[lbo-talk] non-violence is the most powerful weapon we have

[Carrol Cox]

Just a note. Why are we bothering to spend so much time "defending" the
Black Bloc on this list when actually no one on the list has made a single
rational criticism of the Black Bloc. Proyect just vomits up old SWP
slanders against SDS & the Panthers & others shudder at how it will turn
people off, etc. There is no fucking debate here, and it has switched our
attention from the task of embryonic theorization of th OW phenomenon, which
includes but is much bigger than Oakland.

There is a world to win & we are fussing endlessly about  one brief period
on Oaklan.

Carrol

-----Original Message-----
From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
On Behalf Of shag carpet bomb
Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2011 7:08 PM
To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
Subject: [lbo-talk] non-violence is the most powerful weapon we have

// 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.

-----------------------

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)

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