Another yahoo who thinks he's a revolutionary subverts a beautiful protest
There was a pause, and an eerie silence, just before he did it. A green scarf masking his face, the man held a large piece of scaffolding above his head and, surrounded by photographers, eyeballed the unprotected window of the Royal Bank of Scotland's branch on Threadneedle Street.
In that split second, one voice amid thousands in the crowd broke the silence. "Don't do it," she screamed. He did.
A bespectacled man in a beige jacket then began remonstrating with black-clad and hooded protesters. "Gandhi taught us not to use violence," said John Rowley, from the Gandhi Foundation. "This isn't violence," retorted another voice in the crowd. "We paid for this building."
I've said it before and I'm saying it again. Violence from us has no place at a demonstration like this. 35,000 marched on Saturday expressing the anger and frustration of millions at the obscene bail outs of Wall Street and the devastating greed of the casino economy. Media coverage in Britain at least was amazing, even listing all the concerns of the protests.
This week the youth hit the streets in all kinds of non-violent direct action, also positive, also attracting lots of people to the cause. Then comes the black bloc, that anonymous band of people who think they can spark a revolution by breaking a few windows and things turn nasty. The police almost always over react and then not only does everyone else on the protest suffer the police violence but sympathetic people watching get turned off and think they have no place in this movement even though they agree with all our goals. So I'll say it loud and clear. Violence has no place in our movements. If you disagree, write a comment.
Breaking a window is violence?
Hitting someone with a club is violence. Funding projects that destroy local economies and ecosystems is violence. Displacing millions of people in order to ravage the countryside to extract resources and build useless consumer products is violence. Denying refugees right of return and bombing their villages when they defy the injustice is violence. Creating social structures that systematically stifle free expression and the ability to peacefully promote legitimate alternative points of view is violence. Maintaining an economic order in which the only way to hold off collapse is perpetual growth at the expense of a finite resource base, which cannibalizes itself in order to produce growth that is mostly based on the creation of new debt to finance paying off the old debt, while blaming people who bought into the system because they believed what it promised them for its failure is violence.
Breaking a window is a symbol of the shattered illusions of people who are sick and tired, and don't want to take it anymore. Breaking a window is a message to the monsters whose livelihood depends on murder, displacement, and ecocide that the game is up and the ones who got us into this mess have forfeited their moral authority to be the ones who define a "new world order". Breaking a window is liberation, a sign of life, not violence that destroys it.
Whether or not it's tactically a good idea in circumstances such as the G-20 demonstrations is another matter entirely.
St Paul's Principle
Maybe the St. Paul principals should have been agreed upon in order that we don't fall into classic old traps...
http://www.nornc.org/st-paul-principles/
The principles are:... Read More
1. Our solidarity will be based on respect for a diversity of tactics and the plans of other groups.
2. The actions and tactics used will be organized to maintain a separation of time or space.
3. Any debates or criticisms will stay internal to the movement, avoiding any public or media denunciations of fellow activists and events.
4. We oppose any state repression of dissent, including surveillance, infiltration, disruption and violence. We agree not to assist law enforcement actions against activists and others.
St Paul's Principle
If I had been in Britain, I would have denounced the police, as I did during the protests in Quebec City and during the anti=poverty march at Queen's park a number of years ago but here we are free to debate what we think and not just defend the movement since our comments have no impact there.
I think this is an important debate not to get diverted by possibilities of agent provocateurs. If you watch the video you will see that this is unlikely to be an agent provocateur because he has so centred himself out for attention.
This is not the 60's. We have learned alot since then and I have learned that violence, even just violence against property, brings on tremendous state violence and allows them to justify it and scares people away from our movement.
The state has a virtual monopoly on violence
I have seen police inciting a riot and using heavy handed force than the other way around.
Maybe it was a provocateur
Remember that a lot of the perpetrators of violence aren't actually legitimate protestors .. they're often people just looking for an event to attach themselves to so they can fight and loot.
And sometimes they're undercover cops (remember Montebello? And Red Hill here in Hamilton .. we had a cop who went from jail to basic training in two weeks .. .. one week he's getting arrested for inciting violence .. a week later he's on the front page of the paper wearing a policeman's uniform ..)
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