Mayday protests turn violent in Seattle

[Generic Other]

http://media.komonews.com/images/120501_b_May+Day+Occupy+Seattle-22.jpg



http://www.komonews.com/

[Generic Other]

1. more pics

http://media.komonews.com/images/120501_b_May+Day+Occupy+Seattle-1.jpg

http://media.komonews.com/images/120501_b_May+Day+Occupy+Seattle-4.jpg

[Generic Other]

2. May Day demonstrations turn ugly in downtown Seattle

<snip>

Leaving the park, the group soon grew from about 50 to a couple of hundred people. While many in the marching crowd were peaceful, simply chanting and carrying signs, it soon became clear that a fringe group was ready to cause problems.

The group, with no apparent leader, was easy to spot. Most were dressed in all black and had bandannas or scarves covering their faces. As the crowd winded its way through the streets of downtown Seattle with no apparent direction, it eventually became violent. At the old Federal Courthouse at 1010 5th Ave., vandals smashed three plate glass doors on the back of the building.

The group continued down Sixth Ave., eventually smashing plate glass windows at the NikeTown store. In front of the store, parked cars were targeted. Windshields on the cars were shattered, tires slashed. As the vandals moved farther down the street, Seattle Police arrived in full force. Dozens in full riot gear came up behind the group.

<snip>

“A number of the core group of 'Black Bloc' members returned to Westlake, where we saw some of them live on video changing back into street clothes and blending into the crowd,” said McGinn.

http://www.king5.com/news/cities/seattle/May-Day-protests--149640725.html

[AmazingSchnitzel]

3. Always a few...

[Generic Other]

4. Personally I think Wells Fargo deserves a few broken windows

Here's the real terrorists if you ask me:
http://media.komonews.com/images/120501_b_May+Day+Occupy+Seattle-15.jpg

[Xedniw]

5. Black Bloc (Agent Provacateurs): Chris Hedges warned about these guys

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_cancer_of_occupy_20120206/

The Black Bloc anarchists, who have been active on the streets in Oakland and other cities, are the cancer of the Occupy movement. The presence of Black Bloc anarchists—so named because they dress in black, obscure their faces, move as a unified mass, seek physical confrontations with police and destroy property—is a gift from heaven to the security and surveillance state. The Occupy encampments in various cities were shut down precisely because they were nonviolent. They were shut down because the state realized the potential of their broad appeal even to those within the systems of power. They were shut down because they articulated a truth about our economic and political system that cut across political and cultural lines. And they were shut down because they were places mothers and fathers with strollers felt safe.

Black Bloc adherents detest those of us on the organized left and seek, quite consciously, to take away our tools of empowerment. They confuse acts of petty vandalism and a repellent cynicism with revolution. The real enemies, they argue, are not the corporate capitalists, but their collaborators among the unions, workers’ movements, radical intellectuals, environmental activists and populist movements such as the Zapatistas. Any group that seeks to rebuild social structures, especially through nonviolent acts of civil disobedience, rather than physically destroy, becomes, in the eyes of Black Bloc anarchists, the enemy. Black Bloc anarchists spend most of their fury not on the architects of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or globalism, but on those, such as the Zapatistas, who respond to the problem. It is a grotesque inversion of value systems.

Because Black Bloc anarchists do not believe in organization, indeed oppose all organized movements, they ensure their own powerlessness. They can only be obstructionist. And they are primarily obstructionist to those who resist. John Zerzan, one of the principal ideologues of the Black Bloc movement in the United States, defended “Industrial Society and Its Future,” the rambling manifesto by Theodore Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, although he did not endorse Kaczynski’s bombings. Zerzan is a fierce critic of a long list of supposed sellouts starting with Noam Chomsky. Black Bloc anarchists are an example of what Theodore Roszak in “The Making of a Counter Culture” called the “progressive adolescentization” of the American left....

“Their thinking is not only nonstrategic, but actively opposed to strategy,” said Jensen, author of several books, including “The Culture of Make Believe.” “They are unwilling to think critically about whether one is acting appropriately in the moment. I have no problem with someone violating boundaries [when] that violation is the smart, appropriate thing to do. I have a huge problem with people violating boundaries for the sake of violating boundaries. It is a lot easier to pick up a rock and throw it through the nearest window than it is to organize, or at least figure out which window you should throw a rock through if you are going to throw a rock. A lot of it is laziness.”

[Generic Other]

6. So how do they organize these "events"?

Because clearly they were prepared and not just in Seattle. Also why is HS on the scene? Do the Black block people look like undercover cops? Are they? Are they libertarian assholes? They certainly don't help any non-violent movement with their behavior.

Aside from the banks, there was no reason to be violent. And even attacking banks is iffy.

[panader0]

7. The "mosh pit" of the Occupy Movement........n/t