A note on black blocs and street fighting in Occupy Oakland, in response to the Hedges conversation
A marginal note on black blocs and street fighting in response to the beehive of a conversation stirred up by Chris Hedges and the aftermath of Occupy Oakland's move-in day on January 28. I suspect most of this will be fairly obvious for people who were involved in move-in day, but some of the specifics have been lost in the broader conversation taking place.
There wasn't much of an organized black bloc presence on Jan 28 in Oakland. Four things need to be separated: 1) willingness to scuffle with the police, 2) a stance that once a confrontation with the police gets going, people should hold their ground, attempt to maneuver, if necessarily using small-scale street-fighting techniques: barricades, throwing bottles, and burning trashcans and dumpsters - rather than disengaging, getting arrested in civil disobedience fashion, following orders, etc., 3) actually initiating such a confrontation or escalating it, 4) black blocs, which for contemporary US purposes are really groups of black-clad people committing conscious, targeted property destruction during demonstrations. (I realize that the black bloc tradition in Europe is different, but I think what I've just said roughly characterizes US black blocs including and since Seattle 99.)
A key set of people who play an important leadership role in Occupy Oakland hold the position described in 2): people should hold their ground, maneuver, and engage with the cops, using small-scale street-fighting tactics. This means that on Jan 28 a lot of people found themselves in category 1), willing to scuffle. And lots of people not themselves throwing bottles or using barricades stood their ground with those who were doing those things. Some of the leaders in this scenario are not fully masked up, though others are, much less the followers. Furthermore, none of them are really behaving as a bloc.
(I realize that my terminology of "leadership" here is questionable, given the ideology that Occupy has no leaders. In my experience this ideology is strongest amongst the real, practical leaders. In my view, it would help us to move forward if we could start by being more sociological and less ideological about the practices of leadership in Occupy, without abandoning horizontalist ethical commitments.)
A lot of people claim that 3) is happening: "people are provoking confrontations with the police." Though I was pretty close to the front lines on Jan 28, I wasn't quite willing to be enough in the middle of the melee to see who started what. I think this claim tends to be exaggerated by people who don't want confrontation. That is, it naturalizes the fact that police themselves often come to demonstrations ready for a police riot. Psychologically, pleading with other demonstrators not to provoke the police is a bit like pleading with your brother not to "provoke" an abusive parent. The extent of the provocation is exaggerated out of the fear that you, yourself will be victimized. Abusers and perpetrators of violence tend to deploy violence with a pattern that feels random to the victim or abused. We go to a demonstration not knowing whether police are going to be relatively restrained or hyper-aggressive. The same behaviors that might provoke them at one demonstration meet with no response the next time. This is not to say that the movement shouldn't have a conversation about how we comport ourselves; far from it. But we should be careful not to exaggerate the extent of "provocation." More of the conversation should be about how we respond to policing, especially in the inconsistency of its use of various repressive techniques. That's a real conversation, and I'm not necessarily promoting one approach or another here.
None of this really has anything to do with black blocs in the strict sense. There were over a thousand people on Saturday the 28th who found themselves in category 1), ready to scuffle to some extent. Some of them might've been led to do something different if there was a leadership trying to get them to do something different, or if such a leadership had emerged. But I'd say that of the 2000 or so people who were there for the first part of the march on Jan 28, probably 1800 knew there was a good chance of scuffling; of those, some probably planned to stand aside entirely, while the rest sized up how much risk they were willing to accept, how close they wanted to be to the front lines, what they wanted to do, etc. Note that I'm not necessarily saying this was a good model or a bad model, I'm just describing the scene on Jan. 28. If people want to criticize street-fighting, either engaging in it or initiating it, that's a conversation we can have, but it's actually pretty separate from the black bloc question, which in the US is mainly about targeted property destruction by a small group within demonstrations.
What to do going forward, what political possibilities and what kinds of political imagination are under consideration, and a serious political discussion of a diverse set of tactics arrayed in practice in a movement is a separate question, which I won't undertake here.
There wasn't much of an organized black bloc presence on Jan 28 in Oakland. Four things need to be separated: 1) willingness to scuffle with the police, 2) a stance that once a confrontation with the police gets going, people should hold their ground, attempt to maneuver, if necessarily using small-scale street-fighting techniques: barricades, throwing bottles, and burning trashcans and dumpsters - rather than disengaging, getting arrested in civil disobedience fashion, following orders, etc., 3) actually initiating such a confrontation or escalating it, 4) black blocs, which for contemporary US purposes are really groups of black-clad people committing conscious, targeted property destruction during demonstrations. (I realize that the black bloc tradition in Europe is different, but I think what I've just said roughly characterizes US black blocs including and since Seattle 99.)
A key set of people who play an important leadership role in Occupy Oakland hold the position described in 2): people should hold their ground, maneuver, and engage with the cops, using small-scale street-fighting tactics. This means that on Jan 28 a lot of people found themselves in category 1), willing to scuffle. And lots of people not themselves throwing bottles or using barricades stood their ground with those who were doing those things. Some of the leaders in this scenario are not fully masked up, though others are, much less the followers. Furthermore, none of them are really behaving as a bloc.
(I realize that my terminology of "leadership" here is questionable, given the ideology that Occupy has no leaders. In my experience this ideology is strongest amongst the real, practical leaders. In my view, it would help us to move forward if we could start by being more sociological and less ideological about the practices of leadership in Occupy, without abandoning horizontalist ethical commitments.)
A lot of people claim that 3) is happening: "people are provoking confrontations with the police." Though I was pretty close to the front lines on Jan 28, I wasn't quite willing to be enough in the middle of the melee to see who started what. I think this claim tends to be exaggerated by people who don't want confrontation. That is, it naturalizes the fact that police themselves often come to demonstrations ready for a police riot. Psychologically, pleading with other demonstrators not to provoke the police is a bit like pleading with your brother not to "provoke" an abusive parent. The extent of the provocation is exaggerated out of the fear that you, yourself will be victimized. Abusers and perpetrators of violence tend to deploy violence with a pattern that feels random to the victim or abused. We go to a demonstration not knowing whether police are going to be relatively restrained or hyper-aggressive. The same behaviors that might provoke them at one demonstration meet with no response the next time. This is not to say that the movement shouldn't have a conversation about how we comport ourselves; far from it. But we should be careful not to exaggerate the extent of "provocation." More of the conversation should be about how we respond to policing, especially in the inconsistency of its use of various repressive techniques. That's a real conversation, and I'm not necessarily promoting one approach or another here.
None of this really has anything to do with black blocs in the strict sense. There were over a thousand people on Saturday the 28th who found themselves in category 1), ready to scuffle to some extent. Some of them might've been led to do something different if there was a leadership trying to get them to do something different, or if such a leadership had emerged. But I'd say that of the 2000 or so people who were there for the first part of the march on Jan 28, probably 1800 knew there was a good chance of scuffling; of those, some probably planned to stand aside entirely, while the rest sized up how much risk they were willing to accept, how close they wanted to be to the front lines, what they wanted to do, etc. Note that I'm not necessarily saying this was a good model or a bad model, I'm just describing the scene on Jan. 28. If people want to criticize street-fighting, either engaging in it or initiating it, that's a conversation we can have, but it's actually pretty separate from the black bloc question, which in the US is mainly about targeted property destruction by a small group within demonstrations.
What to do going forward, what political possibilities and what kinds of political imagination are under consideration, and a serious political discussion of a diverse set of tactics arrayed in practice in a movement is a separate question, which I won't undertake here.