breakawayfourthconfrontation

The idea of a peace rally is to promote world peace. If
anarchist punks want to have fun fighting with cops why
can't they have an anti police rally? These idiots make the
peace movement look like a bunch of hypocrits. I saw part
of the scene on market, and honestly have to say the police
I saw exercised a great deal of restraint.

If Bush exercised the same level of restraint we wouldn't be
going into this stupid war.

Imperialist governments, blood sucking corporations, and capitalist regimes breed war. Police are the guardians of all of these. Therefore, any anti-police rally is also an anti-war rally. Likewise, any real anti-war rally should also be an anti-police rally.

I have participated in the first two breakaway marches because I am not comfortable thinking that marches alone can stop this was. I wanted to directly target the war/oil machine physically. Unfortunately not all those on these actions were able to focus on legitimate targets. After a scared motorist in a car that had just been pounded on by young black blocvkers looked up at me I felt ashamed to be in the same line of march as these "durnk with power", off target protesters. I'd like to know (I can't see the Real Player downloads) if these same elements again corrupted the anti-war focus of the action by getting involved with harrassing people on a trolly car. The militant left does have a vanguard role to play but it must distance itself from those that erode its credibility by using actions to act out other frustrations. IN (focused) STRUGGLE

Welcome to the Bay Area, where a significant portion of the leftists believe that anyone who drives a car is a terrorist, supports "oil wars," deserves to be attacked, etc.

It is mostly a fringe group of yuppies who are fanatics about riding bikes. If you listen to NPR or KPFA, you can hear their pro-bike/anti-everything else bullshit. In addition, they believe in attacking cars, SUVs, etc based purely on the fact that they hate cars.

And, yes, it is idiots like this who do more harm to revolutionary currents than anything the cops could do. Their elitist and mostly incoherent vision of the future gets in the way of everything.

Personally, the next time I see some jerk attack an innocent person who is merely driving a car, I am going to haul off and punch them as hard as I can in the face.

Their subculture elitism is what they need to overcome their insecurities. Its pathetic, I know, but its a real problem here.

... is that these unpermitted marches have few ground rules, which are going to be ignored by some anyway, and there is no mechanism for deciding what to do. So either it blobs around as an amorphous mass, or is led at times or always by a small vanguard of aggressive or organized people. Kind of like Critical Mass. Don't get me wrong, I like CM, but if you ARE going to engage in property destruction, or have a march in which it is tolerated, it would be a good idea to have some way of letting everyone know what to expect, and ideally, determine which targets are appropriate and which are not.

Most of the people in the trolley car were smiling because the scene was so funny... and didn't really feel in danger.

People caught in the middle of the crowd at confrontation points were helped out of the crowd by black bloc'ers.

A man in a new mercedes felt comfortable enough to get out and take pictures with the breakaway marchers.

Well, there were about 1% of individuals present who irritated me. They struck me as people who didn't understand anything behind the rationale of the breakaway march, and probably were just along for fun. For instance, someone painted on a cab with a driver who looked like they were of arabic ancestry - and it was a small bit of paint, but it strikes me that the larger crowd would not endorse this. Antagonizing random working people on the street, or even tourists from the upper middle class, is vanguardist. It sends the message that you are trying to create an image of us as a very tiny group of pure political ideologues who are against the broad masses who we deem impure. Go join some communist cadre if you think immigrant cab drivers are the enemy, or even a family in an audi. Everyone has to be along if society is going to change without using a dictator.
One of the guys on the cable car bothered me too - he got in the AP picture. The people in the trolley didn't seem threatened, though this was an area with loss of focus. ABC was trying to interview two among us who were ex-marines, but he kept interfering with incoherent statements and hooting. Even if you feel you have to tell media that you don't like them, develop some expression skills.

At this point in time I think people are wise to get in touch with their anger. Expressing anger without intent is counterproductive though. Some of the things that people said and did at the demo on sunday made me reflect on the lack of clarity that exists as to why we are angry and who is responsible. George Bush represents a global community of power elite who see human populations as tax and income producing livestock. They have hijacked the most powerful instrument of civil humanity that exists by rigging an election and are using U.S. law to compromise individual peoples capacity for self determination, not only here but all over the world. They would have us believe that legality is equivalent to morality and therefore methods of demonstration that aren't sanctioned by law are immoral. Meanwhile, they use the law to sack investment funds and rig energy markets. They are thieves and liars. When theives and liars use law to manipulate humanity to do their bidding, the only rational response can be to break the law. BUT....
We need to think carefully about who we vent our anger on and how. City policemen, for example, happen to be in a very unfortunate predicament. It takes a lot of courage to do a job that pretty much garantees that at some point in your career you will end up, at least temporarily, on the wrong side of an issue. But cops usually serve us well and we can't live without them. If we are going to abuse cops we may as well turn on each other because we are all accomplices to the injustice that liberal capitalism has come to represent. There are few, if any of us that aren't casting our dollar votes every day for it to continue. Most of us don't have the courage to live as close to the flame as policemen do, but we are no less guilty.
If we are going to change the direction George Bush is intent on taking us, we need to get real about our own investment in it and be willing to make personal sacrifices that solicit respect from all our brothers and sisters. Break the law. Gather and speak your mind whenever, wherever the spirit moves you to do so. But don't let the turmoil that results turn you against your community. Give policemen the opportunity to become accomplices in what is right. Make it harder for them to be ruthless by treating them like human beings.
It is also a whole lot more effective to act as a group, not only because of the added force factor, but because more heads contain more information and inform more effective decisions. Therefore talking with each other about why the power elite do what they do will make us more effective at counteracting it. George is murderously bent on implementing a seemless global economy. What does that mean?

that wouldnt help anything to punch bikers in the face. alot of bicycle people have been severely injured by wreckless drivers or known people who died. but uhm, i didnt see anything in this video about bicycles. i think you are crazying things up.