// ravi ravi at platosbeard.org
ravi: Violence in such circumstances seems to be well-described by what Carrol wrote, an act of elevating violence to a principle. Tactics here apply to both to the immediate need of self-defence and the larger goal of winning support and obtaining sought after results.
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I want to get on to your strategy question also, but for now, I was thinking about this.
For instance, during the police raid on the OO camp that eventually led to the General Strike, there was certainly a LOT of behavior intended to escalate the confrontation. There were people getting in their face, lunging toward them, other putting hands on them. The first two are considered Assault on a LEO, the last is considered Battery on a LEO. Others were trying to pull arrestees away from the cops. Still later, they purposefully threw down the barricades and taunted cops, etc. etc. http://www.youtube.com/user/TomVeeTV#p/u/0/orIqVHA3E24
As Boots Riley says in the video portion where they are meeting to plan on what to do next, all that happened and they doubled their numbers by early that evening.
So, at least in that instance, responding aggressively toward the cops didn't harm anything. The cops had misbehaved so badly it "justified" the response or, at least, it allowed the media to focus on something else.
Which reminds me of something I think is interesting - the way the "black bloc" was positioned at the start of the anti-capitalist march. As I already mentioned, they created different marches so people didn't have to march with the dirty anti-capitalists.
So, if you are an anti-capitalist and support tactical non-violence, why follow 50-60 people who are clearly out to "fuck shit up"? I mean, there were fliers being distributed indicating they were going to do something like that. And the chant was something like "Shut it down. Oakland doesn't fuck around."
So, I can't figure out why people cognizant of the heated debates over the issue would actually march behind people dressed in all black, wearing bandanas, waving black flags, and toting spray paint? They were not there to play tiddly winks.
In the WF incident, the footage shows the black bloc'rs doing their thing, separate from the anti-capitalist march. They had to leave the march to go after the store. Then, the non-violenters ran after them and intervened in the action.
I'd say that the smartest thing to do was to simply keep marching and let them do their thing. I mean, seriously, the was more eyeballs on that action simply because the non-violenters insisted on running over there.
I take your much earlier point, that someone might feel the need to defend the property not b/c they care about a building, but about the reputation of the movement. However, the context was the commitment to diversity of tactics. I suspect a few of the non-violenters intended to interrupt the bb action. *shrug*
I think they made things a lot worse. They could have just ignored their asses, like you ignore trolls. I mean, that's what people are calling them and it's just as stupid to feed trolls at a protest as it is to feed them on a debate list.
OTOH, I suspect there was a photo opp going on, no? Nothing wrong with photo ops, mind you. This is propaganda man, thank god for some great photo ops at OWS in NYC we wouldn't be discussing this! I can see that they may well have wanted to be seen, having their photos taken to defend the buidings, so they could send a message to the rest of the world that OO is about "non-violence."
Which actually ties in to the strategy thing: this isn't a war, it's not a revolution. It's propaganda to incite mobilization right now.
-- http://cleandraws.com Wear Clean Draws ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)