Reply someone wrote to a post on reddit
"Or like they are sensationalizing what is only a small part of the protest, and trying to smear the majority of Mayday by appealing to people's sensitivities about private property damage. If Seattle thinks Mayday is a smashfest and a smashfest only, then it becomes easier to keep people from supporting the pro-labor, pro-minimum-wage, pro-equality message which is prevalent here. Remember that from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century, Seattle was a huge example of IWW and labor movement might, going so far as to see longshoremen getting massacred by police for striking, as well as having an anarchist-led general strike which lasted for a whole month, where all the while order was maintained and chaos was prevented primarily by self-control and neighbors regulating neighbors. The IWW becoming a force for the existence of a minimum wage in the first place, as well as pushing for workplace safety and child labor laws would have been severely hampered in the United States were it not for the foothold the IWW gained in Seattle.
It's funny how easily we forget our heritage, all the people who fought and literally DIED in the labor movement in this city, all so we could have the privilege of saying "meh, $15 an hour is excessive, we've already got a wage that's like $2.50 more than the federal minimum, so why complain?"
And believe me when I say that those people did a lot more than today's activists, both through legal and non-legal means. Destroying factory equipment, shutting down an entire city for a month, getting into armed conflict with police, all these things would be labelled terrorism and countered with violent police force today. People like to think that non-violent protest can exist in a vacuum. Yet, if you look at every major civil rights movement, there has been both violent protest and damaging of property through destructive rioting, used to punctuate the urgency of a movement, as well as to protect the innocent. For the equality of African Americans, it was the Black Panthers, carrying rifles while patrolling their neighborhoods to prevent racist cops from beating or killing the more moderate protestors. Nowadays, African Americans are incarcerated more per capita than any other racial or ethnic group in the US, and receive harsher sentences than other demographics who commit the same crimes. Law enforcement also is notably more strict about enforcement against POC.
In the women's rights movement, there was violence against police, there was arson, there were shows of force, all necessary to break the paradigm that women were weaker than men, and that women ought to try and seek change through the patriarchal system. And today, still up to 20% of college aged women get sexually assaulted, and in many many cases convictions against those who attacked them don't stick, especially if the attacker was in law enforcement.
In the queer rights movement, there was the Stonewall Riot. Police came into a club and started strip searching patrons to see who was cross-dressing, and many individuals were beaten, some killed. Had the LGBTQ community not stood up and fought there, we would have continued to be made victims, as cops would think they could attack us with impunity. Sometimes, you need to draw attention to yourself in order to get the rights you deserve.
As far as the labor movement, why do we always forget the Battle of Blair Mountain? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain In this case, coal miners back East were facing violent anti-union attacks in the 1920s, with peoples' families often being sexually assaulted, kidnapped, beaten or killed by corporate-hired thugs to try and intimidate union members into calling off strikes and to stop working for labor rights. The situation escalated into what eventually became the largest domestic armed conflict in the United States since the Civil War, with around 13,000 participants. While this was tremendously damaging, it underscored the strength of American Labor, and helped to make it clear that unions were a force to be contended with, and that people would not stop fighting until they had the humane working conditions that they were due. Nowadays, we have exported inhumane labor overseas and to our prisons. Prisoners in the United States are sometimes used for slave or underpaid labor, non-consensually, and slavery overseas is expanding, and is more and more being used by multinational corporations which our government subsidizes.
I'm not saying that now is the time to add violence and destruction of corporate, business, or government property to our bag of activist tricks, but what I am saying is that it's sad to see how quickly we forget our activist heritage, and the many-pronged strategies of attack which sometimes include lawlessness, that our forerunners used to earn us the rights that our parents' generation enjoyed/continue to enjoy. Nowadays though, young adults are facing a job market where degree-inflation is rampant, living in poverty while working full time is the norm, racial discrimination is on the rise within police forces, law enforcement in general is more violent and held to lesser standards of accountability, and the big players in government are more and more beholden to legally protected corporate interests, regardless of whether they are Democrats or Republicans. Income inequality and money in politics haven't been near this level in decades. To say there isn't a problem is naive. To think that simply "occupying" or marching around with signs and "writing to your representatives" has enough power to contend with the oligarchy (which I'm assuming you've heard about) is... optimistic. I sure hope that's all it takes. But to say "we will never be uncivilized in trying to get what we want and need, we are better than that, and besides, things are good enough now, so we aren't justified in going outside the legal system this way" is something which I feel ignores the fact that laws, markets, and the way that the former is increasingly being determined by the latter will not always be things that "civilized discourse" alone can effect change on.
If nothing else, remember the heritage of our city. Seattle was once a major mover of social justice and a shining example to the rest of the United States of what people could do when their government forsook them. While lawbreaking is not necessarily called for at this time (but who can say honestly? Hindsight is 20/20) remember how integral it has been to improving the lives of the masses in our past, and how if the Seattlites of the 1920s or even the 1890s were here, they'd not recognize this apathetic, "good enough, so why bother", non-participatory attitude that has taken hold here.
I'm not really making any value statements, or at least trying not to. I just hope that my calling up historical context will help put the actions of some of the more desperate/radical among us into perspective. If you have taken the time to read all the way through this, then thank you. I can't really think of a good TLDR for this, so if someone else has one and puts it in a comment, I'll be quite thankful to you."
It's funny how easily we forget our heritage, all the people who fought and literally DIED in the labor movement in this city, all so we could have the privilege of saying "meh, $15 an hour is excessive, we've already got a wage that's like $2.50 more than the federal minimum, so why complain?"
And believe me when I say that those people did a lot more than today's activists, both through legal and non-legal means. Destroying factory equipment, shutting down an entire city for a month, getting into armed conflict with police, all these things would be labelled terrorism and countered with violent police force today. People like to think that non-violent protest can exist in a vacuum. Yet, if you look at every major civil rights movement, there has been both violent protest and damaging of property through destructive rioting, used to punctuate the urgency of a movement, as well as to protect the innocent. For the equality of African Americans, it was the Black Panthers, carrying rifles while patrolling their neighborhoods to prevent racist cops from beating or killing the more moderate protestors. Nowadays, African Americans are incarcerated more per capita than any other racial or ethnic group in the US, and receive harsher sentences than other demographics who commit the same crimes. Law enforcement also is notably more strict about enforcement against POC.
In the women's rights movement, there was violence against police, there was arson, there were shows of force, all necessary to break the paradigm that women were weaker than men, and that women ought to try and seek change through the patriarchal system. And today, still up to 20% of college aged women get sexually assaulted, and in many many cases convictions against those who attacked them don't stick, especially if the attacker was in law enforcement.
In the queer rights movement, there was the Stonewall Riot. Police came into a club and started strip searching patrons to see who was cross-dressing, and many individuals were beaten, some killed. Had the LGBTQ community not stood up and fought there, we would have continued to be made victims, as cops would think they could attack us with impunity. Sometimes, you need to draw attention to yourself in order to get the rights you deserve.
As far as the labor movement, why do we always forget the Battle of Blair Mountain? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain In this case, coal miners back East were facing violent anti-union attacks in the 1920s, with peoples' families often being sexually assaulted, kidnapped, beaten or killed by corporate-hired thugs to try and intimidate union members into calling off strikes and to stop working for labor rights. The situation escalated into what eventually became the largest domestic armed conflict in the United States since the Civil War, with around 13,000 participants. While this was tremendously damaging, it underscored the strength of American Labor, and helped to make it clear that unions were a force to be contended with, and that people would not stop fighting until they had the humane working conditions that they were due. Nowadays, we have exported inhumane labor overseas and to our prisons. Prisoners in the United States are sometimes used for slave or underpaid labor, non-consensually, and slavery overseas is expanding, and is more and more being used by multinational corporations which our government subsidizes.
I'm not saying that now is the time to add violence and destruction of corporate, business, or government property to our bag of activist tricks, but what I am saying is that it's sad to see how quickly we forget our activist heritage, and the many-pronged strategies of attack which sometimes include lawlessness, that our forerunners used to earn us the rights that our parents' generation enjoyed/continue to enjoy. Nowadays though, young adults are facing a job market where degree-inflation is rampant, living in poverty while working full time is the norm, racial discrimination is on the rise within police forces, law enforcement in general is more violent and held to lesser standards of accountability, and the big players in government are more and more beholden to legally protected corporate interests, regardless of whether they are Democrats or Republicans. Income inequality and money in politics haven't been near this level in decades. To say there isn't a problem is naive. To think that simply "occupying" or marching around with signs and "writing to your representatives" has enough power to contend with the oligarchy (which I'm assuming you've heard about) is... optimistic. I sure hope that's all it takes. But to say "we will never be uncivilized in trying to get what we want and need, we are better than that, and besides, things are good enough now, so we aren't justified in going outside the legal system this way" is something which I feel ignores the fact that laws, markets, and the way that the former is increasingly being determined by the latter will not always be things that "civilized discourse" alone can effect change on.
If nothing else, remember the heritage of our city. Seattle was once a major mover of social justice and a shining example to the rest of the United States of what people could do when their government forsook them. While lawbreaking is not necessarily called for at this time (but who can say honestly? Hindsight is 20/20) remember how integral it has been to improving the lives of the masses in our past, and how if the Seattlites of the 1920s or even the 1890s were here, they'd not recognize this apathetic, "good enough, so why bother", non-participatory attitude that has taken hold here.
I'm not really making any value statements, or at least trying not to. I just hope that my calling up historical context will help put the actions of some of the more desperate/radical among us into perspective. If you have taken the time to read all the way through this, then thank you. I can't really think of a good TLDR for this, so if someone else has one and puts it in a comment, I'll be quite thankful to you."