(Photo: Paul Weiskel)
First your article is titled “Black Blockers Vow to Continue Attacking” when I don’t think that’s accurate. A more accurate title might be “Black Blockers Vow to Continue Self-Defense.” In the Anarchist News article you quoted it states:
Upwards of 300 people showed up and immediately took the streets after a violent confrontation with the hundreds of police intent on stopping us.
And:
no small accomplishment given the heavy-handed police presence brought about by the widely-circulated NYPD SHIELD Counter-Terrorism memo that detailed the importance of stopping the Wildcat March from happening.
As well as:
Most telling, however, was the fact that photographers in the midst of the bloc explicitly stated their intent to de-mask participants.
And:
One photographer, who has yet to be identified, was confronted by a masked young woman. She told him to “get his fucking camera out of [her] face”. After repeating this several times, she pushed his camera away, and he promptly sucker punched her in the face.
In short, a tense group of people started a march that was attacked by police. The violent state-funded oppressors, of course, were arresting these protesters in order to deter them from marching, as their own literature discussed. Meanwhile, cameramen were infiltrating the group and unmasking them. Unmasking someone involves putting your hands on them and removing an article of their clothing. And you’re shocked that that sort of assault would meet with resistance? I call stopping someone from putting their hands on your face self-defense –especially in a straining confrontation with a corrupt and violent police force.
Also, your article states “Six Black Bloc members were arrested in New York City during the May Day protests,” but it does not state what these people were arrested for. As many Occupiers can tell you, and as you yourself know well, police arrests don’t necessarily equate with something moral or ethical. And yet, you’re all too happy to provide their mugshots on your website. Which is the Anarchist’s criticism of the photographers in the first place: you’re helping the corrupt police force, you’re helping society shame these people –even on sketchy details or no details at all—just because of an amorphous idea that anyone in Black Bloc must automatically be bad.
Ignoring, of course, the LA Activist story that recently lauded Black Blockers for placing themselves in front of police to attract police attention, and to keep the May Day marches moving. Or the Oakland Black Blockers who shielded protesters from a violent corrupt police force intent on harming them and other demonstrators.
You finish your article with this smirking admonition:
I imagine they will be attending the Republican National Convention protests in Tampa this August, so I hope they are aware that we have this controversial “Stand Your Ground” law that allows gun owners to kill anybody that is a perceived threat to them.
Are you suggesting RNC convention-goers would be justified and state-authorized to shoot anyone in Black Bloc? (And yet, Anarchists are the ones who are portrayed as violent.) Haven’t recent events in Florida swayed us from perpetrating violence upon each other and couching it in the protections of this law?
This is where we must depart in our debate. I cannot excuse the state-justified killing of anyone, not Black Bloc, not journalists, not anyone. The state murders enough people without my help.
