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The Panthers were "useful" for far more than their tactics. They were a proud, public, militant, and mass-embedded movement, organizing self-defence of African American communities against the racist suppression by the police. They were no cowardly concealed vandals or assassins. They were, in fact, notoriously the targeted victims of such attacks by police.
Your example is an excellent one to distinguish mass struggle from police provocateurs and individual heroic adventurers. You have quite obviously missed my argument. I am no pacifist, nor do I espouse nonviolence except as a tactic (and maybe as a lofty distant goal in human evolution). When militant action is taken, it must be taken by masses of people, deciding and acting together. If individuals do so on their own, the same masses of people must suppress them - or, if that's not feasible, then clearly condemn and dissociate from them.
Precisely my point. As I said before this past wkend, activists will lose the moral high ground if they support violent tactics. What happened is exactly what us pacifists said was going to happen.
I mean, look at it: either it's "agents provocateurs" or the mainstream media. People like me and unionist and adharden who have been consistently critical of violent tactics are being smeared with accusations of being divisive, or, like you just did, "mainstream." We are offering constructive criticism, so who is being divisive, REALLY?
Truth is, violence is an unsupportable position, so those who support it must necessarily resort to criticizing those who are against it because that's all they got.
Bottom line: violent tactics are a disastrously bad idea. This weekend proved it. People still in favour of it need to take their heads out of their asses already.
Here's another metaphor...army background and all you know. When the battle is in the trenches, to insist on occupying the moral high ground leaves one standing around in no persons land, trying to advance against hopeless odds.
While it would certainly require much more organizational discipline than is currently practiced, I'm not sure it's necessarily impossible to have equivalently armed protesters. This was certainly the practice in the 1969 anti US-Japan Security Treaty/Anti-Vietnam War protests in Tokyo when universities were occupied and shut down for a year. I believe labor organizers in South Korea also to some extent practice these tactics.
Whether it would be an effective or productive tactic though is a wholly different question.
Now I understand Vimy Ridge.
Sineed this isn't about the moral high ground. Report after report indicates that the police left the 2 cop cars, strategically. Yeah, they should have been left alone, but when do cops do this, ever? And the police were simply vanished when the vandalism on Yonge Street began and allowed it to continue for 30+ minutes. Separate from agents provocateurs, the violent protesters walked right into the police's plans. And it worked. It's actually pushing it to even call what they did, "tactics". IMO.
$1 billion dollars is now justified. Orchestrated completely by the PTB. And people are believing it. That's what angers me.
I'm not in favour of violence such as what happened in my city on the weekend. Neither the state-condoned violence, bought and paid for, nor the (perhaps) less-organized sort. Interesting that we've all been distracted from the violence of the cops though. But I get that this thread is about the tactics on "our" side. Nobody who throws bricks is someone I would consider an ally.
SJ, is fear a tactic? Or is it a way to enforce compliance? If that's true, there are many more ways to strike fear into the hearts of corporations than smashing their stores and stealing. Cutting up one's credit card is one way.
Watch how fast change will happen if only 10% of the population does that.
It might work the first time around, if each protester had a rifle and bandolier slung across their shoulder, in convincing the police to adopt a more polite demeanor with the general public. The next time though, the army would be manning the barricades.
It wouldn't happen here of course, because we tend to leave that sort of thing to the 'third' world. We're quite willing to cheer them on in their struggles though, while simultaneously counseling the less intense, apparently more civilized bended knee approach for ourselves.
SJ, when I saw the video of protesters turning their backs on the riot police and sitting down, I thought, who the hell does that, except someone secure in their privilege of the sanctity of their physical dignity? Or, ingrained with "trust" that the police won't hurt them. The results weren't pretty.
The image in my head was more construction hard hats and steel trash bin shields. Nonetheless, you're probably right about what the likely state response would be.
There's a scene in one of Ogawa Shinsuke's documentary series about the farmers' protests against the building of Narita International Airport outside of Tokyo from the 1970s when the farmers and their student allies debate whether to arm themselves for the next days picket lines. It's certainly an interesting glimpse into the thinking that went behind their protest actions at the time.
Sineed - violence in self-defence - violence supported by the masses - is not only justified, it is inevitable. Hence, WWII. Hence, Vietnam. Hence, Afghanistan.
The distinction is not whether people get hurt or not, either. It is what stage the struggle is at, and whether the tactics are decided and accepted by the movement. Maysie's comment about having the "protestors armed in an equivalent way to the police" is so far from the point, I just shook my head. The people of Vietnam (for just one of countless examples) were never "armed in an equivalent way". They prevailed. The insurgency in Afghanistan is armed with some pathetic firearms and home-made explosive devices. But, as in the countless other cases, they enjoy vast popular support. That's why they will prevail.
Turning the other cheek in the face of systemic violence is no virtue. It can be, at best, a conjunctural tactic. Even if, by some turn of fate, the people remove their enemies from their thrones by nonviolent means, they will need to prepare to defend that victory against violent reprisals. That's why I disagree, philosophically, with adharden. But today, I disagree even more immediately and urgently with Slumberjack. The individual arsonists and vandals must be condemned - suppressed - as a small parenthesis to our larger struggle. And we must be the ones to do it, if they don't get the message themselves through their rather dense skulls.
Hi babblers, although u may not know me- i feel like i kno most of you (in that anonymous online way anyways) i have read the forums the last 3 years- but after what happened in the tdot this weekend and closely following the board i feel i need to post in response to a long-time babbler.
Unionist- there are actually a lot of people in support of the activists in black: several in the mainstream. Naomi Klein was on democracynow.org yesterday defending their actions, and providing a context in which this sort of actvism exists.
as many of u may or may not kno (as i did not)canada has had (roll eyes) substantial hockey riots in the past where more cop cars were destroyed/burnt/flipped.
I personally feel ill that the left would not be in solidarity with ALL of the protesters not just those working within the social justice mainstream. My sympathies are anarchist(indigenist/post left/ communist), and i have difficulty with a parliamentary system led by social democrats; however when social democrats, socialists, communists, marxists, social justice people speak and march i tend to listen and realise how rich and diverse the left is- rather be divisive in the face of mainstream media.
If we dont have solidarity for eachother- how can we expect to change the public perception?
Just as an Add- i have also heard many people discuss how the police implemented their "baiting" tactics- so to blame the activists for causing destruction on police "property" when it is clear to anyone paying attention that this was clearly what "they" wanted... The left to divide and the "black bloc' to become the new terrorists...
oh i just wanted to add another little blip- While i am in solidarity with a diversity of tactics- i do not condone the destruction of the police cars, they were a PERFECT camera op if u read the star or the globe and mail u will see what i mean, you couldn't have "planned' photojournalism that great (lol).
However, i do believe that breaking windows adjoining corporate property is non-violen;t particularly in context to the destruction and violence corporations do in the world to all persons but particularly those vunerable to abuse and exploitation. We are all exploited and oppressed- some just choose to acknowledge that fact. and some choose to take it a step further.
We cannot forgot that the only people that were hurt in the protest were protesters, there were no fatalities no police casualties. The vids i saw of the sat arrests sickened me. I was @ the solidarity march outside of don jail were many more arrested in a brutal fashion.
Compare this to any day in afghanistan and iraq where state and corporate mechanisms are at work, causing death AND property destruction every single day.
Hi, st_zed - warm welcome to babble (that is, to a speaking role)! If you've been reading for 3 years, you may have noticed that I occasionally exaggerate in order to make my point. It's my working-class upbringing, I'm afraid...
I'm a big believer in precision. I have absolutely nothing against anarchists nor against people who dress in black. My comments are directed against the assholes that torch banks and cop cars and smash windows of businesses, then run away and hide. Are those the ones you say "a lot of people" support? I guess we'll have to agree to disagree, because I haven't met one single solitary non-cyber-person that has said, "Good for them!"
Not that I don't believe you, but having just met you, I'll need a quote and/or a link so that I can judge your rather astonishing statement for myself.
Yeah, and I have more respect for crowds that do that than masked heroes. Not much more, mind you - but more. The crowds usually aren't trying to invite repression.
What if some of the "protesters" pulled out guns and started shooting cops? Would the absence of solidarity still make you ill? Or do you get to draw the line as to what forms of individual heroics are acceptable? Just askin'.
I personally never give a damn what someone's "sympathies" are. I judge them by their words and deeds, and whether they act with the movement or not. If you think the "movement" only consists of "the left", then we will never win. We will need people marching and acting together who would never dream of attaching all those little sectarian labels to themselves that you have just listed. Come check out my fellow workers sometime. When action happens, they're all together. Ask them how they vote or what they thing of socialism and revolution and anarchism. You will be rudely surprised.
I'll take my "right-wing" workers over the asshole arsonists any day of the week, month, or year - because they will change this world.
I'd like to know this too.
I'm hearing it a lot. Imagine how much damage would have happened if the police wasn't here?!
Word is store owners have to pay for the damage themselves. The federal government MIGHT step in (But now that the big spending spree is over probably not).
Some people here have made comments like big deal, it's just some broken windows. Okay so how about you drop a cheque for a thousand bucks to get someones windows put back in. It wasn't just "evil big name corporate symbolic stores" that were smashed.
We're of the opinion that we have time on our side, and that our immediate circumstances [I mean ‘our' in the sense that we enjoy, no matter what occurs around us, a measure of safety and security that is denied to others on a daily basis] are such as to not warrant a more aggressive posture.
We consider ourselves in solidarity with the oppressed around the world and domestically, yet we define the respective variations of self defense through our own methodology. What is well and good enough for ‘others' as they determine is to be avoided by us.
Solidarity exists so long as the complacency and normalcy that we've come to depend upon for ourselves remains undisturbed. Somehow, everyone must sign on to what we define as legitimate in order to be considered, even in circumstances of knowing full well the level of mainstream conditioning that exists in this society, to an extend where we witness the occasional outburst in protest, followed by an equally rapid return to the accustomed state of lethargy that has been prepared for us. And if somehow the oppressed gain a measure of victory through the very means we look down upon, we stand ready to reap the benefit after stepping past their bodies.
We do not fully realize of course the similarities that should unite us all against a common global system that inflicts its misery everywhere, because after all, we're among the privileged few, which lends toward the notion of feeling that we have the time to be patient, while others are being crushed, poisoned, and suffocated.
I have no intention of letting this go until you either substantiate it - or withdraw it. Who said this, and what did they say? Why should we allow throwaway comments like yours to become urban legend?
I believe violence begets violence. Violent tactics by the BB goons will just bring more police repression.
More for us indeed Boom Boom. We're not used to that.
FUCK YOU UNIONIST YOU FUCK!!!! WHy don't you spend 20 hours in a fucking cage, get beat up by cops and listen to the media and supposed fucking allies trash your friends and family and then go fucking search out the name of someone who spoke in front of 2500 people. Fuck you. Look at the speakers list. it was one of those people.
So, st_zed, just for everyone's information, here is the video clip. The interview with Naomi Klein begins at 23:00. There is also a few seconds at the very end where she returns to the same issue.
NOT ONCE does she mention the "activists in black". NOT ONCE does she "defend their actions".
How about listening to it again, and then get back to us. Urban legend is a dangerous thing. Facts are vital for those who wish to change the world.
Hi Unionist, Thank you for your reply. I won't pretend that i wasn't slightly worried- as I know how heated babblers can get. But i do appreciate your welcome. Here is the link to democracynow =
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/28/naomi_klein_the_real_crime_scene
I do agree with you on many topics- I am not suggesting the "movement" or "change" will only come from the left- I believe many so-called right wing workers among many others- MUST be included in any and every discussion, I am about inclusion not division. I appreciate your feelings on labels or political identities- i felt it was nessacery to identify myself ( a product of my post-modern post- secondary education obviously) so babblers could have some context b/c i had never posted before. I adore ( get ready for it) noam chomsky- and his anarcho-syndicalist sensibilities have influenced me immensley. I will admit that my own understanding of labour history is not a level it should be - but of course i recognise (how could i not?) the immense contributions of labour and working peoples in democratic movements. Don't they form the majority of our society? I believe people who catagorise themselves on the right and are of a particular socio-economic background (whatever that means) do so in response to mainstream education and media. For me personally, the right is pro-business anti-labour. This is not to invalidate their talkior ng points or diminish their capacities - most people in my view are quite brainwashed by capitalist/neo-capitalist forces...may not be a marxist but I strongly concur with his his analysis- just not his outcome. I am not saying I condone the boys in black " " ; but i do not like it that progessives of any shade should attack people that they instead should hold solidarity with. I feel "SICKENED" by the g20- and all that entails- (i know so ambiguous...) but i am tired of BEING told we live in a democracy and never seeing these so-called liberal humanist democratic values enacted. i am pro-democracy and simply put - Democracy should governing principles decided for and OF the people in a consensus or grassroots way. It should bring all sorts of people to the table. I am disapointed i guess in general by the whole spectacle- and it adds to my feelings of unease of our current society I I don't know if this was a even and/or adequate response to some of your points? but I hope we can continue the discssion soon.
The BB goons are nothing but a sideshow, but unfortunately a sideshow that brings increased police repression.
No wonder the level of anxiety being expressed though, there you go again with inconvenient facts and footage.
Having been there, I wouldnt be able to tell you what anyone said with conviction, since the sound was crap and the only time I could for sure know what someone was saying was when they started a chant, since then I could hear everyone else repeating it.
Here's one heck of a tactic worth debating: Police admit deliberately misleading public on expanded security fence law
St_zed, I've read your comments, and I think we are remarkably in agreement on the basic ills of our society and the tasks facing the movement.
I just want, though, to emphasize how important facts are. We must have crossposted, because I linked to Naomi's interview just before you did. I watched/listened to the whole thing. She never mentioned the people in black - not once, unless I was seriously mistaken - and she certainly never once defended any burning of cars or smashing of shop windows. Not once. So please listen again, think over what you said, and let me know if we're still in disagreement on this point.
Let me put it differently. I know Naomi Klein. I know her work. I cannot imagine her defending these characters or their actions. I can certainly imagine her saying that the "real crime" took place among the G-20 leaders. I share that conviction entirely. But no one defends the assholes - no one I've seen, anyway - except anonymously in cyberspace.
I agree it was a spectacle and perhaps calculatedly so.
Unionist- She didn't say "anarchists in black" she called them " young activists" and refers to them as very "angry" she in no way marginalises them or criminalises them- This is what i meant by "defend" i am sorry that i inarticulated my point. Her article in globe and mail yesterday antagonistically derided the "real crooks of the g20 nations" as the leaders. I felt this comparison amounted to defense. I do not condone what they did. I, along with NK, do not condemn them.
Here's what I posted on Friday, although I didn't get a very sympathetic reception:
Emphasis added.
LOL to the continuous cross-posts.