Photos Of Anarchist Contingent At Saturday's Anti-War Protest

Well, on channel 7, they showed okay coverage of the first part, but then they were saying phrases like "PREDICTABLY, the black bloc set off from the main route" and showed footage of some very young looking people locked down in an intersection with white shirts, and police doing pain compliance on their necks, and a restaurant equipment supplier where they had tossed some of his aluminum sinks and kitchen racks into the street, and that guy looked more sympathetic until he said they should all be drafted to be taught respect.

To be fair... what does the black bloc do?

they break away, and cause trouble.

look, i'm an anarchist but what they did today was just plain fucking stupid, and made EVERYONE look bad.

The brake away march let our presence be known, ANSWER is not the answer. The 2nd brake away was a lot more effective. The bloc met back up at a height and fillmore where we contiuned up height towards Golden Gate park, we shut down the GAP for a short amout of time before deciding to take back to the streets to head to the park, When we reached the park we had made up out minds to meet back at the Jail to support those who got arrested.

The first brake away didnt make anyone look bad, we avoided the cops for a good hour and the only arrest were a few peacefull people who decided to sit down in the intersection.

Good job to all those in the bloc.

I can't begin to explain my disappointment with the anarchists who organized this so-called "action." There is no action depicted in these pictures, other than walking. Parading banners around and walking is not going to "destroy the war machine."

Are you folks new to anarchism? I can understand the flavor of this protest if this is your first event, but I think many of us expect more from Bay Area anarchists. I'm not saying that you should go out and burn the town down, but there are many other options than just participating in a boring ANSWER literature fair. You've written that "ANSWER is not the answer." Many people agree with that statement, but your bloc still happened AT THE ANSWER PROTEST. If ANSWER is boring, then why didn't you do your thing elsewhere? Why not some civil disobedience downtown in front of the Fox News office? Or how about anti-military pickets at stores around the San Francisco area? How about going to post offices and filling out wrong information on draft registration cards? How about some anti-recruiting outreach in San Francisco.

There are many, many creative direct actions that "Anarchist Action" could have accomplished today. Doing a "black bloc" at the ANSWER rally is not the fucking answer. Black blocs have their time and place, but ANSWER rallies are the wrong place for your Hot Topic black bloc.

I admire the fact that you all put together this bloc, but can you see where I'm coming from with my criticism? If we anarchists are going to demonstrate an alternative to boring ANSWER rallies, the last thing we should do is waste an afternoon at an ANSWER rally.There are many anarchists in the Bay Area, so it would be good if they could be a bit more visible AWAY FROM the ANSWER rally. ;-)

I completely agree. Now if only the anarchist would organize more things on their own and not rely gatherings created by groups like ANSWER to raise numbers.

I heard that the bay area Anarchist Action group has a meeting coming up. If the protesters who showed up today would like to change things for the better, and help make an effort to organize, they should attend.

I agree,we are here for unity.We unite as a common people for common goals it isnt a hard to grasp notion.War is not the answer neither is answer? comeo n protest against something rather than protest aginst protest groups....

I agree, except, there are a few things to point out. First, all the creative people already had to move to Portland; the rent is a tad high here Check craigslist. When there is anything with advance notice, the police will know, and they get very mean (although Oakland just starts blasting metal shot at proteter) when we walk towards this invisible line in the financial and shopping area of downtown and San Francisco is famous for just arresting *everyone*- like 100s of people including all sorts of random residents, or this japanese tourist clutching a ghirardelli bag seen here: http://www.indybay.org/news/2003/03/1583495_comment.php
There was a mass arrest on the evening after the election where they let everyone walk around poorer neighborhoods all they want, then as soon as they hit 5th street, and hadn't broken a law except jaywalking, everyone was swept up and it got zero coverage. These other types of events and actions shouldn't necessarily be held on the same time as the ANSWER march, or it would be back to being organized around answer again. But we know that people just are going to show up at ANSWER anyway to keep their numbers up. It is nice that the regular answer people don't beat up on the anarchists for tarnishing their reputation, but they symbiotically need those bodies to bolster their numbers because it's obvious that the media coverage is going to interpret that is the relative level of antibush support - like today they ignored int'l coverage and said that people have come around to accept the intervention because only when we get marches of 3 million will that be a signal.

The truth is, the people at the tail end of the breakaway march helped that guy pick up all his stuff.

I even apologized, saying we weren't mad at him, just the system. The bloc may or may not have different opinions on this, but I helped him pick up all of his shit because he didn't represent big business in any way, and seemed like a nice working class business owner.

We picked all of his stuff up so quick, that he didn't have to pick any of it up himself at all, and nothing seemed damaged whatsoever. I felt that the main reason his stuff was knocked over, was to barricade the SF's SS from pursuing us further with thier clubs and guns and pepper spray. And it somewhat worked, with the exception of the fleet of Dirtbiked cops with 8 foot billy clubs.

Keep in mind, I was just a random protester, but when I saw the bloc start doing thier thing, the spirit moved me and I felt I had to run with them and give them my support. I barely made it out of the police melee right before the arrests, and my heart was jumping as I saw those clubs swinging at 14 year old girls, girls who seemed to actually care so much about the current state of america, that they did something about it besides talk.

I would have to take chucks comments as a slap in the face. Quite honestly Chuck, alot more went on than you percieve from a couple of photos. The tactics for this march were very well thought out. I did not help organize this, but, I am happy that it happened.

What I am talking about is the open forum that happened during the Answer Rally. Now, this might not seem like the best option for an anarchist contingent, but it worked. The local anarchist community is crippled with incessant infighting and flamboyant arguments re: various ideological propositions that do nothing but cripple us as active anarchists.

How do we get 1-200 various anarchists together to talk about local issues that we need to develop anarchist-specific actions for? Like for instance, 3 MUNI bus drivers came to speak and talk in an open public forum about the upcoming fare hikes and we discussed how we could fight back against this. Other topics included the school closures happening in Oakland. These are real working-class issues that have not been adequitly addressed by the anarchist community. All of this, while, large groups of people left the answer rally in order to partake in the forum.

So, to answer your "lame" comment. No, this wasnt about direct action. It was about community building. It was about creating an alternate platform to the annoying speakers who yell constantly at us.

Honestly, I dont see were folks get off criticizing other anarchists for trying new and different tactics. Ones, that work to build community and solidarity between anarchists and our communities instead of arguing over petty ideologies.

Right, I can understand why you'd be upset about my comments. After I posted them last night, I struck me that I had posted too hastily, before I had been able to learn more about what had taken place. I tried to soften my criticisms in the above remark by stating that I'm a long distance observer who can only judge what happened from the pictures. If I don't know about what else happened around these actions, the context, then I'm going to make criticisms based on what little information I can gather. This is why it is important for more activists to use Indymedia to tell their stories about what happened. I see very little of this across the country. We still have to deal with this attitude that "Indymedia" will cover our event" when it should be "we are Indymedia, let's make sure we tell the story about what happened."

I'm still a bit concerned with anarchists around the country who continue to do protests in conjunction with ANSWER events. We really shouldn't be doing that, because we have the resources to do things on our own or with groups that are more like us. Of course there may be some activities that anarchists can do at an ANSWER rally, such as tabling or outreach.

Despite my negative criticisms, I'm glad that this action happened. It's good to hear about the forum and I agree with you about the infighting.

I think the forum was a great idea, and that is the most significant thing that happened yesterday. Media coverage brought back footage of March 2003 arrests right before showing those eight arrests, which made it seem like the whole group had no foresight or targeted objectives and just wanted to show childish random anger. I know we can't control the media, but it's pretty important to get people in the general public who mostly agree with our perspective to be on our side. On the literature front, non-marxist leftists really have a lot more to offer. Both in books and magazines/newspapers, current 'anarchist' writers are typically much better than the papers being sold by the WWP or socialist bookstores, but we don't goad each other into hawking them on the street and annoying people into taking them.

"I'm still a bit concerned with anarchists around the country who continue to do protests in conjunction with ANSWER events. We really shouldn't be doing that, because we have the resources to do things on our own or with groups that are more like us."

A few years ago there were a few attempts to have large Anarchist organized anti-war protests but they fell into the rut of being "punx against the war" events that restricted their appeal to a pop culture genre that is pretty white, pretty male and pretty age restricted in terms of appeal. In terms of helping organize a specific scene they were a success but they didn't serve the other purpose of ANSWER style protests which is to draw people in and help build larger movements. THE WWP and other ANSWER groups have a message that appeals to far fewer people than the Anarchist message but Anarchists tend to only focus on youth and specific counter-cultures wheras ANSWER aims to get their message out to everyone who is opposed to the war.

Anarchism as an ideology is obviously broader than a commercial music genre but the symbolism and pagentry that one sees in black-bloc actions these days usually causes the same restiction in appeal (when the globalization protests were going on I was waiting for Hot Topic to come out with a black-bloc line of accesories for teenagers) Part of this one can see in Chuck0's first comment above where a testosterone fueled desire for "action" in the abstract trumps movement building, education and other things other left-wing movements engage in at protests. Another problem is the secrecy that is required to organize most anarchist actions (such as the breakaway yesterday); since only an "in-group" can know about a breakaway march or other more illegal actions only the "in-group" and their friends will show up. Success is usually defined in an ability to outwit a few local police officers and cause small amounts of property damage that have no impact on the bottom line of companies that have insurance. The problem isnt the actions that do take place but that such actions are seen as goal's in themself where only people who are young and fit and can risk arrest can carry out the "important" work while others are delegated to support roles. Aside from alienating those who cant do "important" work this style of action also alienates those who really want societal change rather than seeing symbolic small-scale destruction as somehow the ultimate result that can be achived by the movement.

The main Anarchist contingent Saturday did seem to break away from the usual Anarchist style in that education about Anarchism rather than blowing off steam with action was the goal. Linking up Anarchists with other movements (like MUNI workers) was also great. But, there was still an element of issolation in the contingent based off the overall style; when everyone wears black, some are masked and all the signs have a punk style it sends an indirect message that one has to be into that scene to be an Anarchist when it shouldnt have such a restriction. I saw people actively avoid being near the contingent out of fear of the police which also speaks to the blured line between black-bloc contingents (which are not in my oopinion particularly Anarchist) and a contingent trying to teach people about Anarchism as an ideology that doesnt require going out and buying a new wardrobe. Even symbols like black or black and red flags gives off a cult like feel in that the pagentry of group symbols speaks inward to group identity not outward to others who may agree with the ideology but not yet consider themselves Anarchists. Communist groups are also into their symbols but all such symbolism reminds me of shwag one sees sold by companies to fans of a particular subculture (so people can show how long they have been in the scene by how much they have collected) not something that should be a requirement of a real political movement that desires change.

Refresh my memory. Which war has organized anti-war protests actually stopped?

try Viet Nam.

there was this one country u may have heard of called Vietnam...I dont know I read about it somewhere...jackass

I had alot of the same criticisms that you are airing out here. I really dont see that much can be done to "change our image", and, I dont think that this is necessarily what is needed.

For instance, most folks in the crowd at the Answer rally are looking to do something different. Why was the march so small? And, I dont necessarily think it was the rain -- Rather, it has to do with the fact that we are politically ineffectual. (even in our own communities)

One thing that gets me about the anarchist community is that we all argue about what type of world we want to live in, or how we will go about it. Yet, all this shit that we talk about other groups and even amongst ourselves, does nothing to create that world. What pompous hypocrits we are.

Does anyone really take us seriously when we dont even have some codified mutual aid network in the bay area? When we talk about class war, where is our class war? What is our alternative to the beaurocratic unions? Why arent we looking to help give solidarity to organizing workers?

I think most people can get beyond the image if we were to start taking ourselves seriously, stop bickering and start working together to create the communities we want to live in. (outside of civic politics)

"Does anyone really take us seriously when we dont even have some codified mutual aid network in the bay area?"

Mutual aid for a whole society is the Anarchist goal, but mutual aid within a subculture tends to be what is meant by that term when used by activists. While no movement can ever form and grow if people dont help each other out within the movement one shouldnt confused mutual aid within a movement with anything particularly revolutionary. Frat guys, war buddies, and religious groups also take care of their own in a way that is often the root of inequalities between groups. Many collective businesses that only hire within the broader movement are in a sense just mimicing the dynamic that creates a glass ceiling for women in many jobs and keeps racial minorities out of many management positions. We need to provide others in the "movement" aid so they can continue with their work but I think this shouldnt be thought of as a shift towards a better society since helping those like one's self (even if its a political similarity) is in many ways the same thing as discrimination against those who are different.

In terms of diversity oif Anarchists vs other political movements I think there is a very simple explanation and solution.
Communists hand out newspapers and ask people to come to events. By going to a large protest, a teach-in or just reading a paper there isnt a personal commitment in terms of personal bonds. One doesnt have to feel like one is trusted or part of the same social scene.
Anarchists tend to organize in a more personal fashion. Security culture ofetn means only those who are "trusted" can come to many events. And when one interacts with an Anarchist contingent at a protest there is usually not a clear way one can plug-in outside of making friends and becoming part of the scene. Even many Anarchist benefits tend to look more like parties than Communist ones so if one doesnt feel like one fits in socially there isnt a way to feel part of the movement.
The book fair is an opportunity to let new people interact with Anarchists but its such a commercial type of event that while there are speakers the majority of plugging in one can do involves buying Anarchist shwag (creating an almost consumeristic feel that like being a cool goth or punk one has to pay a lot to buy into the image). Communists definitely try to sell their papers more than anarchists but there is something about pushing patchs, flags, t-shirts and the like that feels at heart more Capitalistic than just pushing news on people.

It seems to me that to many of us Anarchists act just out of anger and frustration rather then combineing anger and frustration with our views.I think that people dont get to see what we represent but rather make asumptions that we are angry bottle throwing,window smashing teens and "over grown adults" that dont really have anything better to do then break stuff and light fires becouse that's all they see us do.Showing people that we are not a violent opposition and informing people on why we do this so that we arent labeled as such is really the most important thing right now.
And so i sincerely thank all anarchists (and black block) who are intent on educateing people on what we represent and why we represent it in such a way.I also dont think we should "change our image" but rather bring our image across in ways that cant be labeled so negatively.

as an observation, we're still using the same tactics of showing up, parading with the group, breaking away, getting arrested... whereas the cops have actually organized themselves somewhat and it's become predictable for them... the flags, the masks, all of it.. it's become predictable. it's become a parade. yet the cops are still uneducated about what an anarchist is or what our objective is... how about that for being ineffective?

this tactic does NOTHING except shed the entire demostration in a negative light which in turn alienate people. watch the mass media's coverage of it and you'll get all these stories about how the "anarchists" and the "black bloc" "predictably" did this or that.. how they "terrorized" local businesses and yelled things such as "fuck fox news." it's a goddamn soundbite field day when we do this... and we claim to be anti-capitalists. ha!

the techonolgy is there (txtmob?) for organizing people quicker and more effectively, yet hasn't really been put into real use which yield real results... what if we didn't wear the funny anarchist uniforms (black on black on black), but had a txtmob list (or something similar) where we sent out a message like, "3/19 GAP, bricks -> front window 3pm".... and then people actually went out, dressed normal-ish, and tossed a brick through the window and then walked away... fuckin' a! that might be progress!

i mean, we can continue doing this and calling these "protests" for what they really are; parades.

so didn't proof what i wrote. revisions:

"yet the cops are still uneducated about what an anarchist is or what our objective is... how about that for being ineffective?"

-SHOULD READ: yet the cops and media are still uneducated about what an anarchist is or what our objective is... how about that for being ineffective?


"i mean, we can continue doing this and calling these "protests" for what they really are; parades."

-SHOULD READ: i mean, we can continue this cliche action, but we need to start calling these "protests" for what they really are; parades.

i loved the sound system.. i loved the open forum.. i loved that there was some AA literature going around..

I'm going to leave the issue of style and mannerisms to my first comment. Primarily because I know for a fact that if we had real actions to back up our rhetoric it wouldnt matter what we look like.

to the issue of a mutual aid network being self serving, by no means did I mean that it needs to be exclusively anarchist. But, I do think that we need to learn from past experiences at building real and true mutual aid networks.

I feel as though you are falling into the pit of debate that we all get ourselves into. instead of criticizing and debating, we should be building upon ideas and using those to present plans of action. I mean if you have this figured out, by all means, present it to others. You'd be extremely surprised at the action your fellow activists and friends (anarchists, communist, whatever) will put into a solid idea. I know I have and have been rewarded continually to the point that I cant believe that we dont have this stuff figured out yet. (primarily because, I believe, that folks want to do constructive action and community building -- there is a very strong need for it)

With that aside -- so you want to start a newspaper. I can help you with that, as I have experience. And it is very possible. But, I guarantee that you will butt heads with other anarchists as to what the "platform" will be. And I dont mean that in a platformist sense, I mean it ideologically. (look at what we have out there, we have the green anarchists, the post-left anarchists, the class war anarchists, the anarcho syndicalists, the anarcho communists, the insurrectionists, etc all publishing content and arguing amongst themselves)

It would be great to have an awesome, just plain, anarchist leaning paper that took real issues (labor, schools, corrupt civic leadership, etc.) in our communities and gave anarchist perspectives and anarchist answers to these problems. Of course, this is an idyllic dream in the current landscape. More power to the folks that can pull it off!

I think the forum idea was great. Minor critiques: I think it should have been furrther away from the main stage so that people could hear better. I think it should have been advertise wi its own section in our literature, Something like, come to place where you can be heard rather that the one-wayness of the rally.

I actually don't agree with the chant "ANSWER is not the Answer" or Chuck's sentiments that we should not pariticipate in the largest demonstration in the Bay Area. If you ask most people at the demo, whart is this event about, they say it's a epqacer or anti-war march and rally. They would not say things about who is the sponsor of the event. I believe that saying bad things without an explanation about the sponsor of the rally is insulting the crowd at the march.

jankyHellface is right on target with the comments about the need for a mutual aid network in the Bay Area. We need that in every community. No, a mutual aid network isn't inherently revolutionary and nobody has argued this. But you would be a fool if you don't have a mutual aid network and a community to back you up. We need mutual aid networks and stronger anarchist communities because it gives us the base to do bigger things. If we are always having to work to pay high rents, then we don't have time to organize an action, a federation, or some publication. If we cooperate with each other and pool our resources to create housing and cheap food for ourselves, then we collectively can work less and spend more time on revolution and taking care of ourselves. Creating this network will also show people how anarchism works in practice. People refuse to believe that anarchism is anything but an unrealistic utopia, but if we practice what we preach, then we can show people some examples of anarchism in action.

Text messaging? This is a very helpful technology, if you have cell phones and people who are willing to make sure that protest channels happen. This tech came in very handy during the RNC protests last year in NYC.

Are anarchists doing the same predictable thing, such as the black bloc tactic? It's important to understand that the black bloc at some demo is a *tiny* part of what anarchists are doing, even at some demonstration. In fact there are usually many other anarchists who are elsewhere in a protest, or off somewhere doing an action or doing logistical support. For every person doing the black bloc, there is one anarchist family walking around in the main protest, other anarchists tabling or handing out newspapers, anarchists doing media or working back at the Indymedia office, other anarchists making food or doing babysitting, anarchists doing legal support or radical reference, and so on.

One thing these "invisible" anarchists need to do is be more visible. so folks don't assume that some black bloc is the sum total of what anarchists are doing.

1. I think a mutual aid network/s is a great idea. I would like to work on creating one.
2. Another good thing that happened was when the Bloc began ot march, it looked like this mass of angry and determined people going toward the Protest Warriors. I looked at them and watched them scurry behind police lines, like they were all pissing their pants in unison. It was a good use of "terror".

"One thing these "invisible" anarchists need to do is be more visible. so folks don't assume that some black bloc is the sum total of what anarchists are doing."

exactly

I have been reading a lot of posts by people who claim that the break away march was stupid. How many of you people were actually there? This never was even intended to happen. It started out with 30 or 40 people having a dance party at the answer protest. ALl of a sudden more and more people, not all "anarchists" I might add decided to join. Now with about 100 people we began to march and then all of a sudden it just happenned. No one can explain it. It's just one of those things. I'm tired of these so called "veteran" anarchists telling young kids that what we did was stupid. What are you guys doing? Do you ever plan your own actions? Probably not. You talk of anarchism, but you never act on it. There were many flaws in the action last saturday, but overall I think because of its spontaneity, it was amazing. I guess you just had to be there to understand.

I really enjoyed chucks post re: the mutual aid networks that already exist.

I thought about it a little and we in fact do have a pretty vast mutual aid network. I am in fact in quite a few and am trying to start up others at the same time.

What I mean to say when I speak of creating mutual aid networks is more of community-based type networks. We currently have a communications network, a new source, various transportation sources, etc. all focused on our inclusive community. Each group I have witnessed has a focus on reaching outside of their inclusiveness, but alot of times dont have the resources (ie. people, time, energy) or focus to effectively reach beyond arms length. None of these, however, help us eat, sleep or add freedom to our lives.

Some thoughts of what could be accomplished:
A health network
Food distribution -- not just fnbs, but actual distribution networks that help folks that need it.
A housing network
childcare
Any other support systems that the state utterly fails --and always will-- at accomplishing.

I know as someone who has worked 40+ hours a week for the past 12 years (im really not that old) it would be amazing to have some sort of community-based mutual aid network that I could plug into making life easier for me and the people around me.

I would like to hear from some of the folks who have organized such networks. Where are they? Why do all the older anarchists just seem to know everything but not help younger folks to create such networks? Where is the skillsharing? Why are we always having to start from square one? the list could go on and on . . . If you can answer these questions, why not speak up?

-----------------------------------------

I have seen alot of criticism going around about the contingent, much of which I have to agree with. But, I hope folks understand for all of the pitfalls that might have happened during the march/forum/breakaway, this was the first real organized event for this group.

Quite honestly, I'm impressed. I think we all have alot to learn from our mistakes, but, we are at an extremely interesting crossroads. More folks and a new energy is coming into the local anarchist community. One that stays away from the petty flamewars and sectarian drama that only comes from the rigidity and the ego-centrism that a blunt and dull ideology brings about in older anarchists.

"as someone who has worked 40+ hours a week for the past 12 years (im really not that old) it would be amazing to have some sort of community-based mutual aid network"

Its called Social Security and they are trying to get rid of it.

To be fair... what does the black bloc do?

they break away, and do nothing is closer to the point.
they pretend they have this tough guy image but when it comes down to it they are a bunch of wussies who run when they see the first sign of a security guard.

losers

hellohello,
this is a bit off topic but i think this is the best avenue to get some answers. I was hit to the ground on Valencia around the time those 9 brave men and women were arrested. As I was in the street I ran into a line of cops and was struck.Unfortunately, I was shooken up and quite baffled at the moment in which my conscious did not kick in and tell me to get the badge number or name of the cop. I was wondering if anyone had any
more footage..flics or video of anymore of the events that happened that day, so perhaps I can get his name or badge # to at the least file a complaint. I have some legal support, but it's up to me to get the info..so if anyone can help me out with resources that would
be greatly appreciated. much thanks.!

>Why do all the older anarchists just seem to know everything but not help younger folks to create such networks? Where is the skillsharing? Why are we always having to start from square one? the list could go on and on . . . If you can answer these questions, why not speak up?

Because we are remiss in our duty. Sorry. We'll try to do better in the future. Let's have a meeting to discuss putting together a mutual aid network. I'll show up. I'll bring friends. When do we want do this? Where?

I'm no sure what kind of help you want, but i would recommend as the first step, you imediately contact a lawyer. The National Lawyers Guild at 415-285-1055 is a good place to start. Get medical help and make sure you keep all those records. If you can't get medical help and the Guild people can't recommend where to go write me. If you have any outward signs of injury, get pictures of this, assoon as possible. If you have any other questions write me at deanosor [at] comcast.net.