Critique of "black bloc" prioritizng tactics over strategy

Think back a few weeks to the weekend of Feb. 14-16. In that weekend, and particularly on Saturday the 15th, we pulled 12-15 million people into the streets world wide, and hundreds upon hundreds of thousands in this country alone, in every nook and cranny of every state. That weekend shook the establishment to its bones and drove the self-confident smirks from the commentators and the politicians' faces. It revealed the isolation of
Tony Blair and Aznar, and put Chirac on notice that he'd better not cut any last-minute minute deals with the U.S. and start backing the war. The stock market dropped, city councils passed anti-war resolutions, and the news could no longer ignore the dissenting voices. Within a week the major capitalist newspaper in the US had reversed itself and was calling for no war.

True, those actions did not stop the war, but by revealing the fragility of the positions of the UK, Spanish, and Turkish, administrations viz a viz the stated anti-war majority opinion amongst their electorates, they were forced to pursue the United Nations diplomatic road a few days longer (as long as Bush would permit them). That delayed the start of the invasion and bombing by several days if not weeks. Time enough for shelters
to be strengthened, for people to stock up on supplies, and for thousands of families to get out of town, and hopefully to safety. With our actions we may have saved countless lives in Iraq, energized our own movement in a way that is carrying us forward still, and opened the debate on the war so widely that the corporate media cannot shut that door, try as they might.

However, we only did that because we, as a movement, were able to involve ordinary, run-of-the-mill, people of every age, ethnicity, and description. How many times did we not come acrosss multitudes for whom "this" --whether Jan 18, Feb. 16, or whichever-- was their first
march, rally, or political demonstration? Their presence gave the movement strength, legitimacy, depth and breadth that it would not have otherwise attained. The multitudes who turned out for the Jan 18 actions fanned out and built hundreds of local actions the following month.

That was the product of patient outreach work done with a long-haul view of the movement. By contrast, what we have been observing in the streets of San Francisco not only lacks a long-haul view of the movement, but undermines the gains that have been made into gaining
the support and participation of sectors of the population not normally associated with political action of any sort.

I had no problem with the shut-down of the financial district on Thursday, but carrying the blockading actions into the night and then into the next day, demonstrated that one sector of the movement has begun to supplant strategic thinking with tactical thinking, and indeed to hold a particular set of tactics paramount. Militancy has replaced the anti-war message and become an end in itself. How little time did it not take for anti-war chants and slogans to be replaced with "Whose streets? Our streets!"?

In the meantime, and in their wake, we have:

a) the irony --not lost on many, believe me-- that the most anti-war city in the nation is being subjected to day after day of anti-war shutdowns; that a movement that criticizes the government for spending money on warfare instead of human needs, is forcing the city
of SF to divert sity services and funds to coping with its actions.

b) thousands of irate workers, who might have been fine with being inconvenienced for one day, but get legitimately pissed when it stretches to two days or more of being made late to work (which many can't risk in these times), late to pick up kids from daycare
(which costs parents money --$1-5 per minute!), appointments, etc., potential allies now turned away.

c) a hare-brained attempt to block the Bay Bridge at evening rush hour, when just about the only people on it would have been workers going home, now off-the-clock and thus of no consequence to the corporations;

d) a growing and manipulable image of the Bay Area anti-war events as violence-prone and likely to incite strong repressive moves by the authorities.

I wonder how much bigger Saturday's march would have been, how many more thousands would have taken BART into the city from other counties if the Friday blockades and day-long cat-and-mouse with the cops hadn't happened? If every march or rally is followed up by vandalism or blockades, how many cities will grant permits for marches or rallies in the
future? How much longer will San Francisco do so?

This is not about legality --I applaud and cheer the Thursday morning blockaders who chained themselves together with their arms inside the pipes-- but about keeping open the political spaces necessary for ongoing organizing and a movement culture that will
facilitate winning the majority of the population to our side.

We did not prevent this war, we likely won't be able to stop it. But we need to start working on the next one, and you know there WILL be one, whether in Korea, Iran, the Philipines, or Pakistan. To do so we will need to stop prioritizing tactics over strategy, or immediate feel-good actions over less-flashy outreach and networking.

In solidarity,

Juan