Occupy Tactics: Violence and Legitimacy in the Occupy Movement and Beyond

[tama]

2. Thanks for the links

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.