ANTI-WTO: Don't throw the radicals overboard
Sharma
sharma at aa.net
Sat Dec 4 14:36:13 PST 1999
There are a number of different issues here and I do not have time right
now to address them. It think it is very important that these issues not
be collapsed into supporting violence vs supporting non-violence. At the
moment I most strongly request that people think about what they are doing
before they decide to help the police and probably FBI in identifying
people who smashed windows.
Seattle has a long and honorable tradition of NOT cooperating with the
authorities in investigations into political property damage. Please do
not be hasty in changing that. I look forward to discussing these issues
further in the next day or two.
An old rad,
-sharma
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 4 Dec 1999 09:06:57 -0800
From: Kurt Cockrum <kurt at grogatch.seaslug.org>
To: scn at scn.org
Subject: FWD: ANTI-WTO: Don't throw the radicals overboard
The "scapegoats" defend themselves...
This viewpoint gets squeezed out of the media so people never get to
discuss it. Its appearance here is an small attempt to counter that.
Frankly I thought they did a magnificent job, far better than I thought
them capable of. We may yet change the course of the juggernaut.
--kurt
<FWD>
Date: Sat, 4 Dec 1999 01:27:33 -0500
Subject: (en) Don't throw the radicals overboard
From: "Andrea del Moral" <libreplanet at hotmail.com>
To: danvswto at listbot.com, ise at sover.net, ban at tao.ca, no2wto at listbot.com
Sender: worker-a-infos-en at lists.tao.ca
Reply-To: a-infos-d at lists.tao.ca
________________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
http://www.ainfos.ca/
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No-WTO
WTO Protest Organizers:
Don’t Throw the Radicals Overboard
Dec. 2, 1999
"The People, United, Will Never Be Defeated," was one of the most
commonly heard chants in the days of marches protesting the WTO summit in
Seattle. However, one of the most striking elements of the WTO protests
was the level of conflict between adherents of a "nonviolent" protest
method, and those who preferred to express more concretely their feelings
towards global capitalism. A tide of reaction has been swelling against
the latter, with great arrogance on the part of the former. As a group of
activist intellectuals, we feel the need to state our support for the
group the media has been calling, only somewhat inaccurately, "the
Anarchists from Eugene."
We - the broad Left, anti-corporate, pro-livable world community -
controlled the streets of downtown Seattle from 7 am on Tuesday to roughly
7 pm. After that period - with Mayor Schell and Governor Locke’s
declarations of martial law and the violent offensive by local, county,
state police and the National Guard - the streets were a war zone, but
during that period, they were a liberated area.
Inside that liberated area a spectrum of protest and resistance
activities took place, many of which warmed our hearts. Violence against
property, as we’ll call the attacks against corporate chain stores by
activists, was one of the conscious strategies that was employed. These
activities began on the afternoon of Monday, Nov. 29th, with the smashing
of a window at McDonald’s. The next day, Tuesday, Nov. 30th, they started
again shortly after 10 am, at the corner of 6th Ave. and Pike St., when
police began shooting tear gas cannisters and rubber bullets into the
crowd. Throughout the day activists, protecting their identities with
hoods and kerchiefs, formed "black blocks" to move en masse to attack
unoccupied chain stores such as the Gap, Nike, Levi, Disney, and Bank of
America. This is a key point that the media and President Clinton, among
others, are trying to obscure: the crowd did not attack "mom and pop
stores," but the physical manifestations of "McDomination".
Adherents to "non-violent" protest methods preach against
targeting corporate property. We feel that this is an uncritical
acceptance of the dominant value system of American consumer society:
private property has a higher value than life. At this time, we feel that
we, as activists, need to debate these issues further among ourselves. The
problem we are addressing immediately is that these "non-violent"
activists used their numerical advantage to isolate and dominate
practitioners of alternate protest philosophies: most visibly, the black
block anarchists.
As a spectrum of protest activities manifested themselves, scenes
we witnessed included "non-violent" activists linking arms to protect the
corporate theme store Nike Town from the aggressive acts of a black block.
Riot police soon replaced the "peace advocates" as if to say, "We’ll take
over now. You’re only volunteering to protect property, we do it for a
living." Elsewhere throughout the day "non-violent" activists de-masked,
and on at least one occasion beat, an individual who was acting against
property.
Many elements of the broad Left, anti-corporate, pro-livable world
community have been alarmingly willing to distance themselves from the
direct, militant forms of protest. The World Trade Observer, a daily
tabloid published by a network of mainstream environmental and fair trade
organizations, which features the writing of prominent figures such as
Ralph Nader and Norman Solomon, offers one example. In describing the
previous day’s festivities in their Wednesday, December 1st issue, they
identified as a "troubling theme" the practice of "the police singling out
peaceful demonstrators for gassing and beating... while ignoring
black-clad hooligans breaking windows and spraying paint." We witnessed
other "non-violent" protesters criticize the police, not for waging
chemical warfare to cleanse the streets of protesters, but for failing to
enter into the crowd and extract the practitioners of militant protest.
The implication of these statements is that the crowd would have handed
over some of its members to the police, if the police had only asked. We
strongly urge progressive activists to reconsider this stance.
There will undoubtedly be repercussions from the fact that we took
control of a major city for twelve hours, as the leading administrative
body of global capitalism met to brainstorm for the next millennium. It is
unfair, and irresponsible, to offer "the Anarchists from Eugene" to the
state as scapegoats. Without the support of the rest of the WTO
protesters, the direct action practitioners are at great risk. Grand
juries have become common in the militant animal rights and environmental
movements: we would not think it a surprising development for there to be
an inquisition exploring "conspiracy to riot" charges for the day of
well-directed rage in Seattle. Gas-masks have been declared illegal in
Seattle under Mayor Schell’s martial law, and the donning of hoods is
being explored by prosecutors in Eugene as a possible excuse for sentence
enhancement. The price of protecting oneself and one’s identity from
police violence is rising. As people who are interested in counteracting
the ill effects of globalization and ensuring a livable new millenium, we
need to consciously confront the criminalization of radical political
philosophies.
We feel that those who belittle and distance themselves from the
actions of "the Anarchists from Eugene" have either ignored or simply did
not realize the level of contributions anarchists - black-clad and
otherwise - made towards bringing the N30 Festival of Resistance into
reality. These include the innovative and joyful protest methods of the
Direct Action Network, a sustained consciousness-raising effort from Left
Bank Books, alternative social structures offered by Food Not Bombs and
Homes Not Jails, the Anarchist hotline, housing networks, and so on. It
also should not go unsaid that developing a community able to produced
several hundred predominantly white youths with middle-class backgrounds
to take militant action against their real enemy is no small feat of
organization. It has taken years of sowing and tending to seeds of
awareness and resistance, and we, at least, appreciate that effort.
If the Left activist community is to be united and strong, more
communication and internal discussion around strategical issues is
necessary. Our contact information is listed below. All of us have
experience with social movements, and many of us have mapped the
repressive tactics used against them. We encourage media to get in touch
with us as well.
Daniel Burton-Rose, (206) 324-8165, ex. 1. Co-editor, The Celling of
America: An Inside Look at the U.S. Prison Industry (Common Courage Press,
1998), editor, win: a newsletter on activism at the extremes.
Ward Churchill, (303) 492-5066 (voice mail). Author, Pacifism as
Pathology: Reflections on the Role of Armed Struggle in North America
(Arbeiter Ring: 1998).
Robin Hahnel, (202) 885-2712, rhahnel at american.edu. Author, Panic Rules:
Everything You Need to Know About the Global Economy (South End Press,
1999); Professor, American University.
Kent Jewell, (206) 324-8165, ex. 3. Former co-owner, Left Bank Books
Collective.
George Katsiaficas, (617) 989-4384. Author: The Subversion of Politics:
European Autonomous Social Movements and the Decolonization of Everyday
Life (Humanities Press, 1997) and The Global Imagination of the New Left
(South End Press, 1987); editor, with Kathleen Cleaver, Liberation,
Imagination, and the Black Panther Party (Routledge, forthcoming); editor,
New Political Science.
Christian Parenti, (415) 626-4034, seapea at juno.com. Lockdown America:
Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis (Verso, 1999); instructor, New
College.
Robert Perkinson, (203) 772-1600, robert.perkinson at yale.edu. Instructor,
Yale University.
Signatures are on file with win, a "movement consultancy" group
currently
based in Seattle.
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</FWD>
--kurt
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