Re: [Marxism] black bloc

[John Reimann via Marxism]

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I was intimately involved in Occupy Oakland from the first planning meeting
to the end. I spent every day, most of the day and into the evening there
while it existed. I knew and worked closely with the (non)leaders, who
composed a small group of anarchists, a group that was part of what came to
be known as the black bloc. I say this to say that I saw the functioning
from the inside, from start to finish.

In the first few weeks, these (non)leaders played a largely positive role;
they kept the influence of the liberals, including the liberal political
establishment and their left supporters out. Because I was just about the
only person closely active with them who supported the opposition to the
liberal establishment, I worked closely with them and had a lot of
credibility with them. For example, it happened that the union leadership
had planned a march to Oscar Grant Plaza scheduled for about a week into
the occupation. They were forced to meet with us to see if we would give
them permission to hold the rally there. We gave them permission, based on
our having three speakers. This little anarchist group assigned me to be
the opening/welcoming speaker. Here

is a video of the speech I gave. As you can imagine, the union leadership
was not exactly thrilled with it.

The problem with the role of this (non)leadership was that they were in
principle opposed to developing any clear and explicit program - a clear
statement on what we were fighting for. Connected with this, they opposed
having a clear, leadership that would be democratically elected based on
what they stood for. But all movements have a leadership, one that will be
open and whose program and strategy is clearly understood, or one that
operates behind the scenes. In fact, I was at one meeting of this small
group in which I suggested that we organize an election for just such a
leadership. They all opposed it, but one of them - one of the more
thoughtful ones - did say, "well, we have to admit that pretty much
whatever we decide on is what will happen."

At first, the union leadership pretty much just ignored occupy Oakland,
figuring it would go away without affecting their members. But around the
time of the general strike, it started to look like it might have an
affect; the radicalism might infect their members. So a layer of the
leadership started to get involved. Like the missionaries who preceded the
occupying armies of the colonial powers, the socialist left also started to
get involved -- on behalf of the union leadership.

A key, telling moment came when it was agreed to hold an occupy/union joint
march and rally. Each side was to have three speakers. At the "Labor
Outreach Committee" (really the Bureaucracy Inreach Committee) of Occupy
Oakland, it was decided to have only speakers who would not challenge the
union leadership. Some of the main ones from that small anarchist group
joined with the union bureaucracy socialist missionaries to push the
decision through. Sensing an opening to real power, they capitulated to the
liberal establishment in the form of the union leadership.

At subsequent events they did the same thing.

In sum: Sure, the vandalism and property damage did not help, but no way at
all was this the main reason for the demise of Occupy Oakland. The main
thing is that no movement can continue on a steady diet of mobilization and
confrontation, as necessary as those elements are for any movement. At some
point, things will die down, and when it does some sort of organization
with a clear program and strategy and perspectives has to be left behind.
The fact that that did not happen, more than anything else, was the failure
of the black bloc and their type.

John Reimann

-- 
"No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them."
Asata Shakur
Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com and //
www.facebook.com/WorkersIntlNetwork?ref=stream
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Re: [Marxism] Black Bloc killed Occupy?

[Sophia Burns via Marxism]

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I agree that consensus is a terrible decision-making method. You're absolutely 
right that it's every bit as anti-democratic as the democratic centralism of 
self-anointed vanguards. (And at least in my personal experience in such a 
group, majority rule didn't apply among the membership, either, except on 
paper.) And one fundamental line I push in the projects I'm part of building is 
that bloc voting by ideological groups is entryism, not democracy, and that 
entryists should be booted from anything that aspires towards participatory 
democracy.

That said, the protesters at Berkely weren't a single organized group. How, 
exactly, could a majority vote have been taken? I don't think any of us has the 
empirical basis to say what a majority of them did or didn't support. Also, I'd 
argue there's a fundamental difference between building a working-class 
institution like a union or neighborhood council and mobilizing for a specific 
protest. The former is much more important, but both are necessary, and 
ultimately they serve to reinforce and strengthen each other if they're being 
done well. But in a protest setting, "diversity of tactics" shouldn't be 
treated as a program to support or oppose but as an inevitable reality on the 
ground. A protest is made of everyone who shows up that day, and they will 
necessarily have different agendas and methods, from Black Bloc stuff to NVCD 
to collaborating with police to passing out campaign literature for Democratic 
candidates to doing the stuff that Leninist groups do during a march. If the B
 lack Bloc has no right to impose its presence without somehow getting a 
majority vote beforehand, why do any of those other formations have the right 
to do so?

In the end, the Berkeley protests did succeed - they had a defined goal (stop 
Milo from speaking) and a defined rationale (he would have named undocumented 
students, and at previous campus talks he'd singled out other students for 
harassment, including a trans woman who dropped out of school as a result of 
the harassment incited by Milo's speech). The capitalist media and the 
individuals it made the choice to interview may have disapproved of the methods 
used by the Black Bloc, but those methods worked, and the fact of that success 
is something I've yet to see an anti-Black Bloc argument properly square with.

Finally, there's the repeated assumption that the Black Bloc (or anarchists 
generally, or "extremists" generally - from which liberals and conservatives do 
not exclude us, btw, even though we're not "horizontalists") is somehow 
separate from the rest of the activist community, or the general population of 
protesters, or (in the Berkeley case) the student body. But that's an absurd 
claim on the face of it - are we supposed to believe that there are no 
anarchists at UC Berkeley, or that the non-Black Bloc protesters didn't contain 
a large share of non-students? It's the "outside agitators" canard with 
slightly different language.



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---- Original Message 
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Black Bloc killed Occupy?
Local Time: February 7, 2017 3:35 PM
UTC Time: February 7, 2017 11:35 PM
From: marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu
To: Sophia Burns <sophia.bu...@protonmail.com>

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On 2/7/17 6:22 PM, Sophia Burns via Marxism wrote:
> The Black Bloc is not our enemy. Whether a given example makes large
> mistakes or doesn't, they're on our side and one-sidedly dismissing
> the positive examples just plays into the other side's hands.


The question of the effectiveness of the tactic is not the only
consideration. There is an equally urgent decision that the left has to
make, namely whether we can build a mass revolutionary movement when a
minority fraction is so indifferent to the wishes of the majority. As I
pointed out in my critique of David Graeber today, he dismissed the need
for a majority vote when the left is building a movement.

He said that he preferred "consensus", a more "horizontalist" approach.
I think this is a fundamental challenge to the socialist movement's
practice going back to Karl Marx. What gave the black bloc the right to
impose its tactics on 10 times the number of protesters at Berkeley?
What i

Re: [Marxism] Black Bloc killed Occupy?

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 2/7/17 6:22 PM, Sophia Burns via Marxism wrote:

The Black Bloc is not our enemy. Whether a given example makes large
mistakes or doesn't, they're on our side and one-sidedly dismissing
the positive examples just plays into the other side's hands.



The question of the effectiveness of the tactic is not the only 
consideration. There is an equally urgent decision that the left has to 
make, namely whether we can build a mass revolutionary movement when a 
minority fraction is so indifferent to the wishes of the majority. As I 
pointed out in my critique of David Graeber today, he dismissed the need 
for a majority vote when the left is building a movement.


He said that he preferred "consensus", a more "horizontalist" approach. 
I think this is a fundamental challenge to the socialist movement's 
practice going back to Karl Marx. What gave the black bloc the right to 
impose its tactics on 10 times the number of protesters at Berkeley? 
What if they didn't want to see windows broken and rockets fired into 
the lobby?


I have spent 20 years attacking the "vanguardist" methodology of groups 
that impose their will through a democratic centralism where the 
democratic part only applies within their ranks. Once they adopt a line, 
that's where the centralism comes in. In the 11 years I was in the 
Trotskyist movement, nobody ever questioned whether it was democratic 
for our members to come to a meeting and vote for a proposal solely on 
the basis of what our floor leaders signaled. I never would support that 
kind of "hierarchical" intervention from a Leninist group today and I 
certainly wouldn't support the kind of unilateral decision-making of 
people wearing bandannas over their face.

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Re: [Marxism] Black Bloc killed Occupy?

[Sophia Burns via Marxism]

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Speaking anecdotally, it's just not true that Black Blocs enjoy zero political 
support. At least within the activist community/activist periphery in Seattle, 
I'd say most people range from indifferent or mildly critical to strongly 
positive - at at confrontational protests, like those on J20, especially when 
neonazis are likely to be present, I've heard next to no opposition to their 
presence. Like, the sense is that given the other side's willingness to use 
violence, we need ppl on our side who will keep the rest of us comparatively 
safe - and people get that the Black Bloc is that.

Now, it's certainly true that Occupiers who thought it was mostly important to 
attract "mainstream supporters" (meaning middle-class liberals and the 
Democratic Party) hated when the Black Bloc was involved. They also hated when 
non-Black Bloc anarchists showed up, and when Marxists and socialists showed 
up. This piece treats their perspective as the "authentic" voice of Occupy, but 
that's an ideological choice by a capitalist newspaper that wants to discredit 
the Left. And I second the claim that it wasn't anarchists in black who killed 
Occupy, but rather the FBI-coordinated actions by local police departments that 
physically dismantled the occupations, forcibly dispersed the Occupiers, and 
destroyed many of their belongings while inflicting bodily violence on them. 
And I'm sorry, but it's just not true that the Black Bloc somehow brought that 
on everyone's head. What brought that down was the fact that people were 
occupying public squares for weeks on end and protesting against the
  neoliberal order. The capitalist state tends not to appreciate that.

Black Bloc tactics are often misused and sometimes counterproductive (just like 
literally every other tactic available). But most of the arguments treating all 
Black Blocs as somehow monolithic, and acting as if there are never any 
circumstances where they could possibly be useful, are arguments of convenience 
from people (conservative or NGO-liberal Dems) who will object to any tactic 
the Left uses because they object to the Left's goals. Not only is a 
categorical dismissal of Black Blocs not reflective of the reality on the 
ground, but it's literally just repeating an anti-socialist instrumental 
argument.

The Black Bloc is not our enemy. Whether a given example makes large mistakes 
or doesn't, they're on our side and one-sidedly dismissing the positive 
examples just plays into the other side's hands.

- Sophia



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 Original Message 
Subject: [Marxism] Black Bloc killed Occupy?
Local Time: February 7, 2017 6:19 AM
UTC Time: February 7, 2017 2:19 PM
From: marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu
To: Sophia Burns 

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The SF Chronicle article (SF Chronicle, Feb. 5 2017
Anarchists who helped kill Occupy worry anti-Trump activists
By Kevin Fagan and Michael Bodley)
is essentially a right wing hit piece masquerading as an objective
journalistic feature. Black Bloc did not kill Occupy. The police state
did. While there are certainly issues with the Black Bloc, the tendency
to dismiss them as spoiled bourgeois brats who have no political support is
the liberal left's version of the right wing's redbaiting of more
mainstream protests. Those who do so obviously have little or no actual
knowledge of who makes up most of the Black bloc around the nation.
The bulk of them are not provocateurs or informants. Indeed, many of them
have years of protest activity under their belts that began when they were
teens or young adults. Are their politics extreme? Yes, but mostly
because they believe that other political approaches are too
accommodating. They have a point.

Raising awareness is one thing. Overthrowing capitalism is another.
it's time we organize for the latter. The Black Bloc believes their
tactics are the right ones.If you don't like their actions, get out and
organize (like you keep telling them to do) mass protests with a radical
program that can actually do something besides make us feel good. Don't do
the bossman's work and spread the idea that some of us protesters are good
and some are bad. If you disagree with the Black Bloc, spend your energy
organizing something more effective.
ron j

Re: [Marxism] Black bloc

[jim davi via Marxism]

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 A positive view of the Bloc:
https://psmag.com/antifascists-have-become-the-most-reasonable-people-in-america-92525aceabd5#.kejwjba0q
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Re: [Marxism] Black bloc

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

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We had these middle-aged libertarian pseudo-anarchists at the big Occupy
march here who kept raising their own chants that parts of the march took
up because the entire operation was such a clusterfuck of disorganization.
No marshals. No nothing.  As coherent as a bowl of flakes with sour milk.

Frankly, I blame the experienced people for not passing on these basic
organizational skills essential to building a political movement.  They
were always giddy that anybody was in the streets at all.  So much so that
any sense of planning never entered into their thinking.

We should also point out the obvious fact that not all anarchists are black
bloc.  In fact, i doubt that all people claiming in social media to be
black bloc are . . . there are craploads of these people on Fb talking
about taking armed struggle into the streets.  But this is one of the
problems with making a religion of disorganization.

ML
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Re: [Marxism] Black bloc

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 2/7/17 2:13 PM, Jeffrey Masko wrote:

Seems the Whitefish protest was able to deal with having both tactics
work together.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/01/alt-right-whitefish-montana-antifascist-richard-spencer-protest/


This article is indispensable but I am not sure what "work together" 
means. Was there window-breaking in Whitefish? I haven't heard about 
that. I can say that some anarchists were talked out of bringing 
firearms to the town--thank god.

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Re: [Marxism] Black bloc

[Jeffrey Masko via Marxism]

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Being in SF, attending protests, and having some contact with anarchists
and class action communists, I can say with certainty that a substantial
percentage of them are people of color, radial queers, working and poverty
class men and women, and not imported from Portland or anywhere else, but
Californian. Whatever it is, it is not exclusively young white middle class
hipsters from the suburbs, but a wide range of activists.

The protests *are* often bifurcated and I've seen those who support
peaceful protests often willing to work with police directly or indirectly
by pointing out those who vandalize; I've seen it multiple times and been
in meetings where this was discussed. The black bloc doesn't do itself any
good by ignoring what the peaceful protesters are asking (to not rampage)
and going ahead with their "propaganda of the deed" actions. Seems the
Whitefish protest was able to deal with having both tactics work together.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/01/alt-right-whitefish-montana-antifascist-richard-spencer-protest/
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Re: [Marxism] Black bloc

[from_alamut--- via Marxism]

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black bloc is a tactic not an organization. There have been white overall 
blocs, clown blocs, radical cheerleading blocs, etc.
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-- Original message--From: Mark Lause via Marxism Date: Tue, Feb 7, 
2017 8:38 AMTo: jim davi;Cc: Subject:Re: [Marxism] Black bloc
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depends on the area.  Black bloc did not organize and lead Occupy inthe 
hundreds (???) of places where it popped up across the 
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Re: [Marxism] Black bloc

[DW via Marxism]

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I agree with Mark...most Occupy's, and especially the working class heavy
ones like in St. Louis, Independence, Cairo and dozens and dozens of others
at *best* had some youthful, teenage, cultural anarchists involved. They
also rejected the BS "consensus" model as well.

The idea that the "police state" killed occupy is equivalent to the
Democrats argument that the Russians through the election to Trump:
avoiding the political responsibility of understanding the limitations of
Occupy. The inability, after making an excellent start, to being the
*imprimatur* of the masses, due to much of the nonsense from the hipster
"left" that started the Wall St. Occupy (consensus, refusing to take
positions, etc), to become an instrument of the working class is what
killed it. Not the Democrats, not the AFL-CIO, but the limitations of the
Occupy itself. Not even the Black Bloc though they didn't help.

Anarchism in California is and remains the largest current on the left.
it's diffuse, weak politically, a disaster organizationally but because of
the 'coming of age' by thousands of mostly white, and specifically this
means white suburban, not Asian (20% of the population in the Bay Area for
example), not Latino, and not Black...passes through the cultural anarchism
stage in their lives. At some point they grow out of it or, join up with
the more tightly organized Black Bloc type groups.

Black Bloc only added to the confusion of what Occupy was 'meant' to
become. But I don't believe they killed it. Occupys with strong labor
committees often were able to isolate, at least politically, Black Block
types. One of the problems with the BB is that they can't organize or
initiate their own mass movements. They can't even exist without a far
larger and broader mass movement from which to opportunistically and
parasitically draw the their strength from.

We used to discuss this (and are again): does BB tactics strength or weaken
the ability to build a movement that involves masses of people? In whose
interests do BB serve? I discussed with one anti-BB anarchist last week at
the airport actions what would happen to this amazing movement if the BBs
showed up? He rolled it eyes and said "it would all simply end".

David W.
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Re: [Marxism] Black bloc

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

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This depends on the area.  Black bloc did not organize and lead Occupy in
the hundreds (???) of places where it popped up across the U.S.
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