[Dissent-fr-info] les réflexions d'un "black bloc" sur l'échec des stratégies émeutières

[Dissent! France Info Newsletter]

On a reçu ce témoignage de Grande-Bretagne, et du coup, malheureusement,
c'est en Anglais. Quelqu'un se sent de le traduire pour que le débat se
tienne ?


Are We Addicted to Rioting?

Sunday, September 27 2009 @ 02:31 PM CDT

Contributed by: Anonymous

Views: 623
Anarchist Movement

By: Ryan Harvey - September 24, 2009

The G20 is upon us, and though BBC world news featured some of "the
troubles" in Pittsburgh, on the ground reports hardly match up with the
media-inflation, police-inflation, and activist-inflation of the actual
thing. As one who was not present in Pittsburgh, I cannot give a
first-hand account. Phone calls with friends on the ground and various
independent and corporate-media accounts are my window to the events.
But as one who has participated in countless similar events, who didn't
attend the G20 due to feelings of disconnection/confusion with my own
people, I felt strongly enough to write this.

As is often the case, big media makes things look a whole lot crazier
than they actually are, if it's in the interests of higher ratings. And
though most Americans if surveyed would be against rioting, they love to
watch it on TV. So the media is hyping the G20 protests up enough to get
some extra points, but not enough to anger their parent companies.

The police of course have to inflate the threats posed by relatively
small numbers of protestors to justify the gigantic amount of city,
state and federal tax-payer money used to buy new weapons, vehicles,
chemical munitions, and armor. They get to keep all these goodies to use
against whomever crosses their path in the future. So little pebbles
getting tossed at robo-cops become boulders and little marches becoming
security threats.

To match these two forces, the protest groups, especially my own
comrades in the anarchist groups, inflate their stories, numbers, and
actions to try to gain support and build momentum, and to make them feel
better. So a dumpster getting rolled down a street into an intersection
will be heroized in well-designed pamphlets to come and talked about for
years the way my generation still talks about the fence-chasing incident
at A16, (World Bank/IMF protests on April 16, 2000 in DC).

What is so crazy about all of this, this inflation is that it doesn't
seem to help. As an organizer with a decade of experience in all types
of work, from anarchist organizations to peace groups to labor
organizing, I don't think over-hyping our actions does anything for us.
In fact, I think it works to our disadvantage. It adds to a culture of
dishonesty, of not addressing our shortcomings, of not reflecting and
refining our work.

Now Pittsburgh had a crowd of 4,000-10,000 people according to different
reports. While this is a big number in general, it's not so big compared
to public opinions on such issues at the bailout, corporate executive
bonuses, or the global economic order in general. Most folks in the U.S.
are pretty angry, from the far left to the independent
right/libertarians. Instead of congratulating ourselves on a "large
turnout", we should be asking why it wasn't nearly size of most anti-war
demonstrations that have happened. Not to put ourselves down in anyway,
but to consider the factors so that we can go about building a stronger
movement for economic justice. When we don't look into these factors, we
are walking blind.

Another major issue in these protests is that when militant groups
over-hype themselves before-hand, to make themselves seem bigger, more
powerful, and often more willing to use violence or property
destruction, they invite and allow public justification for large,
well-funded and well-equipped police action... And they are not prepared
to take it. They are usually fronting, thinking that talking big will
make the actual thing big. This is not how organizing works. You
actually have to do the work, not just front like you have. You end up
in dangerous situations when you do this.

A flimsy PVC-reinforced banner is not going to last long against a few
riot-police, it never has. I've seen it many times and it's never done
anything more than look cool in a photo to those who've never seen the
damn things break on impact. I once saw a cop beat an anarchist with a
piece of his own broken PVC "shield" banner.

I came from this scene, learned all the tactical terms, and met many
good people who I ran in the streets with, and we got into some crazy
situations. I have been around the bloc a few times. I have inhaled tear
gas and pepper spray, heard the close-up clicks on the infamous taser,
and heard the sobering sounds of riot batons breaking human bones. I
once saw a guy almost burn a hole in his hand throwing a tear gas
canister back at the police in Quebec City in 2001. At the beginning of
the Iraq war, I helped drag a 16 year-old girl away from a group of
police who were beating her in DC. Both her ankles and one of her arms
were broken. In Miami in 2003, I heard the explosion of "less-lethal"
weapons and heard a loud pop next to me. As I turned, a middle-aged
woman was starting to run away with blood literally pouring out of her
mouth. She had been hit in the face with a rubber bullet.

After that incident I began a long reflective process, one that started
in the bloodstained streets of Miami and hasn't stopped yet, hopefully
it never will. Something clicked when the blood poured out of this
woman's mouth; this is for real. I am really here and we are really
getting the shit kicked out of us. What before seemed sort of fun, sort
of therapeutic, sort of educational, now seemed totally dangerous,
serious, and life-threatening.

It also became clear that our actions in the streets were not usually
connected to any real strategy to achieve change, no goals that we could
attain, no real meaning for being there at that time, besides to ruin
the party for the bigwigs. Not that that's a bad thing to do, it's just
not worth my eye, hand, or life. It went on like this for years for me
before I sobered up, took a step back, and realized I was in the middle
of a big mess, a mess with very few details. It was like a messy room
that only has large furniture in it, no scraps of paper, no old dishes,
no crumbs. Everything upon observation was really clear, it was obvious
what was wrong.

I began to think about my purpose for protest, my desire for economic
and social justice, peace, and equality. As I reflected, I became
disillusioned with protest, burned out, depressed, and lost. It took a
while to crawl out of it, but I came out on top. I learned a lot during
my down time and came to some understandings.

One of the clearest understandings I reached, one that was really
solidified recently after reading a book called War Is A Force That
Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges, is that me and many friends were
pretty much addicted to these intense street situations. We were
engaging in "combat scenarios" and really, to a scary degree, creating
mini-war scenes where we could play out some strange fantasies.

War is A Force That Gives Us Meaning talks about the strange attraction
that people have to war, even those highly opposed to it. Even those
scarred by it, terrified by it, and deeply effected by it. Some go into
war and get real messed up, vowing to never return, only to soon find
themselves desiring that adrenaline, the fear, the intensity. Hedges was
a journalist in Bosnia, El Salvador, Lebanon, and Iraq. He realized
after many years that he was experiencing a type of addiction, seeking a
high that can only be attained in a combat situation.

I fear that we too, anarchists and street militants, have similar
symptoms. We intentionally go into situations that we know are
dangerous, that we often know don't really have any solid plan. Maybe
it's part machismo, maybe it's part desperation, maybe it's part legit
too, but I think it's a lot of high-seeking. We desire the intensity,
the rush. We get to enact roles that we don't get to enact in our
everyday lives, heroism, bravery, sacrifice, quick thinking,
fear-testing, and some forms of solidarity. We also get to experience
prison, pain, and life-changing trauma.

All of this is well worth it if we have our eyes on the prize and are
fully aware of the risks, reasons, and responsibilities of these types
of actions. The risks are obvious, the reasons usually are few and far
between (meaning we usually don't have a very sound strategic approach
to protest that results in the real changes we desire). The
responsibilities are usually totally missing, aside from street medics
and basic legal support. But larger ones, like trauma support for years
afterwards, support for those abused in prison, networks of real care
and compassion like those veterans have created with groups like Vets 4
Vets and Homefront Battle Buddies to heal from the painful experiences
of violence, don't exist yet.

I have seen all of this go pretty much unnoticed by those of us who
organized actions that resulted in the trauma, like those of us who
helped organize in Miami. A lot of us who were there learned that lesson
real quick afterwards, but a bit too late. I know a woman who has full
audio/visual flashbacks from Miami, another parallel with war, and a
common symptom of PTSD. Many of my friends have PTSD from their
experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. It would not be surprising if many
of us have been coping with similar effects from Philadelphia, Miami,
DC, and St. Paul and didn't know it because we are not in a movement
that is prepared to handle or reflective enough to admit such things.

While the experiences of violence can easily change you, I don't want to
dwell on this too much. I don't want my point to get blurred. I'm not
scared of violence all the time. I'm not against violence all the time.
I'm not against riots all the time, and I'm not against folks putting
themselves in harms way just to prove a point all the time. But I am no
longer lending my support to these acts if they are not solidly rooted
in an organizational and movement-wide foundation, supported by large
numbers of people who understand their purpose and the steps to take
afterwards. If we are "stepping it up" or "escalating" without the
massive numbers of people that we were previously standing with, we are
losing people, and are thus destined to fail. I don't want to be in a
people-less movement, I want to build strong movements that can take
bold and seemingly dangerous steps together, growing as they move
forward. This can justify the risk.

On the question of "Violence VS Non-Violence" I opt out. I respond with
a better question: "What is your goal?". Then I consider the goals, how
they link up to a larger strategy, and how it effects its movement as a
whole. "Will it make you stronger?". "Will it hurt your organizing
efforts?". These are the relevant questions. Then I ask, "What do you
need to do to achieve your goal?". Then I consider the question of
violence or non-violence. It's more of a tactical concern, and tactical
concerns stem from a goal, which usually stems from an even bigger goal,
which stems from a strategy.

If you roll a dumpster at the police, why are you doing it? To prove a
point? To block a street? To open a street? To cause a diversion to pull
off another action? To impress the media? To impress your friends? To
get it out of the way? To get it in the way? These are relevant
questions, far more relevant than whether or not it's morally acceptable
to roll a dumpster around. But then you must ask yourself why you are
trying to achieve that tactical goal. Are you blockading a meeting? Are
you causing chaos to make the summit look bad? Are you trying to get
media attention? Do you want revenge on the police? Then you must ask
yourself why you are blockading the meeting or causing chaos or trying
to get on TV. Who are you trying to effect? Who's your base? If you want
media attention, who are you trying to reach out to? What is your
message for them? If you are trying to cause chaos, what is the purpose?
Who is it serving? How is it advancing your goals? What effect will it
have on your movement next week, next month, next year? What is the
follow-up to all of this?

That's how winning movements think. Those are the critical questions to
ask, among others. Unfortunately, I never experienced a single anarchist
group that considered any of this. We just went out and did the craziest
stuff, had a few parties/events in the next few months, and started the
next round of last-minute militant protest organizing, building for our
next street-fantasy, the omnipresent and mythological "next Seattle". We
were chasing a high that we didn't even understand.

In pursuit of this high, we got lost in our own imagery and rhetoric. We
convinced ourselves that we, the anarchists, were the movement. We were
the ones who were important, the ones who made the difference between a
dinky permitted march and a history-making mobilization. We used Seattle
as the ultra-reference, where a group of a few dozen black bloc
anarchists caused over 4 million dollars in property damage. Nevermind
the other 49,000 + people in Seattle's actions, sacrifices, and hard
work. Nevermind the union workers rushing into downtown to defend those
doing civil disobedience. Nevermind those who locked down peacefully or
used human chains to blockade delegate hotels. We were too obsessed with
ourselves to let other folks steal out glory. We called them all
"liberals", and this was the ultimate diss.

A recent Crimethinc report on the Pittsburgh G20 says that the black
bloc-portion of the protests "signifies the survival of militant street
resistance in the Obama era.". But I ask to what end? Militant street
resistance against what? For what? What kind of vague movement are we
part of if we discuss our tactics as if they are the very point of using
them? Is "militant street protest" an end in itself? Why? What about the
"survival of a sustained movement for economic justice"? Why don't we
discuss the things we are working for? Are we working for "militant
street protests" or are we working towards a broad social goal? Do
anarchists no longer think in terms of issues, goals, or things they
care about? Just vague notions of "freedom" (like the freedom to light a
dumpster on fire) or "resistance" (a habit of attending and organizing
semi-annual pre-staged battles with the police)?

This insurrectionary rhetoric that is so popular today among us young
anarchists is belittling and destroying anarchism. It's turning it into
a mythic fantasy world, where things magically change because someone
breaks a window or quits their job. And it's pulling a lot of young
people into situations where they are often hurting long-term movements
for change, rather than reinforcing them. Today's "Anarchism" is too
disconnected from larger movements, too fragmented in it's own, and too
carried away with it's own romanticism.

These are serious critiques and questions from a comrade, someone who
throws their heart into positive work every day for serious, radical
social change. I write not to piss my friends off or put people down,
but to challenge -urge- my friends to think very critically, very...
Critically enough to make a meeting suck. Enough to make you really
frustrated. Enough to spark heated but respectful discussion. Enough to
make the work hard and controversial. It's not supposed to be this fun.
The fun comes from the struggle. The fun is in light of the struggle. We
don't struggle enough. We play around issues, organizing these events
where we experience "street liberation", the high, and then spend the
next few months coming down from it until we re-up. Crimethinc mentions
the great high later in the same article, without admitting the
contradictions of this strange addiction: "No words can do justice to
this experience, but it is real".

Is that why you take the streets, fellow anarchists? Are you searching
for that feeling that cannot be explained? That adrenaline rush, that
fear? Ask yourself this, and ask it in a serious way. Because if you,
are you should reconsider your role in social movements, how you
participate, how your actions reverberate, what effects they have on
others. And perhaps you should take a deep breath and consider your
priorities and those of the people around you. There's too much at stake
to waste our time and energy preparing for and executing these
theater-like confrontations.

The anarchist groups are full of good people, committed, and hopefully
those who will help contribute to positive social changes in our
lifetimes. It is for you, the committed anarchists, that I write this. I
want you to take my words seriously, because we have a lot of work to
do, and most of it is not going to get done in the streets. It's going
to get done on the doorsteps, the libraries, the churches, the labor
halls, the schools, the military bases, the parks, the prisons, the
abortion clinics, the neighborhood associations, the PTAs. And whatever
it is, it's not going to be called Anarchism and it's not going to look
like what you think it's going to look like. It's going to be new,
fresh, original, organic, unique, and real. And it's going to be a
combination of all of our society's best politics, ideas, experiences,
and sincerity. And we are going to help make it happen.

Let's take anarchism out of the streets for a while and put it back in
the communities where it was born.
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