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An open letter to the black clothed guy who sucker-punched me at the Oakland demonstration

by hank chapot
I was sucker punched by a black-clothed white boy poseur in the Oakland march.
An open letter to the black bloc poseur who sucker-punched me at the anti-police march on Telegraph Avenue Tuesday, December 9, 2014.

You, in your skinny black jeans, designer black hoodie and face hidden behind a fashionably folded scarf probably thought its real cool to drag those construction barricades from the 39th street BART project into Telegraph avenue with your little clique and STICK IT TO THE MAN.

Me, I thought you were fucking with the purpose of the marching, so I blocked your path with my bicycle. You sucker punched me in the face. WTF?

I know you're a tough guy, dressed for anarchy, testosterone streaming, girls watching and all that, your black bloc fashion show allows you to sucker punch an old guy, a veteran of the struggle. But if you really have some cajones, go assault a cop one on one and see how you come out of that.

Now, I'm an old guy, but as a 14-year old, I marched against the Viet Nam war in Golden Gate Park. I mopped up oil in the San Francisco bay oil tanker spill in 1970. I'm a Critical Mass veteran, arrested protesting gulf war one and two, arrested for my union actions, founder of the Green Party.

But I'm not resting on my laurels; I'm not posing about how great the sixties were. I hate that shit. I'm marching in 2014 against police brutality, and I'm marching in the tradition you seem to have missed.

I was a juvenile delinquent once, until, on the eve of my eighteenth birthday, I got my ass kicked by two plains-clothes San Francisco cops and spent the night in juvenile hall. I learned that politics requires respect, discipline and non-violence.

And guess what. People behind you in the march dragged the barricades, trash and recycling bins back to the sidewalk, so your petty little efforts at rebellion were less than powerful, your childish destructive acting-out only fucks up the cause of the protests and give fodder to the mainstream media.

I didn't plan to interfere with your fun, I'm just sick and tired of your kind of mostly white prics taking over the very serious activism against police murder for your own juvenile smash-up. I watched your kind smash windows and light fires on Sunday the seventh, all well-dressed white boys, and asked myself is this vanguard of the revolution, or are they infiltrators, or the quislings we should shoot first when the revolution triumphs?

After you sucker-punched me, I was in shock, a bit concussed. Two people apologized, one asked if I needed medical attention, the other said I didn't deserve it and should just move on, I was lucky I was wearing a bike helmet or you might have killed me.

As I walked along further down Telegraph, I followed you, I took your picture. I was in shock. I had a Leatherman multi-tool on my belt and in my punched-up state, I seriously considered opening the blade and giving you two or three fast jabs in the liver. I might have killed you.

But the story is this; violence, even simple property destruction like yours, has no place in any street movement. Violence against a fellow protester is the worst kind of internecine conflict that will destroy our movement before it is born.
§omg stop
by anonymous
I would agree that "internecine" conflict between demonstrators is wholly inappropriate but in this situation it was you, author of the anonymous letter, that precipitated the confrontation. You say that this act was "fucking with the purpose" of the march. Maybe those actions only ran counter to *your* purpose. Other people have an earnest interest in disrupting normal society, which means blocking roadways (possibly with traffic barricades), vandalizing businesses and banks, and stepping outside of capitalist logic to expropriate goods ("looting").

If anyone is creating divisions within the march, it's the people photographing other demonstrators and clearing their barricades out of the road. Step off your "founder of the green party" high horse and look around ... the kids these days are brimming with a genuine anger at the policed and colonized world they are living in. Your insistence on nonviolence is so out of touch with all of this.

Lastly, the straw man that you make out of black bloc folks is so laughable. Many people in bloc are women, many are queer, many are nonwhite, many are over the age of 30. That macho shit you describe may have been how you felt as a teenager but doesn't come close to the heterogenuous motivations and inspirations. Lulz on you.
"even simple property destruction like yours, has no place in any street movement"

says you. how many serious "street movements" have not had property destruction. you live in a willfully ahistorical and ignorant place. if you are old like you say, you were around when the WU and others were bombing shit left and right, in the Bay Area too. the SDS was breaking shit across the country. race riots in the 60s were burning shit to the ground. black militants were having shoot-outs with police, kidnapping judges, and more. and that's just in the U.S., where no major revolution has happened in perhaps over a hundreds years. wake up and read more. step outside of your "vote your way to freedom" delusion. the green party is cool, but only gets up to around 5% of the vote, and far less now with the "top 2" sham in california.

"Violence against a fellow protester is the worst kind of internecine conflict that will destroy our movement"

then stop trying to physically disrupt protests. if you don't like what someone is doing, move on. you are not a one-man army. being "right" in your own head is not a magical shield for your safety. if property destruction is violence in your mind, then clearly pushing things around yourself, in the direction you want the barriers to go, is violence too. and it was perceived as such by those whom you were undoing their work. people yelled at you to stop doing that before anyone punched you, but you were stubborn and refused to stop.

is it really a sucker punch if you were warned to stop by multiple people before you were hit?
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DATE
hchapot
Mon, Dec 15, 2014 8:02PM
hchapot
Mon, Dec 15, 2014 8:00PM
hankchapot
Mon, Dec 15, 2014 7:58PM
snail
Sun, Dec 14, 2014 10:10AM
miles
Sun, Dec 14, 2014 5:57AM
chris
Sun, Dec 14, 2014 2:03AM
nonkhan
Sat, Dec 13, 2014 9:41PM
hc
Sat, Dec 13, 2014 6:19PM
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