>"Without TV images
>of violence the police would have had an impossible time opening the
>streets because it would have been much harder for them to use violence.
>The WTO would have been shut down all week or the police would have
>provoked such rage that there would have been massive global escalation."
>
>I find this to be a little naive.
>
>(un)leash
i can't tell you how much i agree. firstly, karen, tell randy s that i
said hi. we met in flint at conference when he wasjust starting up his
list/web page. doubt he'll remember me, but for some odd reason i was
thinking of him and his list the same day you posted that note from him.
secondly, the police started in around 3 p.m. and that was before any of
the corporate property damage was initiated. remember, they were trashing
corporate property *after* the downtown stories had closed. now, plenty of
seperate reports from peaceful protesters have verified that the police
started "breaking their lines" earlier than that.
as for agent provacateurs, i personally tend to doubt it. about 5% of me
is willing to believe such things and we certainly know that the FBI muched
up the new left, the black power movement, and other movements by engaging
in some pretty heinous activities. but, otherwise, i tend to think such
events are far more complicated and we're better off not reducing that
complexity to simplistic explanations.
not sure why randy thought it was about morality either. i was talking the
nitty gritty of strategy. should protest ever involve the destruction of
corporate property? obviously, i'm not prepared to say never and i was
ambivalent about Seattle. frankly, i think it was the wrong time to engage
in such things. you need a stronger movement, i think.
i think it's irrepsonsible to scapegoat black block, to portray them as
punks/kids/wilding boys. i think the comments i've read from peaceful
protestors and others sympathetic to nonviolet action have often enough
"blamed" anarchists for the police violence. this deflects our attention
from the fact that the police were beating peaceful protestors before
anarchists started in. i *do* worry that it gave ordinary people cause to
dismiss it all. and yet, aren't many people bound to dismiss it? doesn't
the media do an excellent job of creating a spectacle on its own internal
logic without pointint to an external "cause" in the black bloc or any
other group? the media portrayals USers have seen are very biased. on
other lists, people from france, germany, denmark, sweden have pointed out
that they are not getting the same messages as USers.
on my view the media makes these things a spectacle no matter what.
blaming people involved is like saying that a woman wearing a mini skirt
gets raped because she should know better.
don't mean to sound cranky. i really need more coffee!
kelley
