[Note:  The original part 1 was somehow truncated.  The following txt should be
inserted between part 1 and part 2 of this open letter:]



An activist  by the name of Jeffrey White circulated a copy of the M30 Black
Bloc ACME collective’s manifesto
(http://216.173.206.96/display.php3?article_id=508) [to which your earlier
missive,“On Trashing and Movement Building,” was meant as a response],  to a
group of 300 or so fairly liberal folks on the East Coast.  Here is a sample of
the feedback he received , by a correspondent named Sondra Shaievitz, a New
York  lawyer:


"I think these people are so fucked up to destroy other people's property and
livelihoods.  They use what they personally believe in to lull themselves into
a strong enough feeling of self righteousness and narcissism to purposefully
delude themselves into thinking their actions are justified. And this bit about
their non-violence?  Is that a joke?  They sure as hell would think it was
violent if someone destroyed their property.  They must know that some poor
schmuck who is trying to make a living from owning one small Starbuck's or
McDonald's (if these are franchises) has no influence over corporate
decisions.  Isn't it nice for them that their lives are so cushy that they
don't have to depend on a job working in some chain store to feed and clothe
their families?

  "Of course, these people probably are not old enough to have families of
their own yet.  They may see things alittle differently when that time comes.
Although I totally agree with the changes in policy that these people are
trying to achieve, THEY ARE ATTACKING THE WRONG PEOPLE.  They should target the
corporate decision-makers of these stores, in a TRULY non-violent way, not the
working stiffs trying to support themselves.  How dare they invade other
people's lives in such a destructive way?  I don't care if my opinion is not
"cool.”

  "When these people get alittle older, perhaps they will develop more empathy
for people just trying to make their way in this world.  It's not so easy once
you no longer are heavily subsidized by your parents.  Peace."


Sondra’s comments seem to me to typify the response of many thinking people to
the wanton property destruction that took place in Seattle, and its specious
justification by the anarchists in question.

In the first place, as she observes, these anarchists hit pretty wide of the
real target, the decision-makers at the WTO.  In the second place, the
practical results of their destructive activity for real working people and
struggling small business owners is brought into focus, a consideration
entirely ignored by these anarchists themselves.  Query:  did activists go to
Seattle to ignore the needs of real working people, and to make their lives
more difficult, or to protest and/or block those who were doing so (i.e., the
WTO)?

Another woman highly critical of this tactic, Tresy Kilbourne, offers this
eyewitness account in response to the communique:


“What a bunch of horseshit. Let me tell you about the "anarchist bloc", which I
had the memorable experience of following on their initial rampage:

  "I first came across them at Westlake Center, where they were engaged in
overturning newspaper vending machines and stomping on them, scattering their
contents far and wide. To the repeated pleas of the nonviolent protesters to
stop, they responded in their preferred argot: a string of profanities.  "This
is OUR fucking thing, aright?" one of them intelligently screamed. "If you
don't like it, you can go do your own fucking thing somewhere ELSE!! Got it?!?"

  "'But why must you destroy everything?' pleaded one. 'What possible good can
come of this?'
  'Because it's the whole fucking system, man, that has to be torn DOWN! I HATE
this fucking place!'

" 'But WE don't! We live here! We LOVE Seattle! Can't you just let us have our
city?'

  "'NO!!! I HATE your fucking city!!! It makes me SICK! I want to tear it all
DOWN!! You know that? I want to destroy fucking everything and.... and... plant
a fucking GARDEN!!!'  Whereupon a comrade tapped him on the shoulder, they
cranked up the thrash metal on their boombox (good for gardening, I hear), and
they mounted their bikes for their next destination. Which was where I
photographed their initial rampage against local businesses.

  This is where the hypocrisy in the referenced communique really shines. They
make it sound like their targets were carefully selected. They weren't.
Everything in their path was trashed. Note the picture in Day3 of my website
[http://www.kilbourne-quirk.com/WTO/World.html] of the nonviolents cleaning an
abandoned 5-and-10 storefront of graffiti. Some oppressor of the working
class!  Also choice was their justification for trashing Starbucks ("peddlers
of an addictive substance whose  products are harvested at below-poverty wages
by farmers who are forced to destroy their own forests in the process"). With
nicknames like "Meth," it should hardly be surprising that everyone of them was
a heavy smoker. You didn't notice any smoke shops being put to the torch.  As
for their pious distinction between violence against property and violence
against people, that's horseshit too. Not only did one vandal try to spray
paint me when I took a picture of him, but later several of them tried to mug
me with crowbars for the same offense. The papers carried accounts from other
participants to the same effect.”

(this is the correct end of part 1; please proceed to "part
2")