Mark Laskey replies to Albert's "On Trashing and Movement Building"

[ Here is something that I wrote and posted to the Food Not Bombs list in response to Micheal Albert's essay "On Trashing and Movement Building" that is being posted by a few non-violent types to discredit the actions of militant anarchists. At last year's anarchist bookfair here in Boston, I had the ill-fortune of dealing with the pretentious and arrogant personality of Mr. Albert in scheduling his talk, so admittedly I took a bit a pleasure in criticizing his essay (which I posted below my response), hopefully this doesn't shine through in any of my arguements... -------MaRK ]

It is nice that Mr. Albert took the time to offer his own detailed critical analysis on the controversial topic of the more militant forms of direct action that took place in Seattle. It is also nice to see him refrain from much of the sensationalist arguements that many others have resorted to when they have dealt with this subjct. Overall, I agree with the purpose of this essay (namely, that we should always be able to step back and be critical of our actions), however, I have a few disagreements of not only the conclusions that he comes up with in this essay, but the entire context in which he places his arguement within.

Firstly, as with much of the criticisms coming from liberal-left, the arguement starts off by painting a false picture of the 50,000 demonstrators who made up the opposition to the WTO in Seattle as a near-harmonious working group with a democratically agreed upon idea of what forms of protest were to take place, and unfortunately (parroting much of the mainstream media's spin on the situation), a few bad apples managed to spoil the whole week's worth of events and severely damage all hope of salvaging any sort of sustainable movement. I don't know, Michael is one of those sock and sandel kind of guys, so maybe he really believes in these wide-spread "mutually respectful ties" between the varying constituencies on hand and the unspoken democratic tactical understandings between the thousands of activists. For myself, I am not a sock and sandel kind of guy. My perception of the varying constituencies of demonstrators is a bit less "feel good". Essentially, though we all came to Seattle against the same common enemy, we did so with everyone having their own sets of agendas, and their own ideas of how their voice was going to be heard. This encompassed everything from the far-right to the revolutionary left. Concerning the democratic validity of the varying tactical forms of protest, well, it is quite true that nobody was consulted over the potential for strategic economic trashings. However, in pointing this out many proponents of non-violent civil disobedience overlook one important thing, namely that a great many demonstrators were also not consulted over the planned civil disobedience. Many representatives from various NGOs travelled halfway across the globe to voice their concerns over the impact of globalization in their home countries during the Ministerial forums and were downright furious that they were being blocked from doing so. I saw more than one occasion where perfectly legitimate critics of the WTO, some of whom coming from the poorest regions in the world, were not allowed to voice their protest to the WTO in the way they deemed most effective (by actually taking part in the Ministerial proceedings as a dissenting voice) because they were unable to make it through non-violent blockades, in many cases blockaders would not even engage in any sort of dialogue with the angered "suit-and-tie demonstrators". Is this not an example of certain protestors using tactics that are contrary to the means of protest to be used by another? Was any degree of "coherence, trust and solidarity" fostered between these two activist constituencies? No. The point I am trying to make is that there were many levels of tactical antagonism at work in Seattle, with the window-breaking anarchists receiving far too much of the spotlight (of course the beauty of the situation for non-violent activists and liberal leftists is that much of the tactics that they hold dear, which at one point in history caused nothing but reactionary disgust amongst a majority of mainstream American society, now look quite mild and acceptable in comparison to the politically motivated property destruction of certain factions of militant anarchists).

If we are going to be completely analytical about how certain tactics play a dynamic role in popular movement building, we should not pretend that our arguement holds more weight simply because we pay some sort of homage to the "the majority" who we perceive to share our views. For all of the dogmatically non-violent people who claim to be acting in the interest of "the majority", we should take a step back and ask "the majority of who?". First off, it would be ridiculous to think that they are representing "the majority" of Americans, because a majority of Americans do not support overtly political acts of any kind on the part of individuals that involves disruption (even non-violent disruption). Secondly, I am not even all that sure that non-violent civil disobedience was adamently supported by "the majority" of demonstrators who made it out to Seattle, considering that out of 50,000 demonstrators, under 5,000 took part in these actions. And amongst those who did give overwhelming support to the non-violent civil disobedience, there was all sorts of disagreements on tactical savvy, ranging from locking-arms and singing to building barricades out of garbage dumpsters and overturned police cars. Comparatively, the more militant forms of protest -- including smashing windows, clashes with police, spraypainting and barricade building -- enjoyed a far more diverse make-up in regards to race and class (while, admittingly, remaining predominently youth based), whereas the most rabid partisans of dogmatic pacifism (i.e. "the peace police") were almost always, without fail, white, middle class and politically liberal in temperment. This may come as a shock to some, but a good many of us don't place white middle class liberals as a high priorty in our political outreach. Just as many non-violent activists had no problem alienating the many suit-and-tie activists who came to Seattle to use the WTO Summit as a forum for their dissenting views by shutting them out of the meetings, many of us have no problem alienating white middle class liberals by disregarding their definitions of what constitutes as "legitimate forms of protest". We do not want to build a movement that is dominated by white middle class values, and we do not want to restrict ourselves to a politically liberal temperment. Unlike liberals, a good many of us don't get that icky feeling inside when we do something that is perceived confrontational or alienating to a good many people if in our hearts we feel passionately that it is the right thing to do.

There are also other problems with some of the arguements posed in this essay, such as mystifying some forms of "trashings" as being "organic" in nature (such as burning and bombing ROTC buildings during a prolonged anti-war movement) therefore making them acceptable (or at least acceptable 30 years later!) and condemning other forms of "trashings" as "alienating" and "unnecessay". Acting as if most of the people involved with the "destructive" actions (such as window breaking and spraypainting) had nothing to do with any the "creative" actions throughout the week (such as the non-violent blockades, the festive resistance, etc.). Overlooking the fact that if not for the militant and "alienating" forms of action that took place in Seattle, the resistance against the WTO would not have enjoyed the world-wide attention that it did. Insinuating that these actions "dilluted" the overall political content of the protests (when in actuality they were partly responsible for making the WTO a household word). Blaming these actions for the brutal repression that we all suffered at the hands of the police. And finally, and this is the most disturbing (but perhaps this was unintentional), casting relatively small-scale property destruction authored by anarchists (which was largely symbolic destruction, considering that if they wanted to achieve large-scale economic destruction they would have used more than rocks, hammers and crowbars and it probably would not have taken place in the light of day) in the same light as Weatherman bombings.

My feelings on the subject are summed nicely by a quote given by William Domhoff (from his book "The Power Elite and the State"):

"...Liberals, labor, and minorities, despite their great numbers, never win much against the conservative coalition unless there is a fear of disruption and violence loose in the land due to the actions of strikers, civil rights demonstrators, angry rioters in northern ghettos, or students demonstrating against wars... I am asserting that social disruption, whether violent or non-violent, is an essential factor in any successful challenge to the power structures in the United States."

-------------MaRK