To invent new tactics
Webs of Power, 2002
After Genoa: Asking the Right Questions
Genoa Was A Watershed For the antiglobalization movement. It's clear now that this is a life-or-death struggle in the First World as it has always been in the Third World. How we respond will determine whether repression destroys us or strengthens us. To come back stronger, we have to understand what actually happened there.
The media are telling one story about Genoa: a small group of violent protesters got out of hand and the police overreacted. I've heard variations on this from within the movement: the black bloc was allowed to get out of hand to justify police violence. But that's not what happened in Genoa, and framing the problem that way will keep us focused on the wrong questions.
Let's be clear: in Genoa we encountered a carefully orchestrated political campaign of state terrorism. The campaign included disinformation, the use of infiltrators and provocateurs, collusion with avowed Fascist groups (and I don't mean "fascist" in the loose way the left sometimes uses the terms, I mean "Fascist" as in "direct inheritors of the traditions of Mussolini and Hitler"), the deliberate targeting of nonviolent groups for tear gas and beating, endemic police brutality, the torture of prisoners, the political persecution of the organizers, and a terrorist night raid on sleeping people by special forces wearing "Polizia" T-shirts under black sweatshirts, who broke bones, smashed teaths, and bashed in the skulls of nonresisting protesters. They did all this openly, in a way that indicates they had no fear of repercussions and expected political protection from the highest sources. That expectation implicates not only the proto-Fascist Berlusconi regime of Italy, but by association the rest of the G8, especially the U.S. since it now appears that L.A. County Sheriffs helped train the most brutal of the special forces.
Italy has a history of employing such tactics, going back to the "strategy of tension" used against the left in the nineteen-seventies, in fact, even further back to the twenties and thirties which don't seem all that far away any more once you've heard prisoners describe being tortured in rooms with pictures of Mussolini on the walls. The same tactics have, of course, been used extensively by U.S. agencies and other countries. Italy also has a political culture of highly confrontational actions and streetfighting with the police, as well as strong pacifist groups and groups like the White Overalls who are exploring new political territory that goes beyond the traditional definitions of violence and nonviolence. All of this set the stage upon which the events of the G8 protest were played.
The police used the black bloc, or more accurately, the myth and image of the black bloc, very effectively in Genoa - for their ends, not ours. Some aspects of black bloc tactics made that easy: the anonymity, the masks and easily identifiable dress code, the willingness to engage in more confrontational tactics and in property damage, and, perhaps most significantly, the lack of connection with the rest of the action and the organizers.
But the black bloc was not the source of the problem in Genoa. The problem was state, police and Fascist violence. Acts werde done in Genoa, attributed to protesters, that were irresponsible and wrong by anyone's standards - but it seems likely now that most of them were done by police. Or if not, police provocateurs were so endemic that it's impossible to tell what might have been done by people in our movement or to hold anyone accountable. So the question Genoa presents us with is not "How do we control the violent elements among us?", although that conceivably might be an issue someday. It's "How do we forestall another campaign of lies, police-investigated violence, and retaliation?"
There's no easy answer to that question. The simplest strategy would be to go back to a strict form of nonviolence, which many people are proposing. I don't know why I find myself in resistance to that answer. I'm a longtime advocate of nonviolence, I have no intention of ever throwing a brick through a window or lobbing a rock at a cop myself, and in general I think breaking windows and fighting cops in a mass action is counterproductive at best and suicidal at worst.
One reason might be that I can no longer use the same word to describe what I've seen even the most unruly elements of our movement do in actions and what the cops did in Genoa. If breaking windows fighting back when the cops attack is "violence", then give me a new word, a word thousand times stronger, to use when the cops are beating nonresisting people into comas.
Another might be just that I like the black bloc. I've been in many actions now where the black bloc was a strong presence. In Seattle I was royally pissed off at them for what I saw as their unilateral decision to violate agreements everyone else accepted. In Washington in 2000, I saw that they abided by guidelines they disagreed with and had no part in making, and I respected them for it. I've sat under the hooves of the police horses with some of them when we stopped a sweep of a crowded street using tactics Gandhi himself could not have criticized.
I've choked with them in the tear gas in Quebec City and seen them refrain from damaging property there when confronted by local people. I'm bonded. Yes, there have been times I've been furious with some of them, but they're my comrades and allies in this struggle and I don't want to see them excluded or demonized. We need them, or something like them. We need room in the movement for rage, for impatience, for militant fervor, for an attitude that says, "We are badass, kickass folks and we will tear this system down". If we cut that off, we devitalize ourselves.
We also need Gandhi pacifists. We need room for compassion, for faith, for an attitude that says, "My hands will do the works of mercy and not the works of war." We need those who refuse to engage in violence because they do not want to live in a violent world.
And we need space for those of us who are trying to explore forms of struggle that fall outside the categories. We need radical creativity, space to experiment, to carve out new territory, to invent new tactics, to make mistakes.
Aus:
Starhawk, Webs of Power. Notes from the Global Uprising, New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island/Canada, 2002
Das fünfte Geheimnis
Starhawk's Home Page
Achtung: Starhawk.net ist NICHT die Seite von Starhawk!
After Genoa: Asking the Right Questions
Genoa Was A Watershed For the antiglobalization movement. It's clear now that this is a life-or-death struggle in the First World as it has always been in the Third World. How we respond will determine whether repression destroys us or strengthens us. To come back stronger, we have to understand what actually happened there.
The media are telling one story about Genoa: a small group of violent protesters got out of hand and the police overreacted. I've heard variations on this from within the movement: the black bloc was allowed to get out of hand to justify police violence. But that's not what happened in Genoa, and framing the problem that way will keep us focused on the wrong questions.
Let's be clear: in Genoa we encountered a carefully orchestrated political campaign of state terrorism. The campaign included disinformation, the use of infiltrators and provocateurs, collusion with avowed Fascist groups (and I don't mean "fascist" in the loose way the left sometimes uses the terms, I mean "Fascist" as in "direct inheritors of the traditions of Mussolini and Hitler"), the deliberate targeting of nonviolent groups for tear gas and beating, endemic police brutality, the torture of prisoners, the political persecution of the organizers, and a terrorist night raid on sleeping people by special forces wearing "Polizia" T-shirts under black sweatshirts, who broke bones, smashed teaths, and bashed in the skulls of nonresisting protesters. They did all this openly, in a way that indicates they had no fear of repercussions and expected political protection from the highest sources. That expectation implicates not only the proto-Fascist Berlusconi regime of Italy, but by association the rest of the G8, especially the U.S. since it now appears that L.A. County Sheriffs helped train the most brutal of the special forces.
Italy has a history of employing such tactics, going back to the "strategy of tension" used against the left in the nineteen-seventies, in fact, even further back to the twenties and thirties which don't seem all that far away any more once you've heard prisoners describe being tortured in rooms with pictures of Mussolini on the walls. The same tactics have, of course, been used extensively by U.S. agencies and other countries. Italy also has a political culture of highly confrontational actions and streetfighting with the police, as well as strong pacifist groups and groups like the White Overalls who are exploring new political territory that goes beyond the traditional definitions of violence and nonviolence. All of this set the stage upon which the events of the G8 protest were played.
The police used the black bloc, or more accurately, the myth and image of the black bloc, very effectively in Genoa - for their ends, not ours. Some aspects of black bloc tactics made that easy: the anonymity, the masks and easily identifiable dress code, the willingness to engage in more confrontational tactics and in property damage, and, perhaps most significantly, the lack of connection with the rest of the action and the organizers.
But the black bloc was not the source of the problem in Genoa. The problem was state, police and Fascist violence. Acts werde done in Genoa, attributed to protesters, that were irresponsible and wrong by anyone's standards - but it seems likely now that most of them were done by police. Or if not, police provocateurs were so endemic that it's impossible to tell what might have been done by people in our movement or to hold anyone accountable. So the question Genoa presents us with is not "How do we control the violent elements among us?", although that conceivably might be an issue someday. It's "How do we forestall another campaign of lies, police-investigated violence, and retaliation?"
There's no easy answer to that question. The simplest strategy would be to go back to a strict form of nonviolence, which many people are proposing. I don't know why I find myself in resistance to that answer. I'm a longtime advocate of nonviolence, I have no intention of ever throwing a brick through a window or lobbing a rock at a cop myself, and in general I think breaking windows and fighting cops in a mass action is counterproductive at best and suicidal at worst.
One reason might be that I can no longer use the same word to describe what I've seen even the most unruly elements of our movement do in actions and what the cops did in Genoa. If breaking windows fighting back when the cops attack is "violence", then give me a new word, a word thousand times stronger, to use when the cops are beating nonresisting people into comas.
Another might be just that I like the black bloc. I've been in many actions now where the black bloc was a strong presence. In Seattle I was royally pissed off at them for what I saw as their unilateral decision to violate agreements everyone else accepted. In Washington in 2000, I saw that they abided by guidelines they disagreed with and had no part in making, and I respected them for it. I've sat under the hooves of the police horses with some of them when we stopped a sweep of a crowded street using tactics Gandhi himself could not have criticized.
I've choked with them in the tear gas in Quebec City and seen them refrain from damaging property there when confronted by local people. I'm bonded. Yes, there have been times I've been furious with some of them, but they're my comrades and allies in this struggle and I don't want to see them excluded or demonized. We need them, or something like them. We need room in the movement for rage, for impatience, for militant fervor, for an attitude that says, "We are badass, kickass folks and we will tear this system down". If we cut that off, we devitalize ourselves.
We also need Gandhi pacifists. We need room for compassion, for faith, for an attitude that says, "My hands will do the works of mercy and not the works of war." We need those who refuse to engage in violence because they do not want to live in a violent world.
And we need space for those of us who are trying to explore forms of struggle that fall outside the categories. We need radical creativity, space to experiment, to carve out new territory, to invent new tactics, to make mistakes.
Aus:
Starhawk, Webs of Power. Notes from the Global Uprising, New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island/Canada, 2002
Das fünfte Geheimnis
Starhawk's Home Page
Achtung: Starhawk.net ist NICHT die Seite von Starhawk!
Liliths Loge - 8. Jun, 15:33
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