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Social Movements, Web ExclusiveHow the ‘black bloc’ protected the G20
Photo: Christopher Bevacqua http://www.flickr.com/photos/nofutureface/ licenced under creative commons. Some rights reserved.
One of the most intriguing things about the chaos of the G20 in Toronto has been the effectiveness with which the black-clad violent individuals (who we’ll indulge by calling the ‘black bloc’) have contributed to the protection of the G20, its message, and what it represents. I consider it more than likely that there were agents provocateurs of various police services among the black-clad mob. It is certain, however, that if so, they were standing shoulder-to-shoulder with non-police - supporters and perpetrators of violence and endorsers of the idea of ‘diversity of tactics’, which provides a tacit legitimation and sanction for violence in the name of protest. That fact in and of itself is perhaps the best irony, and to committed ‘black blocistes’, the most salient paradox of the useless chaos perpetrated in Toronto this past weekend by those in black. It is fatuous to attempt to convince oneself that they were all provocateurs. The fact is that there are individuals out there in the movements who like violent tactics. The preference for violence is usually couched in a strong anti-state perspective, which questions the legitimacy of police services at all - thus many who would style themselves as anarchists have attempted to lead the charge in defending and advocating for violent tactics.
For the better part of two months, I’ve been publicly attempting to debate, discuss and criticize the advocacy for violent tactics by those who think of themselves as activists or protesters, both on my blog and at rabble. It started with a reaction to a former student of mine - Alex Hundert - who has been arrested along with three other self-styled anarchists from the Kitchener-Waterloo and Guelph areas. In his article criticizing Judy Rebick and celebrating ‘black bloc’ violent tactics, Alex made a public statement I felt deserved a public rebuttal, and I’ve been attempting to engage in this debate publicly ever since.
Now, ironically, I come to grips with the reality that Alex’s anarchism-inspired militant group, AW@L has more than likely been infiltrated since April 2009, along with other groups. The sheer logistics are interesting to consider - to gain trust, such undercover agents would have had to help nurture and support the type of defense and advocacy for violence on offer. Thus the agents have been complicit in helping nurture the kind of culture of support for violence that I and others criticize…
I also come to grips with the fact that the black-clad mob [protestors] in Toronto has left a lot of people not only in the general public but in the wider nonviolent social/global justice movements in Canada feeling disgusted, demoralized and dispirited. Just the result you want if your goal is to marginalize and stifle dissent. I would suggest that what the ‘blocistes’ accomplished was what many feminists have termed ‘silencing’. While the more numerous non-violent voices were indeed heard on the streets and at Queen’s Park (25 000 in the main march!), they weren’t ‘heard’ in the more meaningful, mass sense as loudly as the same reels of destruction overplayed in the media, and the same accounts of destruction and violence witnessed to on the ground by journalists, activists and citizens. The blocistes, in other words, are the most effective tool on the ground for silencing the valid concerns of the broad social movements questioning neoliberalism, corporations, imperialism and war - because like a ball dropped in a glass of water, they take the discursive space away from the broader movements, inviting and indeed compelling the public (through the media, of course) to only focus on the violence of smashing, burning, destroying, throwing, hitting… which are all pointless, repulsive, destructive, and frightening.
The stories of injuries to protesters from police batons, even of chilling night-time gunpoint raids in search of ‘persons of interest’ are all-too-easily marginalized in favour of the reality of the black-clad mob, wantonly doing violence and frightening anyone in their path. In turn, the media seized all too easily on the reality that many organizations and activists are reticent or refuse altogether to condemn violent tactics.
This major weakness in the movements is directly attributable to the aforementioned ‘diversity of tactics’ - which, if it were a ‘nonviolent diversity of tactics’, would not be destructive in serving to legitimate and justify violence under the cover of ‘refusing to judge’ activists. In the end, this is impossible - we all take moral positions, whether tacit or explicit, and accepting a ‘diversity of tactics’ is certainly a position that helps tacitly justify and legitimate violence.
The icing on the cake from the viewpoint of stifling dissent and effectively protecting the G20 is the reality that the violence of the black-clad mob served as a pretext for the completely undemocratic rounding up of hundreds of activists, some of whom are still detained as I write on Monday, reportedly in abhorrent conditions.
This movement on the part of the police only fuels the fire of the particular brand of violence-advocates who loathe the state - in fact it helps reinforce, from their point of view, a desired spectacle.
All of this is so much distraction from questioning the G20. The billion-plus Harper dollars did their part, but the violence-supporters in black ultimately did the more important cultural work of protecting the G20 and what it represents from criticism, by inviting justifiable criticism onto themselves.
I think they are spineless cowards hiding behind masks and innocent protectors who want to make their voice heard. I don’t see throwing a rock thru a window or setting a car on fire for your cause to wise. Who pays for this damage? Yep the tax payees and that would include you thugs oops I mean black bloc. Want your voice heard without violence? What a concept. Stand up for what you believe but lose the mask pussies and don’t make the innocent protestor pay your price for stupidity.
#1. Posted by Bryan in Ontario on June 30th 2010 at 4:29am
The problem at this point is that even if the ‘Black Bloc’ were to disappear they could easily be entirely re-invented or re-built by a group made entirely of agent provacateurs from the RCMP or CSIS. Although both rabble.ca and this site have mentioned their role, the real actions of police agent plants have not really made their way into the mainstream corporate discourse. Until alternative entities such as rabble.ca or Canadian Dimension promote themselves to a much wider audience, the concerns about the actual role of the police or other agencies will not resonate outside of a very small, marginalized segment.
#2. Posted by Cornelius Froese in Wpg on June 30th 2010 at 12:30pm
Yes, the Bloc could be comprised entirely of provocateurs, and that is exactly why organizers/protesters must summarily reject any kind of affiliation with or support for them.
#3. Posted by Lee Anne in British Columbia on June 30th 2010 at 11:38pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oesjegD1-Vg
it seems the fear is of “violence” against people
i was at the action in Toronto and felt completely safe
and i wasn’t knowledgeable about the black bloc at the time
black bloc techniques include damaging property, not people
with their presence
everyone is talking
and that’s important
because the real issues are with the G8/G20 meeting
you might be interested in this article…
http://www.torontosun.com/news/columnists/joe_warmington/2010/06/30/14564416.html
saturday was a photo op for the police to run wild on sunday
you’re a bit of an idiot
you could learn from you student
hopefully you’ll have the balls to post this
but you are part of the mainstream media
and you all failed us this weekend
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees everyone in Canada the right to freedom of expression and the right to peaceful assembly. It also guarantees the right of all persons to be free from arbitrary detention and unreasonable search and seizure. These constitutional liberties – and the limits they place…... on government and police – are the foundations of our free and democratic society. The G20 Summit did not authorize or warrant their suspension. Constitutional guarantees matter because, as is often said, without them, “even the most democratic society could all too easily fall prey to the abuses and excesses of a police state.” - CCLA
#4. Posted by Karen in toronto on July 1st 2010 at 9:32am
Capitalism can only be overcome by a mass movement that has the support of the majority of the population. The Black Bloc are obstacles on the road to creating such a movement.
The Black Bloc has a twin role:
(1) It sabotages the movements for real social change.
(2) It provides the police and the state with a rationale for more repression and bigger police budgets.
The Black Bloc consists primarily of three kinds of people:
(1) Infiltrators and provocateurs;
(2) Anti-social individuals who get off on smashing things and who use the label ‘anarchist’ as a handy excuse for doing it;
(3) Sincere anarchists who are too stupid to realize they are being used to advance the purposes of the state.
There isn’t much we can do about the first two types, but we can try to make the third category (the majority) understand that they are objectively sabotaging the anti-capitalist movement, even if they believe in their own minds that they are doing something “radical”.
#5. Posted by Ulli Diemer in Toronto on July 5th 2010 at 10:09am
Ulli:
The “sincere anarchists” are not the only ones who are too stupid to realize they are being used to advance the purposes of the state.
Consider, for example, those faux-leftists who bleat about the need to have respect for the police.
#6. Posted by Jeff White in Toronto on July 6th 2010 at 4:04pm
Jeff:
I agree about ‘respect for the police’. I wrote the following on rabble.ca in response to Naomi Klein’s speech in which she called on the police to “do your goddamned job!”
“The police ARE doing their job.
Their job is to protect the wealth and power of the ruling elite against any challenge. That involves - among other things - intimidating and suppressing anyone who is not respectful and subservient.
Upholding law and order in a society whose ‘order’ and legal system are based on inequality and oppression depends, first, on an ideological system that tries to make people believe capitalism is good or at least inevitable, and second, on using violence or the threat of violence to deter challenges to the power of the powerful.
The police are the enforcers of the capitalist system. No need to tell them to do their jobs—they’re already doing them, and they’ll keep on doing them as long as capitalism survives.”
#7. Posted by Ulli Diemer in Toronto on July 6th 2010 at 8:14pm
I’m glad you agree, Ulli.
Too bad Adam Davidson-Harden doesn’t: http://adamdavidsonharden.blogspot.com/2010/06/respecting-police-fault-line-for.html
#8. Posted by Jeff White in Toronto on July 6th 2010 at 9:33pm
I neither fear nor loathe the state…. I do think that’s a serious dividing line in the movements seeking to advance left/indigenous/green/antiwar issues… I do think that strains of anti-state mentalities - variations of self-identified anarchist thinking, and even strains of anti-state socialist thinking, tend toward a complete lack of respect for anything to do with the state - and this will tilt folks toward violent spectacles… I’m quite happy to bleat about that :) ... as I believe that violent spectacles - what I talk about in the ‘respecting the police’ piece on my blog - are only holding back social movements…
#9. Posted by Adam Davidson-Harden on July 13th 2010 at 8:22pm
Wouldn’t it be the media, and not necessarily the black bloc that silenced all the other protesters? I mean, there were protests since the previous week; rights for all on monday, gender, disability, and queer march tuesday, toxic tour/environmental justice wednesday, indigenous rights thursday, and justice for our communities on friday.
Was it another failed tactic of protesters, that these messages didn’t get heard? Or was it rather that when the black bloc showed up and smashed windows, only then did media become extraordinarily interested in all those silenced protesters who couldnt get their message out?
I think that either way that gets answered above, it would still be the job of the media to get out the message/statements/impact of the G20, no matter what got smashed and who was silenced. What amazes me, is that all of this tends to turn into an issue of ‘which one story are we going to tell’ and not that the media exists to tell all of them. Where is the medias role in silencing protesters messages in all this debate?
And the worst part of it, as far as i experience it, is that the media then shows up and asks you to condemn the violence and to collude with them about how you’ve been silenced, when it was always them who did that in the first place.
There are still people in jail while activist commentators go to the media to talk about their ruined message and it plays right into the “good protester, bad protester” language that the police and government employ to justify not launching an inquiry, to keep people in jail, to legitimize what happened in the streets, to arrest over a thousand people, to hold people in prison, to create a situation where cops felt so empowered that they threatened detained women with rape believing they could get away with it. . .
It was never the black bloc who hijacked anything, it was a media that, for weeks even before the protests began, focused on ‘anarchists’ and pre-emptive weapons caches; a media who went along with the police, who hid their violence from view, who never questioned whether the vandalism had been started by police undercovers like last time, who fell for the miami model.
The media is not neutral ground; but in this debate, it gets to pretend it is in the condescending role of advocate of the very group they themselves silenced and failed.
#10. Posted by Chelsea Taylor in t'rano on July 15th 2010 at 1:25am
Well, Chelsea posted what I wanted to before I could, so here’s something else worth considering: the police were already illegally searching, arresting, beating and otherwise causing serious problems for people long before any vandalism happened. If that’s what they want to do, they will always be able to find a justification, or even act without any justification at all, knowing that officers are rarely held accountable for their actions. This, for example, has been happening increasingly in the States: peaceful protests in public places, totally unconnected with any more militant actions, get mass arrested, dispersed with crowd control weapons, and otherwise silenced by an unopposed show of police strength. To blame the black bloc for this sort of behaviour is unjustified, and only serves to divide and weaken the movement against ever-increasing state violence.
#11. Posted by Paul in Toronto on July 15th 2010 at 1:48am
It’s also much sexier to have a web exclusive about how the black bloc protected the G20, rather than, say, elaborate those issues that were silenced. This article only perpetuates the silencing of those messages by continuing the conversation about appropriate tactics, and not being an article about what was being protested, or what the decisions at the G20 will lead to.
Whether or not activists were treated unfairly by the state before or after the black bloc took their actions, either way the notion of collective punishment is what is worth investigating as a story. I dont think it follows that accepting diversity of tactics (DoT) means a tacit justification and legitimation of ‘violence’. Implicating those who support DoT with the collective punishment mechanism is again another conclusion that doesn’t have to be as narrow as it is.
Is vandalism/property destruction beyond debate? Not even within black bloc conversations. Some might see it as theft, some might see it as a catalyst to the state powers reaction that will radicalize whomever the state chooses as a victim. Others think it might just trigger more authoritarianism. You’ve never heard of such possibilities? These debates are out there; certainly not on any mainstream press or its opportunistic axillary independent counter-parts.
All of this is so much distraction from questioning the G20. The billion-plus Harper dollars did their part, but the vandalism/violence equating commentators behind their screens did the more important cultural work of protecting the G20 and what it represents from criticism, by inviting justifiable criticism onto themselves.
#12. Posted by Chelsea Taylor in t'rano on July 15th 2010 at 2:23am
This article would have been stronger had the author not tried to shove all protesters into peaceful v. violent binaries that he simply picked up from the media and bourgeois culture. He should probably do a little reading on the history of the black bloc, which was started as a means to protect other protesters during actions against the violence of the state. Even the smashy technique was developed as a means to draw police away from others and allow them to engage in civil disobedience and other forms of protest to get their message out.
The fact that the black bloc no longer serves the same purpose at protests but appears to do the direct opposite might mean its time for people to move on from the tactic. I really hope that is the lesson that comes out of this. I am not saying we need to respect private property or that we should aid in the good v. bad protester stuff. I am just saying that every tactic has its limitations and the very fact that the state does use the bloc to legitimize its violence and to shift the focus from the summit, and those issues to being about police (as if leaders using other workers to divide and take the heat off of their power is new), should give us a lot to think about.
I also think it is really easy to dismiss the notion that the bloc caused the police to respond with violence by simply reading the police arrest sheet and by talking to folks abused prior to the bloc events or watching the vids of people being beaten prior to Saturday afternoon. This is important because the state in its witch hunt and persecution of ‘violent’ protesters is making the claim that the bloc caused the police to suspend civil liberties and violently arrest 1000 people. This isn’t to say that they didn’t increase their violence after Saturday afternoon, only that they simply increased it because of the green light, they feel, the bloc gave them. They are trying to hang their violence, even the stuff before the bloc apparently, on the bloc. That the media hasn’t pointed out this simple fact is a big problem. Also, important is the way they let the bloc run wild, and even instigated it with provocateurs, only to focus instead on these protesting elsewhere. This further victimises those who were the victims of state violence by attempting to shift the blame for that violence.
The bloc has a lot to answer for, but not for the police violence. I think there are ways to to do this but we have to stay clear of the binaries I outlined above.
#13. Posted by Travelin fellow on July 15th 2010 at 7:46am
Chelsea (and others),
What exactly did the Black Bloc accomplish? I agree that damage to property should not be conflated with violence and that a few broken windows and damaged police cars are being trumped up by the state into something just short of terrorism and that all political prisoners should be released. But what did the window breaking and police car burning actually accomplish? From a tactical point of view it appears to have been quite counterproductive.
#14. Posted by Milk in Toronto on July 15th 2010 at 10:45am
who knows? what exactly did any of those protests accomplish? isnt that one of those questions you get asked by people who dont protest at all?
im sure in certain circles there was a lot that felt got accomplished. im also sure in certain circles, there is a conversation about this tactic that doesn’t come down to, ‘dont do it ever it is bad and tactically useless.’ maybe folks right now are talking about how to revise this tactic, where it went wrong, where it succeeded.
is any of this for you to speculate? for me to know? just because we’re not part of the internal analysis of black bloc tactics, should it come down to whether this tactic is any good, at all, whatsoever? wholesale write off? sounds familiar.
I’ve also seen these tactical things out undercover cops in montebello. It wasn’t dave cole who had magic ‘undercover cop radar’, but the group of french activists in the video who try to explain in broken english that the undercover police approached them and was trying to get them to be aggressive. conversations around smashing things can out undercovers who are just approaching anyone in all black to get them to smash things. sure, the undercovers dress (poorly) like black bloc, but i do think it is important to learn that police are dressing up as protesters to incite violence and shut down protests. that’s one of those things that really lays bare the hostility of the police to protests in general. And the police lose a lot more legitimacy I think, compared to black blocers, for those who have never thought of police as directly confrontational with protests. It’s eye opening to learn that police will do that, for those who do take away that lesson. For those who avoid mainstream narratives, at least.
#15. Posted by Chelsea Taylor in t'rano on July 15th 2010 at 11:20am
I agree with almost everything you wrote Chelsea, except the part about how who should speculate on BB tactics. Everyone on the left, and even those not on the left, should speculate on the effectivness of BB tactics and their impacts because they affect us all. This is part of the problem with the tactic: it can never be open and democraticly debated openly and if the point is to build a open and truely democratic society, we need to prefigure that into our movements. Lead and educate by example if you will. If not, we come off as just as hierarchical and masculine in our approach as those we are condeming. It is vanguardism behind a black flag. Besides, if the cops are trying to get us to throw bricks should we really think it is good to throw bricks?
I should have also mentioned to the author that property destruction is not violence.
#16. Posted by Travlin Fellow on July 15th 2010 at 11:33am
“who knows? what exactly did any of those protests accomplish? isnt that one of those questions you get asked by people who dont protest at all?”
Except that we can answer the question “what do protests accomplish” by pointing out that they mobilize 10s of thousands of people, succeed in raising important issues and putting government on call that there is widespread opposition to their policies. Moreover, in the weeks leading up to the summit, the support for the Harper government dove due to the scandal over the billion dollar price tag over security. In the days leading up to the summit there was growing and widespread disgust in Toronto over the hyperpolice presence.
That all evaporated on Saturday afternoon when broken windows gave the state the justification they needed for the obscene cost of security. Polls since the summit show overwhelming support for police - and support is highest in Toronto!
So what did the breaking of windows actually accomplish other than giving a few dozen activists a momentary thrill and the privileged feeling that they were an elite, willing to go further than anyone else?
#17. Posted by Milk on July 15th 2010 at 11:46am
“is any of this for you to speculate? for me to know? just because we’re not part of the internal analysis of black bloc tactics, should it come down to whether this tactic is any good, at all, whatsoever? wholesale write off? sounds familiar.”
Yes. If they claim to be part of the movement then of course it’s the role of the movement as a whole to discuss whether or not a particular tactic is effective. That’s what democracy looks like. If the Black Block, or anyone, thinks their tactics and actions should be exempt from democratic scrutiny, discussion and decision making then they are elitists who privilege themselves over the movement and place themselves above it.
If they don’t want to be subject to a democratic discussion within the movement or accept the democratic decision making process of the movement then they shouldn’t usurp other people’s actions by using someone else’s mass demo as a launching point for their own elite action.
#18. Posted by Milk on July 15th 2010 at 11:50am
Im not so sure I was suggesting that it is a closed-door thing, but rather, that instead of talking about BB tactics as “effective/ineffective” (as most conversations end up going), it might be more helpful to tease out the ways in which they are effective, or to try to come up with a list of all the effects, and determining where those effects might be better placed. I find the ‘effective/ineffective’ conversations to go in circles, and I do agree that these things matter to all the people taking to the streets.
And likewise, there are some black bloc views that think massive peaceful demonstrations taking to the streets is ineffective, and perhaps this also needs to be thought of in these conversations around what works and what doesn’t.
I raised the “what’s the point in protesting” question, not as much as a serious question, but to show that the BB gets treated by protesters as non-protesters treat protesters: what is the point? didn’t you deserve what you got? what were you doing there?
There is room, I think, for ratcheting up the level of protesting, from a march in the streets, to, say, occupying the gardiner. The tamil community had been protesting for months before they took university ave, and then later the gardiner. And very few people had heard of these protests. While the racist media scolded their methods, again it was another one of those times that the media only showed up when the tactics were escalated. And here comes another protest demanding an inquiry this saturday. We’ve had thousands of people in the streets here in toronto every week, sometimes a few times a week, since the G20 left. And where did all the cameras go? Surely there is room to reflect on what happened with the G20 protests, what seemed to garner media attention, what acted as a justification for x,y,and z, but the conversation can’t be so one-sided as if peaceful marches are always good and smashing windows is always bad.
And this is having strayed from the original critique i had of this piece, which was that yet another article had been dedicated to the silencing of the message of the (legitimate) protesters. All of this falls into that binary, even accusations of, “if only the BB didnt do this, then we would have won/had mass support/ things would be amazing”. Someone else already pointed out that there had been pre-emptive arrests, raids, police harassment. If anything, BB tactics only widened the net of who was treated like this. something else to consider.
#19. Posted by Chelsea Taylor in t'rano on July 15th 2010 at 12:22pm
It’s important to discuss whether given tactics are effective or not. In this case, since I found the vandalism to be a huge morale boost and radicalizing influence on me and my closest friends, my opinion might be skewed, but I’m prepared to be convinced that on the whole the tactic was a net negative.
However, that is very different from trying to exclude and condemn the “blocistes” as they’re called in the article, or from condemning all violent or vandal protest on principle. In the past, as I understand, the bloc has served to divert or fight off the police so that other direct actions could proceed without interference. (Even this year, I met two women who were saved from illegal arrest by the black bloc: they were grabbed, one of them had her shoulder dislocated, and then the bloc rushed in and grabbed them back.) If the police have wised up and decided not to take the bait, the bloc can hardly be blamed for that. Certainly they need to rethink their tactic, but it simply does not follow that all protest must step up to the nonviolent “party line” in all circumstances.
#20. Posted by Paul in Toronto on July 15th 2010 at 1:21pm
Chelsea,
Ok, what were the effects of the Black Block action? Let’s do a balance sheet of the positive and negative effects. We’ve heard a lot of negative effects. What are some of the positives?
#21. Posted by Milk on July 15th 2010 at 6:33pm
At present I’m working on a critique of the defense and advocacy for violent tactics as I’ve found the argument presented in NA/Europe…. Zizek has embraced violent tactics broadly speaking - it would seem - and Gelderloos - a militant self-styled anarchist from the states, does so brazenly in his ‘how nonviolence protects the state’ (continuing the trail blazed by Ward Churchill and others)....
One of the above comments suggests that property destruction is not violence. This is all very intellectual/philosophical, attempting to draw political/philosophical lines around violence and what it might or might not be, but folks, to the vast majority of us out there, smashing stuff, throwing things, breaking things, setting things on fire, hitting people/things, these are all violent tactics… It’s possible to play as many semantic games as one wants, but it’s impossible to avoid the fact that this is how things are perceived by the broad majority, whom we need to attract, invite, interest in left/green/indigenous/antiwar issues to build mass movements if we want to get anywhere… In an earlier article:
http://adamdavidsonharden.blogspot.com/2010/04/futility-of-activism-using-violence-as.html
I suggest that the rage against injustice vented through violence could only be conceived as ‘effective’ as a form of emotional and intellectual catharsis… because in my view (and many others’), the violent tactics and the attendant violent spectacles they engender are doing nothing but holding back attempts to build mass movements…
#22. Posted by Adam Davidson-Harden on July 15th 2010 at 6:56pm
Yes, debates over what is and what isn’t violence can be intellectual/philosophical and many books can and have been written on the subject. However, in the history of struggles by the left civil disobedience has often included property destruction, sabotage, monkey wrenching etc…I am not ready to throw, or conflate, all of those forms of resistance and that history into a little box along with other truly violent acts such as bombing, shooting, throwing things, hitting people (which you group with breaking things), etc… I think we are in agreement that those latter things should never be part of left organizing and I am simply making a distinction between those and the former acts of resistance. I also think we agree on the need to build mass movements and that what occurred in Toronto during the G20, particularly the Bloc, does little to do that. But it is less because they are ‘violent’ as you say and more because they are not open to debates and have real impact on others who were not consulted. The society we wish to see is one where people debate things and where their decisions are open to scrutiny by the broadest possible community. Our approaches to resistance need to be informed by the same. This is also why dismissing it as violent when it isn’t also undermines the lefts ability to discuss these approaches honestly and openly.
#23. Posted by Travlin Fellow on July 16th 2010 at 7:59am
Well, respectfully, it is violent. It’s a violent tactic - this is how the vast majority of us see it - both within social movements and without. The fact that the violent tactics, and attitudes that lead to violent spectacles, act to hinder the building of an effective nonviolent movement is a key issue here, and it’s good to get this debate out in the open. Rather than have the day hijacked by the ‘diversity of tactics’ mantra - which of course tacitly endorses/legitimates violent tactics, as did the Toronto Community Mobilization Network - we need to to come together more effectively around a nonviolent DoT as well as not be afraid to call out the violent tactics for what they are - a hindrance to effective movement-building… and at best, a form of catharsis for those who espouse them…
#24. Posted by Adam Davidson-Harden on July 18th 2010 at 9:03pm
Do the Black Bloc ever show up where nobody else is around, without mass media and without any potential standers-by as victims? For example, why do the Black Bloc not go out to suburbs and to damage the auto dealer lots and smash gas SUV’s and Hummers while nobody else is around? That would impact the worst aspects of this auto culture but not threaten mininum wage earners at Starbucks. Because they are mostly police who regularly intimidate civilians?!?
#25. Posted by Cornelius Froese in Winnipeg on July 21st 2010 at 12:46pm
Long live the black bloc! They’re the only ones out of all you spineless left-wing fools who really know what time it is. The system cannot be reformed or voted away. As for allegations of cowardice, i’d like to see some of you really ‘tough’ emailers run in the street with a bloc then see how brave you are.
#26. Posted by tom on August 22nd 2010 at 2:10am
for more info and a radical analysis of the black bloc at the G20 check out this report:
http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/sites/mediacoop.ca/files2/mc/Fire and Flames!.pdf
#27. Posted by zig zag on August 22nd 2010 at 2:13am
don’t know what the problem is with this comments section but it’s not loading the complete url i will try again: for radical analysis of black bloc at G20 Toronto:
http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/sites/mediacoop.ca/files2/mc/Fire and Flames!.pdf
#28. Posted by zig zag on August 22nd 2010 at 2:16am