The Pump Don't Work 'Cause the Vandals Broke the Handles
http://www.counterpunch.org/jacobs05072010.html
Days of Rage
By RON JACOBS
May 7 - 9, 2010
Late in the evening on May Day, 2010 a small group of young people
clad primarily in black and with their faces covered by bandannas
staged a brief rampage through part of downtown Asheville, NC. Later
that evening a similar rampage occurred in Santa Cruz, CA. The Santa
Cruz action was undertaken by more people, but the intent seemed to
be the same: attack perceived symbols of capitalism and cause
property damage. A similar action occurred in Olympia, WA. a few
weeks earlier. Almost all of those arrested in the three towns are
linked to the current version of the US anarchist movement in some
way. Those arrested in Asheville were quickly charged with a variety
of misdemeanors and possible felony riot charges, as were those in
Olympia. Police are still trying to track down most of the Santa
Cruz participants through the use of video.
The reaction of the authorities in Asheville was a reflection of its
liberal sensibilities. The police chief lamented the damage and
wondered why these young people did this, especially in
Asheville. The local Gannett-owned daily newspaper sensationalized
the action as if the damage done by the vandals totaled several times
more than the $20,000 the police estimated. Local rightwingers
immediately began calling for prison terms for the alleged
perpetrators and a fair amount of the local conversation revolved
around the vandals class origins (which were unknown for the most
part). There were even some hysterical comments in the comments
section of the online version of the daily paper that called the
violence the worst violence to ever hit Asheville. As I pointed out
to a local who repeated that statement to me at work, the day before
the vandalism occurred a man had shot and killed two of his neighbors
in a trailer park not more than three miles from where the vandals
did their piece. This double murder, I suggested, surely had to be
considered worse than $20,000 worth of property damage.
Now, to the politics of these rampages. As a person who spent many
hours of his life researching the history of the Weather Underground,
I can not help but be reminded of that group's first major action
(when they still called themselves Weatherman) in Chicago. This
action, known popularly as the Days of Rage, took place in October
1969 and involved a rampage of a few hundred Weatherman members
running through the wealthy Gold Coast neighborhood of Chicago
smashing car windows, shops and fighting with the police. Like the
rampage in Asheville, some of the targets destroyed by the Weathermen
and women were not owned by wealthy people or outlets of some
international corporate behemoth. In fact, they belonged to people
who actually work for a living.
Unlike the Days of Rage action, the 2010 actions mentioned here
occurred in what is essentially a political vacuum. In 1969, the
antiwar movement was actively opposing the US war in Vietnam, law
enforcement agencies were hunting down Black Panthers and other civil
rights activists. Barely a year earlier there had been police riots
at the Democratic Convention in Chicago and a state of insurrection
had existed for weeks after the assassination of Martin Luther King,
Jr. in April 1968. In addition, presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy
was killed in June. Today, this sense of crisis does not exist, not
even among the more hysterical members of the Tea Party. This isn't
to say that there is not a crisis, but that the sense that there is
one is much diminished. Why this is so is a topic for another time,
although the role of the media could certainly be a major cause.
Anyhow, even with all of the sense of crisis and approaching doom or
revolution in 1969, the Days of Rage action were met with a fairly
unanimous round of condemnation from across the political
spectrum. The Panthers in Chicago called the action
"Custeristic." The rest of the Left wondered why the Weatherman did
what they did. Some called them the acts of a frustrated few.The
authorites prepared indictments on charges ranging from vandalism to
felony riot. The action was a failure and did more to alienate the
people of the US from the Left than anything else. If we look to a
more recent example of these tactics, the actions of the so-called
Black Bloc in Seattle during the 1999 protests against the World
Trade Organization certainly qualify. Even there, however, it could
be argued that an obvious political context existed in the protests
themselves. Furthermore, the targets that were attacked were
selected for their role in the neoliberal attack on the environment
and labor: McDonalds, Starbucks, and Nike.
I have friends who used to break shit, wear black, and considered
themselves anarchists. Some of them really were and some of them
just wanted to break stuff. What happened in Asheville and a couple
other towns on MayDay was politically motivated nihilism minus any
apparent political context. I understand why the young folk did it,
but I don't think too many other people do. It was politically
stupid because it did not make any issues clearer. Instead the
vandalism became the issue. Hopefully, the vandals won't get any
jail time. After all, this really was just vandalism. High school
boys have done worse than this and received community service and
restitution. If they do get jail time and the execs at BP
responsible for wantonly polluting the Gulf don't, then it virtually
proves some of the points these folks were trying to make.
--
Ron Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the
Weather Underground, which is just republished by Verso. Jacobs'
essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch's collection on
music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden. His first novel, Short
Order Frame Up, is published by Mainstay Press. He can be reached at:
[email protected]
.
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