed march path. Maybe that discussion can help clarify who constitutes the real internal threat to the occupations.
http://jacobinmag.com/blog/2011/11/people-who-hit-people/