Re: Fwd: AUT: Re: Re: [barricada] Account and Analysis of Inauguration Day RAAB

[commie zero zero <commie00@xxxxxxxxx>]

not much time to do an exaustive comment, but two
quick things:

1) every black bloc i've participated in have been the
most diverse section of the protests, in regards to
race and gender. and on more than one occaision, when
non-white folks have joined off of the street, they
have inevitably joined the black bloc actions.

2) i did a lot of talking and interviewing after
seattle, and i could not find a single person (aside
from lefty-liberal activists) who was against the
property destruction, etc. the most common response i
got was "well, i'm prolly alone in this, but,
honestly: it's about fucking time", or some such.
(which speeks to me more of a problem of intraclass
communication...)

the lefty-liberals and the media have tried to portray
it as some kind of horrible thing, but when it comes
down to it, according to everyone i've talked to: more
militant actions have a great amount of popular
support.

the questions i have to ask tho, are these: why aren't
more people participating? why aren't more people
talking to one another?


--- Chris Wright <cwright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> With Seattle, i can't really say anything.  I missed
> it, much to my chagrin.
> However, in Mumia work and anti-police brutality
> work in Chicago I have
> noticed a few things from people who take their cue
> from Black Block (as
> well as the Refuse and Resist Maoists from the RCP
> who hang on to try and
> get some of the anarchist youth to buy into
> authoritarian politics by
> burning a flag and yelling "It's right to rebel.")
>
> I have mixed feelings about it politically.   I
> appreciate the energy those
> folks bring to a demonstration and the level of
> courage and combativity they
> have.  They have made some of the demonstrations
> much better.  From what I
> saw in Seattle, I only have contempt for the liberal
> and social democratic
> types who tried to protect Starbucks and McDonalds,
> especially since those
> attacks began after the cops started assaulting
> people.  They wanted to
> 'respect property'.  Screw that.  Those people
> targeted capital, and rightly
> so.  Should the workers in those places have been
> given a few seconds
> warning to get out of the way?  Yeah, in my opinion.
>  But I have no qualms
> with targeting Starbucks, McDeath Burger, etc.  The
> pathetic displays of
> 'protecting property' merged with the police
> violence.  I have no arguments
> with raab on that.
>
> On the other hand, the lack of any perspective
> beyond running down the
> street and starting 'spontaneous' altercations with
> the police has caused
> serious problems.  For example, at a recent Free
> Mumia rally and demo, we
> had about 350-400 people show up, we had a good,
> energetic rally, and we
> started to march.  However, it was cold and people
> began to leave near the
> end of the rally.  By the time we hit Lake Shore
> Drive (a very major
> thoroughfare that runs the length of most of
> Chicago's lakefront and is
> high-visibility), we had dwindled to about 100-125
> people.  We faced about
> 100 cops.  At that point, about 15 people decided to
> sit in the middle of
> Lake Shore Drive and do civil disobedience.  No one
> had been told about this
> or warned about it, even though the march organizers
> literally begged to be
> warned so we could be properly prepared to fend off
> the cops.  The
> relationship of forces was VERY bad, and several
> people got hurt and
> arrested for no purpose and endangered the rest of
> us, so that when we
> arrived at the march end, the cops surrounded us,
> took off their badges,
> distributed wrist straps, and pulled out their
> nightsticks.  I have no doubt
> they intended to use them and we had no means of
> self-defense since the
> police basically had as many people as we did, while
> some of our marchers
> included parents with kids who were not prepared for
> this.  They came out to
> support Mumia.  The anarchist youth who did this,
> along with a few R&R
> people, basically endangered everyone in the march
> with no thought other
> than 'confronting the police'.  This smells to me of
> bravado, dangerous
> bravado and chest thumping.
>
> I find it no accident that the same people do not
> show up for marches with a
> large Black presence or even more so on the South or
> West sides (almost
> entirely Black and Latino communities), and they
> certainly don't act the
> same.  They basically feel they can fuck up a Mumia
> demonstration and
> endanger people, but they don;t do that if a large
> Black and Latino presence
> is at the march.  Then they have no perspective.
> Zero.
>
> Not surprisingly in my experience, these youth are
> almost lily-white (1 in
> 50 might be African American, but in the 'actions',
> i have only seen one
> African American youth.)  The African American and
> Latino youth who show up
> take a different attitude.  And they have a
> different presence.  The cops
> are not scared of the white middle class kids
> (mostly from rich private
> schools and yuppie public schools).  The Black and
> Latino kids scare the
> cops.  The mood changes radically and so does the
> level of tension.  If
> anyone doubts the problems of race and class, just
> get a feel for two
> different marches with different compositions (and I
> will stand fast by the
> existence of a middle class because these kids have
> privilege oozing out of
> their pores.)  See how different people act.  I have
> seen militant
> demonstrations with African Americans and Latinos,
> and it isn't the same.
> It isn't about 'being radical', 'fucking shit up' or
> 'confronting the
> police'.  People who could live their whole lives in
> privilege and never
> have to be confronted by a cop have to manufacture
> 'confrontations'.  The
> Black and Latino (and less often on our side, white
> workers) working people
> have daily confrontation with the cops, in deadly
> ways that they don't need
> to manufacture.  Its a different kind of 'Black'
> block, if you will.
>
> At the same time, when it works, i know African
> American activists who
> appreciate the energy and vitality of the young
> (white) people, in part
> because they know those young people come out there
> by choice, not because
> the cops are coming for them.  That gives them hope,
> too.  So it is a mixed
> bag.  It has caused problems when it is done
> stupidly, thoughtlessly, and in
> a manner that smacks of spoiled brats relying on
> their white, middle class
> privileges to save their asses from much worse
> violence.  Sometimes, it
> sends a charge through everything and lights it all
> up, turning a bad (read:
> boring) action into something worth talking about.
> Sometimes it works.
>
> But an essnetial problem of everything from Seattle
> forward, in my opinion,
> has been its failure to resonate in the Black and
> Latino communities.  The
> Black Block has a weird resonance to me as a
> long-time
> anti-racist/anti-white privilege activist,
> especially when it is so white.
> I may not be formulating this well, but it seems to
> me that at least in the
> united States, if the problem of race and the
> whiteness of the current
> struggles, their separation from Black and Latino
> and immigrant struggles
> (which have also spilled into the workplaces in
> strikes like the dry
> wallers, the custodial strikes in Chicago, Justice
> for Janitors, etc.),
> represents a major problem.
>
> I hope this kind of ties a few threads together here
> and takes the
> discussion in a useful direction.  I also do not
> want to say that because
> some Black people are not ready to engage in violent
> marches against the
> cops that that justifies being passive.  The Black
> population is no more
> homogenous than any other.  But we should be attuned
> to the differences in
> struggle, in presence, in the meaning of certain
> choices, and the social
> foundation of certain ways of approaching politics.
> for me, the struggle
> against racial privilege forms a central part of any
> communist politics of
> any worth.  A communist politics which cannot
> grapple with that problem is
> not worth shit.
>
> Not because race and class are intertwined, as I
> have poorly put it, but
> because race, like class, is a central form of the
> fetishization of human
> relations.  I may privilege class because it flows
> directly from the
> separation of doing from done, because that polarity
> in my opinion forms the
> nexus of all other social relations, but if we take
> the idea of
>
=== message truncated ===


=====
commie00
---------------------------------
http://www.geocities.com/commie00
---------------------------------

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices.
http://auctions.yahoo.com/


     --- from list aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---