Diversity of tactics = rubbish
I’m trying to make sense of this whole diversity of tactics business. And I can’t. I’m going to earn the enmity of a lot of folks who might normally consider me an ally, but what the hell. I understand the phrase to mean: deliberate property damage as a protest tactic is okay.
I work for unions. I have for a long time. I like strikes. They’re risky. They’re a direct confrontation between authority and people and they cost the enemy (the employer) money.
So in some ways, I suppose I should understand bashing windows, cop cars and the like as part of a protest. It’s risky, involves confrontation and it costs the capitalists (the enemy) money. It makes sense, I suppose, insofaras most of the folks doing the smashing (the ones that aren’t members of the police union) don’t have a union to organize a strike for them.
Strikes, though, are legal (within the strictures of the labour code anyway).
That’s unfair to people who aren’t unionized and want to hit their oppressors where it hurts, so it’s not a compelling reason to be pro-strike but anti-property destruction.
What is compelling, though, is the fact that with strikes, there’s an exit point. And there’s something to be gained. If you play your cards right, at the bargaining table, you can actually end the strike by raising working peoples’ wages.
Not all strikes end well. Sometimes that’s not the union’s fault. Sometimes it is. But at some point, it’s over and we can see how we did. When they go well, they can bring a group of people together, and show them their power.
But this business with the burning the cop cars and smashing the windows during the G20 protest in Toronto – how did the bashers think that was supposed to end? And what exactly was the purpose? Moreover what has it cost us?
People who supported doing the property damage have written that it showed the state that even with $1 billion in security they still couldn’t protect their property, and it cost the capitalists some money (the insurance companies, anyway) though we don’t know how much.
So that’s on the plus side of the ledger. On the negative side, we have the trauma that at least around 900 people suffered as the cops played out their fantasies, tried out their new toys and tactics on anyone who looked vaguely like a demonstrator.
Also, the further marginalization of progressive ideas and alienation of social change movements. Mass demonstrations now mean kettling, mass arrest and 36 hours handcuffed in a cage. Who is going to want to be part of that? If I can’t bring my four year old, I don’t want to be part of that revolution, dudes.
And public opinion? Hardening against demonstrations and supporting the police.
I know online opinion polls are rubbish, but for want of a real one, I give you this evidence. A Globe opinion poll about the security expenses for the G20 summit prior to the demonstrations found 68% of the Globe’s normally conservative readers saying the expense was unjustified.
After G20 fracas, the Star’s normally liberal readers were pretty much evenly split on the issue of whether the police’s response to the protest – including gross violations of civil rights etc – was justified.
Before the G20 demo: the Globe'e conservative readers say security costs unjustified
After: Star readers split on whether cops were justified
More polling will come and I predict it will confirm the thesis that deliberate property damage as a political tactic hardens public opinion against those who do it and the causes they support.
As ‘out there’ as we want to be, we still need public opinion and popular support if we want to actually make the change we claim to want. It is, after all, these people who we claim to speak for and on whose behalf we claim to act.
July 2nd, 2010 at 11:50 pm
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July 2nd, 2010 at 11:52 pm
Window smashing a gift to the security forces, no question. In my opinion it played into the choreography of the whole weekend, in that I am convinced that the police watched it happen to justify the expense of the weekend, and to justify filling the detention centre with innocent people the next day.
What’s totally lost in the received story is that 10,000 or more peacefully protested; lots of children *were* in the march; and their moms and dads had them all home safely before anything went down. It is extremely damaging to our traditions of dissent that next time around families won’t be there at all. I can’t help but contrast this development with the huge anti-cruise demos of the 1980′s in Toronto (heavily promoted by the Star, too, with pull-out sections just like they run for big festivals) that were considered a celebratory family day out by massive numbers of Torontonians. That peaceful festival atmosphere is gone now, and with it the possibility of engaging mainstream Canadians.
July 3rd, 2010 at 5:32 am
Well said.
July 3rd, 2010 at 7:04 am
That’s why the police were ordered to not stop the vandals for over two hours, and let some glass get broken for the TV cameras.
The police commanders would have let a city block burn to the ground, as they refused to deploy the water cannon or firetrucks. It could have been ever worse.
Face-masks need to be banned from any proper protest.
Also, it does appear some of the vandals may have been Agents to juice the vandalism. The authorities love vandalism, it makes them a lot of money.
July 3rd, 2010 at 8:22 am
By the latest poll, two-thirds of Canadians support the police. That’s because they saw the violence on TV and condemned it. But so did the labour movement and other responsible protest organizers.
Yes, the police were justified in arresting the Black Blog thugs. This does not justify arresting journalists and hundreds of other innocent people who were then released without charge.
If we don’t start on the same page as the mass of the population, we’re spitting into the wind, and paving the way for a Harper majority this fall.
July 3rd, 2010 at 9:22 am
Good piece. Dude, I disagree about the facemasks. If you get caught with goggles or a gas mask or a respirator, you get arrested. The only other way to protect yourself from teargas is a bandana around the face. Though I totally disagree with the anonimity thing, which is where I think you’re going with that.
July 3rd, 2010 at 9:30 am
I think my greatest frustration has been that hardly anyone actually wants to talk seriously about tactics and strategies, on either side. Or even what the feck the objective of said strategies might be. To me, the terminology is misleading. I understand any strategy for change to require a diversity of tactics; that is, at any given point in any given struggle a distinct range of tactics can (and should) be agreed on in order to further an agreed on strategy. Well, we don’t have much of a consensus on strategy, and so the diversity of tactics is reduced to freedom of self expression in the face of repression – conceptual/vicarious or real. The great thing about confrontational tactics, or expression, is that one can shift positions from privileged to repressed and feel personally and physically involved in struggles that may otherwise be somewhat abstract. But I digress. My point is that there must be a strategy in order to talk about tactics, and if there are actually different and incompatible strategies being developed, then perhaps it is indeed time to take a hard look at what kind of consensus is possible. And I think this may be a huge challenge given that very few of the elements of the anti-corporate globalisation movement actually use consensus in their own internal decision making (i.e. neither the CLAC with its 75% majority, nor the unions with a simple majority, nor NGOs with internally-appointed directors…).
At some point we have to get to the point of deciding whether and to what extent diverging tactics, strategies, and even objectives, are complementary and compatible. Don’t get me wrong, I am always looking for the broadest coalition possible for whatever effort is underway. Apart from specific defensive situations I can’t think of examples of small focused groups and actions have actually accomplished anything (including Greenpeace, sorry!). But if the tactics we’re using are creating internal conflict in the broader movement rather than helping build it either in size or commitment, then there’s a problem. I’m willing to call bullshit on anyone who calls freedom of self-expression a “tactic”. So who’s going to be brave enough to allow the strategic discussion to happen?
July 4th, 2010 at 8:56 pm
Very well put Chris — I especially feel the part about bringing our kids to protests. I was taken to some pretty “interesting” rallies as a child (as well as a picket-line where my father and brother were arrested — in dad’s case after a cop assaulted him) but last Saturday I was VERY relieved that my 15-year-old got on a bus back to London by 3 or so in the afternoon, before the worst broke loose in Toronto.
And if I can’t bring my kids safely, I can’t in all conscience ask members of my union or others to attend either.
I spent most of Saturday in court at Finch and Hwy 400 (bailing a friend on bullshit charges from Friday), but found some compelling observations from someone else in London about Bloc tactics
http://londoncommons.ca/node/7596
July 6th, 2010 at 4:20 pm
Spot on. A tactic is an attempt to get something done. So, if there’s nothing that’s reasonably hoped to be achieved, then it isn’t a tactic at all, let alone a good one. It’s just acting out.
Further, if the goal of public protest is to get a message across, and this one group is preventing the other 10,000+ protesters from getting their message across, then it’s very much a good thing for the state.
Damaging public property is not a win, though, since one wing of the government losing money doesn’t disempower them at all. This event will be used to justify a higher federal police budget, if anything.
July 7th, 2010 at 12:00 am
Diversity of tactics is a phrase used to allow for all forms of protest – violent, non-violent, provocative, anarcho-syndacalistic, etc among a group. The group itself gets to decide what is relevant, allowable, sensible or agreeable. I've been involved in a several demonstrations where the majority had decided that non-violent measures were the only acceptable means of protest, diverse as they were. I've also been in others where strict rules were applied that distanced violent protests from the non-violent variety, to make distinct those who were opposed from those who were in favor – It was about not abandoning your comrades. In short, diversity of tactics doesn't mean that the particular group has to allow ANY form of protest to take place, but the democratic power lies with those who are doing the organizing. One cannot sit on their hands in these discussions . . .
July 7th, 2010 at 12:00 am
Diversity of tactics is a phrase used to allow for all forms of protest – violent, non-violent, provocative, anarcho-syndacalistic, etc among a group. The group itself gets to decide what is relevant, allowable, sensible or agreeable. I've been involved in a several demonstrations where the majority had decided that non-violent measures were the only acceptable means of protest, diverse as they were. I've also been in others where strict rules were applied that distanced violent protests from the non-violent variety, to make distinct those who were opposed from those who were in favor – It was about not abandoning your comrades. In short, diversity of tactics doesn't mean that the particular group has to allow ANY form of protest to take place, but the democratic power lies with those who are doing the organizing. One cannot sit on their hands in these discussions . . .
July 6th, 2010 at 9:37 pm
I think the cops used the window smashing as a convenient pretext for rounding people up, but they were going to round people up anyway. They started with 4 a.m. raids and hauling people out of bed at gunpoint well before a single rock left a single black-gloved hand. I wouldn’t have brought Zab to the protests, but not because I was worried about the protesters: I wouldn’t have brought her because police violence was totally predictable. Kettling and arrests aren’t new, and those tactics were NOT used against the window-smashers, they were used against peaceful protesters, un/disinterested observers and working journalists.
I agree that there should be an open debate on the left about tactics, what works and what does not, what our goals are and how we might better achieve them. But I object, strenuously, to any suggestion that the property damage is what snapped the cops to attention and that somehow everything would have been all rainbows and sunshine if the black bloc had just stayed home.
July 7th, 2010 at 9:32 am
That’s an excellent post. I’ve been teetering myself.
In Quebec City my friends and I planned to stick to the “green zones”. We know how well that turned out! The Ottawa G20 was the same thing, our peaceful march was treated like it was an anarchist hoedown by riot cops. All protests are being painted by the same brush.
That you want to bring your four year old really resonates. When I was a single parent it was a major effort just showing up! How many people don’t protest because they can’t bring their kids or couldn’t flee a dangerous situation? There were a couple years where I couldn’t last through a whole march let alone physically endure what went on in Toronto. I’m one of those people who would suffer greatly if I were detained and denied my medication! The stress of the situation would probably cause a big time fibro flare-up putting me out of commission for a few days.
I guess what I’m saying is, not only do violent tactics/property damage pit the public against us, they also may forcefully exclude a surprising number of people.
Forget diversity of tactics I’d rather see more diversity of participants!