http://october2011.org/blogs/kevin-zeese/debate-tactics-violence-vs-nonviolence-hedges-vs-crimethinc

and

http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/chris_hedges_debates_the_black_bloc_20120918/?ln

Journalist Ari Paul, writing in The Indypendent, had this to say about the Black Bloc, both in the streets and at the debate:

[T]his kind of entitlement to be at once disruptive and immune from accountability is emblematic of the kind of dish-it-out-but-can’t-take-it attitude they have displayed in reaction to Hedges’s original article. If they’re still having a tantrum about Hedges’s article, how can we expect them to hold up against the 1 percent shock troops?

This is why I think it is ultimately wrong to classify this particular group as anarchists—that would sully the names of various movements past and present that have used and currently use non-hierarchical structures in anti-capitalist organizing. This particular clique is explicitly and actively against the left, and there’s a reason the CrimethInc book Days of War, Nights of Love reads like the ideological bastard child of Karl Marx and Ayn Rand. It rails against corporate control, but replaces class struggle with libertarian individualism. Capitalism and the state are oppressing you, and their flavor of anarchism is your struggle to liberate yourself from the mediocrity of the bourgeois state. You have to do whatever you can to do to save yourself.

I stopped reading the second article of the first link when the writer told about him taking pictures of members of audience. Which also Hedges would agree is an act of violence against those who consider it violent and putting them in danger.

Ari Paul's hit piece against CrimethInk ended with words "Their utopia isn’t a liberation of oppressed society but their personal secession from it." Good for them and good for some hippies to live in anarchic ecocommunities, living the revolution and learning sustainable ways of life in practice instead of waiting for some central committee of some centralist bureaucratic "revolutionary" movement to start and finish revolution for them. We can't build another world without stopping to keeping up the oppressive mechanisms of this world.

Both links contained words and ideas trying mostly to pour more oil into the old flames that the discussion they commented was aimed at healing and building consensus. Consensus that there was and should be no support for physical violence against black block tactics from "pacifists", either directly or by turning them to cops. Violence which I remember many liberal "pacifists" suggesting and promoting. In retrospect I consider Hedge's article a useful and benign "trolling" to bring out the issue and re-energize the discussion about tactics, without demonizing and exclusion of anyone seeking a positive change.

Your analysis beats all of theirs, as does your insight, especially regarding Hedge's article.

Thank you.

I agree with critics that year ago or now is not the best time or place for certain black block tactics in US, though from the little experience I have of them I admire and to some extent understand their power to empower us. And that the strategy that Hedges proposes and supports - to make the state servants and victims with guns not to shoot us - remains our best overall strategy.

I've been on one black block march that was in support of the 2008 Greek uprising. The art of organic group behavior of being unruly and unpredictable in response to police containment was fun, and what to me was most astonishing was that when police took hold of one of the participants, rest of the marchers immediately surrounded the police car and demanded release very loudly and with the whole of their fragile bodies, putting all traffic at that place to indefinite stop and raising emotions of drivers. Until the police released our friend from the police car, which was what happened very soon. I heard something like that happened also in NY during latest happening - without people wearing black and bandanas. BTW during the one black block action I participated I was not wearing black or bandana, and my mug was shown on national TV to the amusement of my then roommate in gardening school who happened to see it.

I have no direct experience other than peaceful, picniking sit-ins in the mid-late 1960s and early 70s. My opinion is that the U.S. would not have made the progress in civil (including womens and LGBT) rights, without the anarchal element. I am grateful to those more courageous putting their lives in danger for all of us.

the action day actions in New Your from a live Occupy channel, and thinking in my arm-chair general way, when the people obeyed police and walked the pedestrian side-walks trying to get to Wall Street, until NYPD warned them "not to block pedestrian traffic" and made few arrests to make their point and to turn the pedestrian side-walk marches turn back. I admired the self-organizing power and the huge amount of care taken to inform participants about which situations are more likely to lead to getting arrested, lot has been learned. But the Gandhian strategy that Hedges and others speak about is no less militant and demands that many of us put their bodies harms way and confront the armed forces of our oppression to the point where they have to choose whether they shoot us or join us. We need to be very smart about that, where and when and how we put police etc. against that choice, and it's better for us to choose that where when and how than to be taken by surprise and worst case, be slaughtered.

So this is what I would like to say to Hedge's in defense about experimenting various "black block" tactics - to ultimately confront the people holding guns and forcing them to make the choice of either to shoot us or join us. One tactic that can be developed and rehearsed and be prepared for is "zero-tolerance" against any arrests of our friends, using just our bodies and superior numbers. Basically, if police try to arrest any of us, we surround the police with our bodies - and if situation allows, disarm them for our own protection. And humbly, much easier said than done.