The headline in the Philadelphia Inquirer told us last week that, on the other side of the country, a brick hit a police officer in Oakland and sent him to the hospital. Civil Rights organizer Jim Bevel predicted headlines like this in the ’60s when arguing about the then-current version of “diversity of tactics.” He said something like: “We want people to talk about our issues, about the suffering of our people from racism and poverty. When you throw the brick, people don’t talk about our issues, or the thousand black people on the streets that day, they talk about the police officer who was hit by the brick.”
The question for all those, whether using black bloc tactics or not, who consider adding to the Occupy movement tactics of either property destruction or violence: Do you want the issues of injustice to be talked about, or your bricks? In my own definition, property destruction is not the same as violence—there can be very significant differences between the two. But in this historical-political situation, the impact of either is similar; they give an easy out for people who don’t really want to talk about injustice.
I don’t, however, recommend Chris Hedges’ recent essay, “The Cancer in Occupy,” as a model for how to respond to the black blocs. Demonizing, calling people names, using the giveaway metaphor of “cancer” (I’ve had cancer) is about as far away from effectively opposing a tendency one disagrees with as it’s possible to get.
We have such good models in the tradition of nonviolence. Dr. King, James Lawson, John Lewis and so many others in the Civil Rights movement who had to respond to those willing to advocate violence showed us how to do it. They were themselves mentored by people like A. J. Muste whose largeness of spirit in dealing with defenders of violence went all the way back to the 1919 Lawrence, MA, textile strike.
Dr. King, for instance, famously had a public dialogue with Malcolm X, and I myself was involved in a radio broadcast debate between Malcolm and Freedom Rider Albert Bigelow. But less well-known to the public were the thousands of hours spent by SNCC and SCLC organizers dialoguing with advocates of violence wherever they found them: bars, pool halls, on the street, in church basements. Bayard Rustin seemed to have unlimited patience in going into the wee hours of the night over whiskey with black comrades who believed the time had come to include violent tactics. Rev. James Orange, a strongly-built staffer for the SCLC, was given the job in the Chicago campaign of winning over the largest and toughest African-American gang, the Blackstone Rangers; Jim was beaten up repeatedly by gang members to test his courage and sincerity before he was finally led to the gang leaders who agreed, in the end, to join the campaign and be nonviolent “peacekeepers.”
The issue of the appropriateness of property destruction and/or violence is, like any other aspect of community organizing, not settled by blanket statements or posturing but by getting in there and dialoguing, over and over again. Advocates of nonviolent action need to learn from the Civil Rights movement and the field of community organizing in this way—there really aren’t any shortcuts.
I personally am as furious as anybody about the oppression that’s dealt out by the 1 percent, and my background as a working class gay person give me plenty of stories I can tell about injustice. But my hope for those now devoting themselves to Occupy is to keep your eyes on the prize. We already have in this country the model provided by heroic African Americans of how to stand up to violence—whether from the police or the KKK—in a way that keeps a city’s or nation’s attention on the real issues.
If, in good conscience, you just can’t stand for what looks to you like ineffective nonviolent struggle, then launch your own campaign with your preferred tactics and see how it works out for you. The public debate between Ward Churchill and me might be useful as you think about strategy. And if anyone else would like to debate me publicly on this subject, let me know.
Great perspective – thanks so much for sharing and doing the work you do.
Bringing up Dr. King is appropriate in an historical context, but would be laughed at by many of the proponents of so-called “violent tactics” at #Occupy #Oakland. These are mostly fired up youth of an instant gratification generation, that do not grasp many of the nuances you can. Anyone met communicating casual critique’s or incorporating historical references is met with divisive derision, and denouncement of the messenger. There is definite cult like feel to their zeal, and there’s immediate rejection of any idea not in lockstep with their worldview, which I find rather narcissistic & naive. I have experience with them actually announcing they do not tolerate communication with ‘dissenters’. A friend of mine recently wrote of their lemming like approach of walking into the jaws of the OPD : ‘So enamored of one’s own bourgeois revolutionary fervor that one authentically believes the best thing for the people would be to plunge them into total fascist shit, thus *necessitating* the glorious dreamt-of revolution.’
couldnt agree with you more. peruse occupy oakland fb site.
Great article. Agree with the civil rights blueprint. Let the police hit us-that will have more impact upon video review compared to destructive tactics on both sides. Thank you for this article.
This is a very complex question which actually stems from views about tactics in a revolution. If even for that matter you want a “revolution”. A tearing down of the structures of capitalism. Neither articles, this or Hedge’s answer this. They are both onesided. Ghandi’s “victory” didn’t really stop the oppression of the poor majority in India. It simply changed the ethnicity of the oppressors. Nor for that matter did the Civil Rights movement in the US. It simply ameliorated ethnic oppression to some degree by establishing a larger accepted “Black Bourgoisey” in the US. Anyone who actually doesn’t see this, against all well-documented evidence, is “part of the problem”.
Mao’s “A revolution is not a tea party” contends against what is basicly a religious belief in moral principals and those moral principals contend against a massive state (or corporate) power which has none.
It works some times when public opinion weighs in and doesn’t overly tax the resources of that power. But it is all still part of the “carrot or the stick” methodology of plutocratic governance.
Revolutions though are won by overwhelming the massive state military power of the oligarchy by whatever means. But it will involve violence.
Does anyone seriously believe the Syrian people can achieve liberation without violence ? But it’s outcome depends also on the support of the citizens of the western powers whose rulers see no big oil payoff as in Libya. This is the power of tactics.
I’m reminded of an incident in one Latin American country in the 60s where a bomb killed a sargeant in the hated repressive police. He had 6 children and public opinion enflamed by the articles in the Junta-controlled wiped out the rebel group who did it’ while other actions exalted in public opinion the courage of the rebels and gained massive popular support. Any actions must be thought through and the ramifications must be closely considered. “Terrorism” is generally self-defeating and should be rejected. It stems from a losing situation, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be utilized at certain instances as an expession of public will and encouragement.
It seems to me that those who have brought violence to bear in the fight against capitalism have typically ended up replacing the bourgeoisie with a brutal state apparatus remarkably similar to the hated capitalist state in its use of oppression and repression. In any case, even the Russian Revolution was successful (so far as it was “successful”) due, in large part, to the widespread use of noncooperation (massive strikes – a classic nonviolent tactic – not to mention military defections are what drove out the Czar, who was not a foe typically characterized as “morally sensitive”).
The Communist Party of India in Kerala had the right idea. The CPI’s successes can largely be put down to the democratic empowerment that arose from their use of nonviolent tactics during and after the Indian Independence struggle. And that while failing to recognize that they were using nonviolent people power at all and deriding Gandhi et al. as “bourgeois traitors.” They didn’t use people power on principle – they used it because when they tried to mount a state-wide armed insurrection in the mid-1940s, the British crushed it within a week. Tactically they realized – though they never would have put it this way – that violence was going to get them nowhere, and for their trouble they won the opportunity to institute sweeping land reform and bring First World levels of human development indicators to a desperately poor agrarian society.
Tom gets it right and Little Muddy muddies the water. To deride non-violent protest as inneffective simply because there are still poor people in India or because African Americans still do not enjoy full economic equality misrepresents the reality of what those movements accomplished. Economic prosperity for the majority of Indians was never going to happen as long as they were a subject, colonial state. Full prosperity for African Americans was never going to happen as long as Jim Crowe laws made them second class citizens. And in contrast, violent revolutions have been far less effective at bringing about real change. As Tom points out, the Russian revolution just replaced the Csar and the Russian nobles with the Communist party. The same thing happened in China. And in fact, they were worse–think of the millions killed by Mao and Stalin by systematic state sponsored oppression. The American Revolution succeeded, but if you use the same standard you did for the Indian Revolution then it didn’t–the same people who ran the colonies ran the new country after the revolution. If you want to break the system apart, not just reform it, and if you are willing to use violence to do it, you better have a clear and persuasive vision of what you are going to replace it with and solid arguments about how it will not merely replicate a new power structure. As the Who sang: “There’s nothing in the street
Looks any different to me
And the slogans are out-phased, by-the-bye
And the parting on the left
Is now parting on the right
…Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again
Don’t get fooled again
No, no!”
“the Russian revolution just replaced the Csar and the Russian nobles with the Communist party. The same thing happened in China. And in fact, they were worse–think of the millions killed by Mao and Stalin by systematic state sponsored oppression.”
Your analysis is misinformed by anti-communist propaganda.
Just to address one fallacious point out of many: How are strikes a “non-violent tactic”?
Its not a question of “do we even want a revolution” but do we want to as John Holloway says “change the world without taking power.” Change the World Without Taking Power; John Holloway
http://republicart.net/disc/aeas/holloway01_en.htm or
Twelve Theses on Changing the World without taking Power; John Holloway; http://libcom.org/library/twelve-theses-on-changing-the-world-without-taking-power
What the patriarchal hierarchy has historically called “revolution” is just the substitution of one set of hierarchical males for another. Its nothing other than a changing of the patriarchal guard. Its time for real transformative change – to change “power over” into “power to do.”
My problem with the so called “black bloc” is what no one in this debate seems to be addressing which is the very real possibility that there are agent provocateurs in the rank and file of this group
First of all, destruction of “property,” aka non-living things, can be violence. For example, if you burn down a family’s home or burn a farmer’s crop. When it’s violence directed against people or other sentient beings, violence is fairly black and white, aka throwing a brick at security agent (even one engaged in violence). But, when violence is directed against non-living things it is much more of a gray area. On one end of the spectrum is violence against things that are necessary for a person, family or community’s survival and well-being. That is clearly violence and historically has been one of the primary means for oppression by the 1% hierarchy and their lackeys. But what about the guns and tanks used in oppression? What about the bulldozer building a logging road into an old growth forest or digging into the earth to build the XL Pipeline?
A commitment to nonviolence is not the same as pacifism. To stand by and do nothing to stop the bulldozer or tank is to be a co-dependent in the violence those objects do. We have an active, positive moral obligation to do what we can to prevent violence, including destroying the means and instruments of violence. We have a duty and a right to defend ourselves, our families and communities from violence. In this regard, destroying “property” is a nonviolent act of empathy and compassion.
But what about smashing a window of a Starbuck’s? I would argue that this kind of random, mindless destruction of “property” is violence. The difference between the bulldozer and the window is that the bulldozer is an active instrument of violence and the window is not. The reason the tactics of the Black Bloc are so controversial is because they do not care to make the vitally important distinction between “property” that is directly used to perpetrate violence and “property that does not.
P.S. One thing I did not like about Chris Hedge’s article was his irresponsibly calling the Black Bloc “anarchists.” They are not “anarchists” but “nihilists.” The Black Bloc is just a reflection of the violence that the 1% State uses against the 99%. For all intents and purposes the Black Bloc is just another agent of State oppression – CH got that part right. The 1% and their massive apparatus for violent oppression, aka military, Homeland Security and the State are one and the same as the Black Bloc – they are nihilists, devoid of morality and values, who can only take and destroy.
P.S. Because of the enormous connotative baggage, I no longer use the word “anarchism” except in a historical context. What is happening in Occupy is “horizontalism” – a social movement that is going far beyond the historical anarchism as a philosophy of transformative social change.
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/chris-hedges-and-the-black-bloc/
From Proyect’s article:
“Like a lot of the problems on the left, ultra-leftism has been around for a very long time.”
So has right-opportunism, comrade Proyect….
Seattle happened in 1999. I was 19 back then. I was 21 when I participated in my first black bloc, in Quebec City 2001. I am 32 now. Even if many of us were young back then, we’d be pushing into our late 20s and early 30s now. This myth of the black bloc actions being only the result of youth is just that, a myth.
As for the supposed lack of discussion about the possibility of provocateurs, it is in fact all that people talk about. Not only are they talking about the possibility that there are some provocateurs, they are going into lurid paranoid fantasies of ALL of us being provocateurs, and even writing revisionist histories in which we were provocateurs even back in Seattle, fully 5 years before the first proven instances of provocateurs in the black blocs occuring.
There is no Black Bloc. There are black blocs. Blacks blocs are what occur when anarchists decide to show up at a demo en masse, banding together, wearing clothes that identify them as such, preserving their anonymity in the face of the very real risk of police repression. The one position that black blocs take is to refuse to recognize illegitimate authority figures (i.e. cops) or accede to their demands. Direct action, violent reprisals against cops, vandalism, etc… is something that some anarchists engage in but is not a necessary part of a black bloc. I have been in many black blocs on the East coast where no property damage or violence occured. I have done black blocs at economic summits, at pro-choice counter-demos against pro-life groups, and more. I have personally never committed a criminal act during a black bloc, and I have never seen a criminal act take place during one either (though I have seen news reports of such in actions I was not a part of).
We are also not against organisation. I was a member of North Eastern Federation of Anarcho-Communists, which is a pro-organizational anarchist group.
The fact is that behind that mask is a teacher, a father, a mother, a poet, a union leader, a street kid, a musician, a computer whiz, a social worker, a medic. You do not know. You presume to know that the same person who throws bricks in self-defense against state violence during the day returns to a life of mindless video games or wasted drunkenness, rather than a job and a family, at the end of the day. You presume wrong.
“…who throws bricks in self-defense against state violence…” I don’t think there is a single change-agent on the planet who wouldn’t be absolutely thrilled to discover that we can successfully defend ourselves against state violence by throwing bricks. So pony up; how does it work?
Wait, seriously?
Officer Friendly approaches for an arrest + a little fun time with his police baton. Our Friendly Neighborhood Anarchist clocks him with a brick, leaving him incapacitated. State violence averted.
I mean, I get you’re going to go into the fact that state violence is a system and that it is more than just these guys at this one demo. This is irrelevant in that the black bloc is a tactic of self-defense against *punctual* acts of violence by the state at a given demo. Confrontation against police by the black bloc occurs once police has already initiated force against the anarchist contingent… or even, in examples of solidarity that happened in Seattle and elsewhere, the black bloc participants might intervene to protect non-anarchists and other nonviolent protestors against police violence (possibly despite the protestors’ own masochistic victim ideation, if they adhere to civil disobedience dogma and were actually going to deliver themselves to these illegitimate authorities neatly prepackaged).
“Officer Friendly approaches for an arrest + a little fun time with his police baton. Our Friendly Neighborhood Anarchist clocks him with a brick, leaving him incapacitated. State violence averted.”
This is why Bakuninists have never successfully overthrown the state.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1873/bakunin/index.htm
And this is where I really need Mr. Lakey to step in with some hands-on training because I’m sure I’m doing it wrong and providing a great example of how not to do it, because I don’t have anything to say to this that doesn’t include how pathetic, idiotic, simplistic, ignorant, and wrong it is for someone who claims to be part of a movement to think you can INCAPACITATE A COP WITH A BRICK and not create serious repercussions for many, many more people who had nothing to do with it.
Thank you! This discussion of the black blocs is like the right’s discussion of socialism, few people have any direct experience with it and most comments are based on what they have read second hand or even worse what they believe, not know. I would really like to read what some of the current black bloc folks have to say. Or at least some people who have actually witnessed black bloc participation in Occupy actions.
P.S. I still think that random destruction of property (as opposed to carefully targeted destruction of instruments of violence) and violent attacks on security agents (even those engaged in violence) is nihilism not anarchism – as if words and labels really make much of a difference. But I do believe in accurately describing what we are talking about.
There was a lot of rioting going on the sixties, and let’s face it, American blacks still aren’t exactly liberated. Non-violent protest might have made sense, to pressure the federal government to end segregation and put moral pressure on whites. But what if you’re against the government and want nothing from it, as anarchists are? Who do contemporary pacifists think they’re putting moral pressure on? Do you think Wall Street, or any capitalist or police officer, is going to feel bad and give up their power? Come on. Let’s come to planet Earth, where abolishing capitalism will mean having to fight. We’re already fighting, we’re under attack and have to defend ourselves, just that middle-class liberal pacifists don’t notice it.
I appreciate your critical take on Hedges’ article, at the very least I respect your willingness to have a dialogue on the subject.
This was intended as a reply to the main article.
Using the word “cancer” loosely is an issue with Hedge’s piece, but he makes a well reasoned argument against using violent tactics.
However, one must look at the context of the violence in some of the Occupy cities to really get a full picture.
In Oakland, for example, the black community has been constantly harassed, abused, beaten, and shot by the police, and the police have acted like an autonomous paramilitary group that is out of control. One can understand the need for direct, destructive and even violent actions in these contexts.
While I don’t promote the strategy, and I speak out against it at our meetings, it helps to try to understand it. Moreover, it does help to discuss the strategies in your GA meetings and come to a consensus about when and if to use violent tactics. I appreciate the experience and knowledge the author bring to this issue.
Peace,
Tex Shelters of Occupy Tucson
for being so historically politically active, oakland sure is a mess. the oakland police department has been dealing with a mess for 50 years. of COURSE they are part of the problem now. but occupy oakland needs to leave OWS and get a new name. whatever moniker gets their point across. occupy police departments?
A good response from Michael Albert.
http://www.zcommunications.org/violence-begets-defeat-or-too-much-pacifism-by-michael-albert
Whether your tactics are violent or non-violent no change will occur unless you implement whatever change you want to see at the personal level. I support Occupy and its spirit but I think we are becoming misguided in our attempts to fight “injustice.”
Surely the economic downturn is bad for our comfort, and the 1% who caused it and reap the profit from it are selfish to say the least. But for the world as a whole, each American recession has led to a huge decrease in CO2 and pollution in general. (Except for this one because manufacturing is mainly done in China now and they are building coal plants at an astonishing rate.)
Do we really need more jobs, more houses, more food, more resources, more things? The answer is no. We have everything we need we just need to change the way we perceive the world, the way we do business and the way we think of personal or intellectual property.
What we need is a game changer, a paradigm shift that makes Corporatism obsolete. Something so drastically different that they can’t keep up. This is already happening, to the music and movie industry but it will soon cross over to manufacturing, development and even biology and medical science.
The internet and open source information and technology is the key and that is why we are seeing a huge push by corporations to acquire and protect “intellectual property” as well as internet censorship.
They won’t succeed, the cat is out of the bag already. People are starting to be able to build their own self contained “internets” to share information. Firefox developed SOPA bypassing software before it was even got close to passing through congress.
We need to go further and reexamine the way we acquire food, energy, information and technology. A new way of life is approaching, all we need do is embrace it and corporations as they exist today will die out because they won’t be able to sustain themselves.
fingers crossed.