Re: Summing Up

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> ermadog@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 07/28/01 11:14AM >>>

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Right from the start, the pro-bloc comrades ran into a problem: some of us
had already identified an ultral-left tendency within the bloc. Worse, we
were an informed opposition: we have continually been able to show that
even their fellow anarchists condemn these confrontationist tactics.
Further, we have shown *from their own words* (the urban75 manifesto and
the Statement by Black Block activists posted by Stainsby to this list)
that bloc-stes advocate window-smashing and the provocation of police. We
have drawn the acknowledgement from one comrade that he does not know the
Seattle situation as well as he claimed. It appeard to me that he was
attemptintg to use his moral cachet as a participant as a substitute for
reasoned argument. Yet it turns out he had not known, during the action
itself, that the window-smashing (the event that precipitated the state of
emergency and subsequent all-out war) had been deliberately planned, by a
minority in defiance of the majority decision for passive resistance.

In spite of his acknowledged ignorance about these people, he still pushes
his line that we must unite with these people, or be left behind in what
could well become the decisive battle of our age. He has deliberately
sought to polarize the debate right from the start, claiming that we are
do-nothings if we do not support the bloc-istes immediately. The slander
has been raised; if we proclaim that the bloc-istes' provocative tactics
were a deciding factor in the police violence, we must be also claiming
that Carlo Guiliano deserved his fate. Carlo's surviving father has
himself called for an end to the violence.

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Joan Cameron


(((((((((

CB: Well said, comrade Joan.

Gee, I'm a real fence sitter on this one.