#OccupyOakland and the Power of the Black Bloc

     #OccupyOakland and the Power of the Black Bloc

Posted: 06 Nov 2011 09:49 PM PST

Corrente has a post up by Affinis on a potentially important, and troubling development at OccupyOakland, namely, the fact that the movement has a relatively small group within it that believes in the use of violence to achieve its ends. It numbers are roughly 200 members out of an estimated 7,000 to 40,000 that have participated in demonstrations. However, they have disproportionate influence on the decisions made at the General Assembly, since many of the Occupy participants are transient (as in participate in demonstrations only or only occasionally show up for GA) while the black bloc is a much bigger proportion of the group that stays overnight on a consistent basis.

Affinis give some insight into why this is view is being tolerated:

From postings by OO participants at various sites/forums, several lines of thought seem to be contributing to tolerance of black bloc. I see a lot of posts arguing that destruction of property is not violence – and this position seems common among certain anarchists, even if they’re not actively in agreement with use of black bloc tactics currently. Some are arguing that since this movement is nascent, now is not the time for violence since it would alienate the mainstream – but that they would support its use once events have advanced sufficiently. Others more fundamentally disagree with the use of violence/vandalism, but are not willing to oppose/condemn black bloc since that would be siding with the “enemy” over other protesters. I also see a lot of condemnation of those who intervened to stop black bloc vandalism on Wednesday (e.g. at Whole Foods) – they’re being referred to as “peace police”, and there seems to be particularly strong anger against those who tried to physically restrain or physically block the black bloc individuals (even some commenters who appear relatively unsupportive of black bloc are condemning “peace police” actions as coercive and as failing to respect “diversity of tactics”).

Some of the proposals passed at previous OO GA meetings seem to have opened the door to the events of early Thursday morning. See here for a list of decisions passed as of October 31. Number 4 on the list is “diversity of tactics”.

For example, during marches: when confronted by police, some people may want to attempt to have calm conversations with them, urging them to be non-violent. some people may want to sit down in front of lines of police. some people may want to express their anger by yelling at the police. some people may want to attempt to remove police barriers. some people may want to disrupt traffic or banks. some people may prefer to remain on the sidewalk. We should be tolerant of each other’s approaches and respect different forms of protest, while being aware of our privilege or lack of it, especially when engaging with the police.

So the coded idea is that if you are against destruction of property, you are aligning with those of privilege.

This argument simply show a stunning ignorance of the lives of the 1%. Folks. the odds you can get at them via street level actions are pretty much nada, unless, like the driver of the hapless Archduke of Ferdinand, one happens to take a wrong turn. The people you are hurting are petit bourgious to maybe upper middle class. And when you hurt them, you are just as likely to hurt their workers, who if they are paid at typical wage rates, are much more peers than part of the problem. And what about the risk of loss of life, of, say, the smashing of a window cutting a big artery of a bystander? Stuff like this happens. It suggests that the this crowd isn’t just against the top 1%, the professed target of the movement, but that they are against the interests of the broad middle class, when in fact many see the pursuit of a just society, which includes reorienting the economy to serve a broad population rather than the needs of the few, as the overarching goal.

Affinis seems to agree:

It appears that the vast majority of people partipitating in Occupy Oakland events comdemn the black block actions. Tens of thousand participated in the demonstrations ….

But there appears to actually be a serious split among the core occupiers and in the general assembly regarding black bloc and use of violence/vandalism. I suppose this is not necessarily surprising. It makes sense that people who are able/willing to indefinately camp out under difficult conditions and constant threat of police raid, and those who are able/willing to consistently attend long GA meetings, may have different demographics and more radicalized beliefs than people who are more sporadically involved. I’ve seen this at prior occupations I’ve been involved in…

But we have a governance issue. Just as Washington is run by a political class, we may have a political class emerging at the Oakland GA that is not representing the interests of the broader movement. Yet thy are sufficiently influential as to prevent the Occupy Oakland GA from renouncing violence/vandalism as a tactic (it actually distanced itself from a media committee statement taking an anti-violence position).

More troubling, Affinis describes how they were successful in effectively recruiting other demonstrators to participate in an attack on Whole Foods, which was erroneously depicted as directing employees not to participate in the march after Iraq war veteran Scott Olsen was critically injured. Note how this works: a few violent people, operating in isolation, are much easier to identify and be subdued. If they are in the front or midst of a large crowd, which by virtue of its size may not even know what they are doing, it becomes much harder for anyone other than the other demonstrators to stop them. That did happen at Whole Foods: some of the marchers did try to restrain the vandals, but the store was still damaged. And of course, the instigators hope to get others to join in their attacks.

This is obviously far more pernicious that outside infiltrators, who are allegedly a common feature of anti-globalism demonstrations, and are paid to pretend to be members of the movement and engage in destruction in order to discredit it. The reason the Occupations have captured the public imagination is in no small measure due to using non-violent strategies that have again and again proven to be effective, with Tahir Square and the indignacios in Spain the models for many of the Occupy practices. But Affinis tells us how one set of Occupy precepts, of inclusiveness, is being used to undermine what many would see as higher order principles.

The Rome March Of Indignant Youth, Exasperated And Furious: Two Anomalies

The Rome March Of Indignant Youth,
Exasperated And Furious: Two Anomalies

By Gaither Stewart

18 October, 2011
Greanvillepost.com

The “Black Blocs” represent a challenge to the system and the larger Occupy movement itself. And although the corporate media are already painting the violence as “reprehensible” and “unacceptable”, and many Occupy groups committed to nonviolent protest seek to distance themselves from those who choose to express their pent-up rage in more aggressive ways, “the hooded unknowns” clad in black may be simply ahead of their time.

Rome demonstrators burn a police van on October 15. Their tactics present a dilemma for the nonviolent movement that may resonate with greater force as more protesters around the world increasingly clash with a system determined to maintain business as usual while practicing selective repression and cosmetic reforms.

(Rome) Last October 15, up to 200,000 Italians marched in Rome in the name of change, under the vague aegis of the “Movement”. Young and not so young from all corners of the country marched in the direction of the huge Piazza San Giovanni where Italians traditionally hold political manifestations. October 15 was a landmark of the new Resistance spreading in Italy, on the one hand in imitation of Occupy Wall Street, on the other hand a kind of summing up of the air of not completely non-violent protest infecting the country.

Contrary to elsewhere, the state TV network, RAI 3, covered the entire half day of the events from shortly after noon until evening so that the entire nation could follow the demonstration from its beginning to its bloody end, which was the second anomaly: the transformation of a non-violent demonstration into extremely violent guerrilla warfare so that few of the marchers ever reached Piazza San Giovanni. Though there were some 120 casualties, government spokesmen seemed pleased—or disappointed—to announce that there were no deaths. To view the example of urban warfare as it happened was like viewing an insurrection.

Following the script of similar manifestations throughout the world on October 15, Rome’s planned non-violent manifestation was infiltrated by from 500-1500 violent, self-proclaimed revolutionaries who were mixed among the huge formations of singing and chanting non-violent marchers. In a well-planned and coordinated action the organized violent infiltrators overcame both police and the peaceful demonstrators alike and stormed and devastated the city center, spreading fire and destruction.

Agents provocateurs? Berlusconi’s men? Black Block? Or anarchists from the Social Centers in most Italian cities? Perhaps the identity of the masked and hooded infiltrators wearing gas masks comprises something of all. The insurrectionists are also called i Neri, the Blacks, because of their dark clothes. For the government, the October 15 violence is a revival of the air of the 1970s and 80s and the infiltrators incarnate the spirit of the terroristic Red Brigades, last century Europe’s most successful terrorist organization.

In any case, as of today the government is benefiting from the violence. Police raids and house searches are underway in cities from north to south, from Turin, Milan, Padua and Bologna to Florence, Rome, Naples and Palermo. Numerous arrests have been made, some persons facing up to 15 years prison, while loud voices demanding more stringent laws are arriving in perfect timing. The Movement fears that for the government violent and non-violent protest are considered one and the same and that a general crackdown on all organized protest is likely.

In an interview with a Rome newspaper, one of the Blacks claimed that their action had been planned for a year, their weapons—clubs and cudgels and powerful paper bombs—were hidden in the city and that some of them were trained in urban warfare by “companions” in Greece. He revealed that they were divided into two major phalanxes of 500 men each, plus a group of 300 who remained with the Movement marchers for purposes of control. The phalanxes were broken down into small battle groups of 12-15 men. “Police,” he said, “are not prepared to fight our rapid style of urban warfare.” The results bear out his claims; the Blacks attacked and burned police armoured vans and destroyed everything in their path. “This is war,” the Black from south Italy told the two journalists. “They declared the war but it is not over yet.”

Right or wrong, the Rome events of October 15 demonstrate for the world to see the other side of the coin of the meaning of resistance of which everyone should be aware. The real reality is that in Italy, deeply entrenched power is no more likely to agree to the non-violent Movement’s demands for real change—for tight control over financial institutions, for equality in the fiscal structure, for the maintenance of social programs, for employment-creating economic planning—than is Italy’s neo-fascist criminal Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi likely to resign and make way for change on a government level.

The Blacks are most likely ahead of the times; yet, in Italy, they have moved the hands of the clock ahead. They represent a growing part of society that does not believe that non-violent sit-ins will suffice to bring about the systemic change on everyone’s lips.

An anonymous pre-October 15 internet post (subsequently removed) written apparently by a Black leader reads like a call to arms and a revolutionary manifesto. Police and the National Anti-terrorism Organization read it as a Decalogue of terrorist intents. Whether authentic or a false flag plant, the manifesto warns: “Police would attack us even in the absence of our conflictual intents. All of us, revolutionaries of all tendencies, who will be present in Rome because of our anger and because of our awareness of the abyss into which they want to hurl us, definitively, all of us must do combat. We cannot stop. We must give our all in order to capture and to hold the piazza in Rome. Workers, students, marginalized people, combat!”

GAITHER STEWART serves as The Greanville Post‘s European Correspondent. His latest novel is Time of Exile, third part of the Europe Trilogy, soon to be published by Punto Press.