[Note: I know the Black Bloc is not a formal group, but an informal manifestation; there are no members, only participants]
There has been a lot of online chatter recently regarding how to handle the Black Bloc; as if the movement were a parent dealing with their unruly teenager.
The most extreme suggestions seem to be concerning unmasking the Black Bloc, either at demonstrations or afterwards, and handing them over to the police or other state authorities.
The idea scares me. Not from a “no snitching” stand point since we are not talking about a community dealing with a murderer or rapist, but from a Sylvia Plath standpoint of “Never do the enemy’s job for them.”
Are we actually ready to be the police? Are we ready to be collaborators?
Especially considering that the judicial system is rife with complaints of racism, classism, sexism, ableism… do we as a community who fight back against oppression every day want to hand anyone over to face the full brunt of that oppressive system with the naïve expectation that they will receive fair treatment and a fair trial?
Let me break the whole ‘we should not be hunting the Block Bloc down like rabbits’ notion down…
Firstly, how does one go about trapping or catching a Black Bloc participant? Should eager against-the-Bloc activists come to demonstrations armed with a modified black butterfly net? Should it be an old school swarming technique? Laying down traps with Cliff bars or NOFX CDs as bait? Or something more DL, like just pointing out a suspected Black Bloc participant to the police and then letting the police do the dirty work for us, pre-emptive strike style.
If this were the case, surely the movement could get a police/ government grant for building a specialized Black Bloc detector machine, inputted with a list of stereotypical Black Bloc traits to look out for. Anti-Bloc activists could stand beside the police as they choke off entrance ways to rally gathering points and while the police illegally search people, they could use the specialized Black Bloc detector machine on the crowd.
Maybe, again pre-emptive style, posters could go up along a march route the week before a demonstration as a sort of CSIS/Police Public Service Announcement warning people to immediately call 9-11 if they spot anyone wearing all black and looking anti-social. Does your friend wear black and vote for the NDP, better report him to the police just to be sure! “You’re either with us or against us,” right?
Call the Black Bloc or its tactics what you will, but I’m not into witch hunts. I don’t think we should be doing the police’s job for them. Which is what would inevitably happen if activists were encouraged to spy on each other and report any activist who had any sentiments towards radical activism to the authorities. Who needs enemies with comrades like these?
And what exactly would these anti-Bloc activists do once they caught a Black Bloc participant? Well, turn them over to the police, of course! I mean, these dastardly black clad ninjas purposefully went out of the way to ruin the Labour/NGO march on Saturday. That must have been their sole purpose on the weekend! How dare they steal Sid Ryan’s thunder!
Nevermind that the mainstream media is controlled by mainstream corporations, it’s the Black Bloc’s fault for the lack of media coverage they wanted. The Black Bloc scourge on the movement must be stamped out at all costs. The movement must be sanitized of troublemakers! Forgot the whole innocent before proven guilty notion. We need a pre-emptive strike!
Ah hell, I could go on with the humour but let’s get serious here. In regards to the movement’s relationship with the Black Bloc, are we activists really ready to collaborate with the authorities so far as to hand over suspected Black Bloc participants directly to the police? Does the movement really want on their hands that they handed over innocent people to a judicial system; the same police officers with a police chief who is willing to lie to the public?
Games in babble threads like “Unmask the Vandals” further feeds the notion that we should be working with-cough-for the police as opposed to a movement united against excessive police powers and police brutality.
No one says you have to agree or condone with what other demonstrators choose to do at demonstration. But calling for a police collaboration campaign or a form of activist vigilantism is very dangerous and divisive to the movement as a whole. Look at it this way, if a marshal turns someone they can only suspect participated in a Black Bloc action over to the police and they are subsequently beaten senseless by the same police, can the marshal just say they were doing their job?
Also questionable is the rabble.ca TV piece: Did you see these provocateurs? https://rabble.ca/rabbletv/program-guide/2010/07/features/did-you-see-these-g20-provocateurs
Again, it encourages a form of activist vigilantism. What are we supposed to do if we see the people highlighted in the posted video walking down the street? Turn them over to the police, expecting some kind of ‘I’m a good citizen award’? Or beat them up because we suspect they are police/agent provocateurs as the video seems to suggest?
As for the actions of those who conducted property damage at the G20 demonstrations, if we want real debate about these tactics, we first need to stop with this blaming outwards mentality. What I mean by that is this belief that any/all vandalism that occurred during the Summit had to be the work of agent provocateurs. Yes, perhaps it was. But what happens if it wasn’t?
There are activists who just don’t want to accept that some the roughly 250 activists who conducted the property damage over the G20 protests might actually be from our own movement and not the devious work of some outside force? Yes, a movement that is capable of quiet, prayer-based sit ins is also capable of property destruction. We are capable of both. Diversity of Tactics is occurring organically within the movement transcendent of all the screaming matches we have at organizing meetings about the topic.
I know this is a hot topic right now, and I think discussion is always healthy. Screaming at each other from the assumed moral high ground is not. On Saturday June 26, 2010, despite all the rumours that the more radical Get Off the Fence group would hijack the more peaceful Labour / NGO /Peace march at Queen’s Park — which still got attacked by the police — the organizers from each group were able to sit down and work out a solution to overlapping start and finish times to respect each other’s space. That would not have happened if entrenched activists from both sides were too busy denouncing each other.
That was a much better problem solving technique then leaving it up to some vigilante rule of the streets.
Can you imagine an outraged union activist marching into the crowd of Black Bloc participants and unmasking one of them, only to find himself staring into the face of his own son.
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