Thinking back to Doug's earlier comment, I think the fear isn't necessarily of violence, but of ungovernability, that ungovernability at times take the form of non-violent civil disobedience (for instance, a lot of the civil rights stuff in the south was really designed to shut stuff down, to destroy the workings of segregation in day to day life), at other times it takes the form of property destruction, and physical violence against people (the most notable form of this really isn't the black bloc historically, its most prominent in labor history.) There's more to say on this, but I'm going to stop there.
In regards to Seattle, I think that Shane is right in regards to the public imagination, but it's remarkable how much of its tactics and debates have returned lately. I don't think that's because its a set of structural issues, rather it shows the extent that anti-globalization protests have held on within the activist imagination.
robert wood
> On Feb 10, 2012, at 11:35 AM, Shane Mage wrote:
>
>> "in mainstream memory" it was like a cat's meow in the middle of a sound
>> night's sleep. Take a poll asking "mainstream" Americans what happened
>> in "Seattle" and the answers would likely be about 90 percent "no idea,"
>> 9.5 percent "what's a Seattle?" and 0.5 percent "wasn't that some sort
>> of riot?"
>
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/nyregion/wall-street-demonstrations-test-police-trained-for-bigger-threats.html
>
>> But to the New York Police Department, the protesters represented
>> something else: a visible example of lawlessness akin to that which had
>> resulted in destruction and violence at other anticapitalist
>> demonstrations, like the Group of 20 economic summit meeting in London
>> in 2009 and the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in 1999.
>
>
>
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