Genoa,
Italy, was a watershed for the antiglobalization
movement. It's clear now that this movement is a life
or death struggle in the first world as it has always
been in the third world. How we respond will
determine whether repression destroys us or
strengthens us. To come back stronger, we have to
understand what actually happened there.
The
media are telling one story about Genoa: a small
group of violent protestors got out of hand and the
police overreacted. I've heard variations on this
from within the movement: the Black Bloc was allowed
to get out of hand to justify police violence. But
that's not what happened in Genoa, and framing the
problem that way will keep us focused on the wrong
questions.
Let's
be clear: In Genoa we encountered a carefully
orchestrated political campaign of state terrorism.
The campaign included disinformation, the use of
infiltrators and provocateurs, collusion with avowed
Fascist groups (and I don't mean fascist in the loose
way the left sometimes uses the term, I mean Fascist
as in "direct inheritors of the traditions of
Mussolini and Hitler"), the deliberate targeting
of nonviolent groups for tear gas and beating,
endemic police brutality, the torture of prisoners,
the political persecution of the organizers, and a
terrorist night raid on sleeping people by special
forces wearing "Polizia" T-shirts under
black sweatshirts, who broke bones, smashed teeth,
and bashed in the skulls of nonresisting protestors.
They did all this openly, in a way that indicates
they had no fear of repercussions and expected
political protection from the highest sources. That
expectation implicates not only the proto-Fascist
Berlusconi regime of Italy, but by association the
rest of the G8, especially the U.S. since it now
appears that L.A. County sheriffs helped train the
most brutal of the special forces.
Italy
has a history of the employment of such tactics,
going back to the Ôstrategy of tension' used against
the left in the 1970s, in fact, even further back to
the '20s and '30s which don't seem all that far away
any more once you've heard prisoners describe being
tortured in rooms with pictures of Mussolini on the
walls. Maybe even back to the Renaissance, if not the
ancient Romans. The same tactics have, of course,
been used extensively by U.S. agencies and other
countries. Italy also has a political culture of
highly confrontational actions and streetfighting by
the police, as well as strong pacifist groups and
groups like the Tute Biancha who are exploring new
political territory that goes beyond the traditional
definitions of violence and nonviolence. All of this
set the stage upon which the events of the G8 protest
were played.
The
police used the Black Bloc, or more accurately, the
myth and image of the Black Bloc, very effectively in
Genoa, for their ends, not ours. Some aspects of
Black Bloc tactics made that easy: the anonymity, the
masks and easily identifiable dress code, the
willingness to engage in more confrontational tactics
and in property damage, and perhaps most significant,
the lack of connection with the rest of the action
and the organizers.
But
the Black Bloc was not the source of the problem in
Genoa. The problem was the state, its police and
fascist violence. Acts were committed in Genoa,
attributed to protestors - that were irresponsible
and wrong by anyone's standards - but it seems likely
now that most were done by the police. Or if not,
police provocateurs were so endemic that it's
impossible to tell what might have been done by
people in our movement or to hold anyone accountable.
So the issue Genoa presents us with is not "How
do we control the violent elements among us?" -
although that conceivably might be an issue someday.
It's "How do we forestall another campaign of
lies, police-instigated violence, and
retaliation?" There's no easy answer to that
question. The simplest strategy would be to go back
to a strict form of nonviolence, which many people
are proposing. I don't know why I find myself
resisting that answer. I'm a longtime advocate of
nonviolence; I have no intention of ever throwing a
brick through a window or lobbing a rock at a cop
myself, and in general I think breaking windows and
fighting cops in a mass action is counterproductive
at best and suicidal at worst.
One
reason might be that I can no longer use the same
word to describe what I've seen even the most unruly
elements of our movement do and what the cops did in
Genoa. If breaking windows and fighting back when the
cops attack is 'violence,' then give me a new word, a
word a thousand times stronger, to use when the cops
are beating nonresisting people into comas.
Another
might be that I like the Black Bloc. I've been in
many actions now where the Black Bloc was a strong
presence. In Seattle I was royally pissed off at them
for what I saw as their unilateral decision to
violate agreements everyone else accepted. In
Washington in 2000, I saw that they abided by
guidelines they disagreed with and had no part in
making, and I respected them for it. I've sat under
the hooves of the police horses with some of them
when we stopped a sweep of a crowded street using
tactics Gandhi himself could not have criticized.
I've choked with them in the tear gas in Quebec City
and seen them refrain from property damage there when
confronted by local people. I'm bonded. Yes, there
have been times I've been furious with some of them,
but they're my comrades and allies in this struggle
and I don't want to see them excluded or demonized.
We need them, or something like them.
We
need room in the movement for rage, for impatience,
for militant fervor, for an attitude that says
"We are badass, kickass folks and we will tear
this system down." If we cut that off, we
devitalize ourselves.
We
also need the Gandhian pacifists. We need room for
compassion, for faith, for an attitude that says,
"My hands will do the works of mercy and not the
works of war." We need those who refuse to
engage in violence because they do not want to live
in a violent world.
And
we need space for those of us who are trying to
explore forms of struggle that fall outside the
categories. We need radical creativity, space to
experiment, to carve out new territory, invent new
tactics, make mistakes.
There
are campaigns being waged now that are defined as
strictly nonviolent: concerning the School of the
Americas, Vandenberg, Vieques, among others.
Those
guidelines have been respected, and no black-clad,
brick-throwing figures have attempted to impose other
tactics.
But
the actions directed against the big summits have
drawn their strength from a much broader political
spectrum, from unions and NGOs to anarchist
revolutionaries. All these groups feel a certain
ownership of the issue and the fat, juicy targets
that the summits represent.
How
do we create a political space that can hold these
contrasts, and still survive the intense repression
directed against us? How do we go where no social
movement has ever gone before? Maybe these are the
questions we really need to ask. In a life or death
situation, there's a great temptation to exert more
control, to set rules, to police each other, to
retreat to what seems like safe ground. But all my
instincts tell me that going back to what seems safe
and tried and true is a mistake. As an anarchist, I'm
not interested in doing any kind of police work.
I
want to call each other to greater, not lesser
freedom, knowing that that also means greater
responsibility and greater risk.
Using
provocateurs to instigate violence which can be
blamed on dissenters and justify repression is a time
tested, generally successful way of destroying
radical movements. But identifying provocateurs in
the midst of an action is like trying to spray for a
pest in the garden: the toxicity of the spray (of the
suspicion, secrecy and lack of trust) may be as great
as that of the pest.
But
plants can resist pests if they are grown in healthy
soil. To forestall infiltration and provocateurs, we
need to examine the soil of our movement. I'd like to
suggest three nutrients that can make us more pest
resistant: communication, solidarity and creativity.
We
have to be in communication. We can no longer afford
to wage parallel but disconnected struggles at the
same demonstration. We need to state clearly our
intentions and goals for each action, and ask others
to support them. We may need to argue, to negotiate,
to compromise.
Articulating
a clear set of agreements about tactics may at times
be the best way to forestall provocateurs. But
agreements are only agreements when everyone
participates in making them. If one wing of the
movement attempts to impose them, they are not
agreements but decrees, and, moreovoer, decrees that
will not be respected and that we have no power to
enforce.
That
kind of communication involves risk on both sides,
but those risks have to be taken, intelligently and
thoughtfully, of course. We need to put a higher
priority on our communication than on our standing
with our funding sources. If my tactic of choice
makes it impossible for me to talk to you, I need to
question whether it's an appropriate tactic for a
mass action.
In
that dialogue, we actually have to struggle to
respect each other. No one gets to claim the moral
high ground. None of us exclusively gets to set the
agenda, determine the form of what we do or decree
the politics. Those who advocate nonviolence (a chief
tenet of which is to respect your opponent) need to
practice it within the movement. You can't just
dismiss the Black Bloc and other militant groups as
'negative rebels' or immature adolescents acting out.
They
have a political perspective that is serious,
thoughtful, and deserves to be taken seriously.
But
it also means that more militant groups need to stop
dismissing those who advocate nonviolence as
middle-class, passive, and cowardly. The Black Bloc
is widely respected for its courage, but it takes
another kind of courage to sit down in front of the
riot cops without sticks or rocks or Molotovs. It
takes courage to have your identity known, to
organize in your own city where you can't disappear
but must stand and face the consequences.
'Nonviolent' does not equate with
Ônonconfrontational,' or with wanting to be safe on
the sidelines. The essence of nonviolent political
struggle is to create intense confrontations that
highlight the violence in the system, and then to
stand and openly take the consequences. In today's
repressive climate, where 88-year-old nuns are being
given year-long prison sentences for completely
pacific actions, the risks of nonviolence may be much
higher than the risks of anonymous street fighting.
We
need to communicate clearly with the larger community
as well, proactively, not reactively. We have to let
people know what our intentions are and what the
parameters of the action might be. Imagine the Black
bloc putting out a Crimestopper Leaflet: "If you
see a group of masked figures looting small shops,
burning private cars, and endangering your children,
get their badge numbers! They are the Cops! Because
we're the Black Bloc, and that's not what we
do." We need to talk to the
not-already-converted, door to door, face-to-face,
not to lecture them but to ask about their lives and
the effects these issues have on them, and to ask
them to show support for us.
We
need to be in real solidarity with each other.
Solidarity is not just about refraining from
denouncing each other to the media, or about holding
vigils for those in jail. It means putting the good
of the whole above our immediate individual desires
or even safety. It means supporting each other's
intentions and goals, even when we only partially
agree with them. Not just by saying, "You do
your thing and I'll do mine," but by actually
taking responsibility for our actions and for the
impact they have on others beyond ourselves or our
immediate group.
Greater
freedom demands greater responsibility.
In
a mass action, individual decisions have a collective
impact. Some tactics are like the loud-voiced guy in
the meeting: they take up all the available space and
make it impossible for anyone else to be heard. Cops
are not creatures of fine distinctions. If one group
is throwing Molotov cocktails and smashing shop
windows, it may well affect how the police react to
the pacifist group a block over.
So,
just as the loud guy has to learn to step back
occasionally and shut up to give others a chance to
be heard, high confrontation tactics sometimes need
to be restrained just to allow other possibilities to
exist.
Solidarity
is about what we do on the street. It means
protecting each other as best we can, and certainly
not deliberately endangering each other. Of course,
one group's idea of protection may be another group's
idea of endangerment.
A
barricade may seem protective, but if your strategy
is to de-escalate tension, a barricade may actually
make your situation more dangerous. We need to
respect each other's choices. Solidarity means that
if I'm sitting down in front of a line of riot cops
and you're behind me, I can trust that you're
restraining the crowd behind from trampling me, not
throwing a rock over my head. And that if you push
through a line of cops and I'm behind you, I'm there
to support you, not restrain you. We have a right to
ask for solidarity from everyone who wants to be out
on the street together.
Solidarity
is also about holding each other accountable,
critiquing what we do together with the purpose of
learning from our mistakes and becoming more
effective. Critiquing is not attacking: a good
critique is a mark of respect, it's saying, "I
know that you and I share a common interest in making
this work better."
Perhaps
most of all, we need to be creative. Maybe, just to
stimulate our thinking, we need to mount one action
with one simple guideline: No tired, overused tactics
allowed. No cross-the-line symbolic arrests, no
bricks through the windows of Starbucks. And please,
please, no boring chants that have been recycled
since the Vietnam War, if not before. ("Hey hey,
ho ho, King George the Third has got to go?" At
least this would be a useful thought experiment.
We
need to think outside the fences and the boxes. We
need to do the unexpected, change clothes, change
tactics, be where they don't expect us to be, doing
what they don't expect us to do. If they expect us to
trash McDonalds, we're there disrupting its
operations by giving out free food and asking the
workers how globalization affects them. If they
expect militants to dress in black, then the
militants go lavender and the pacifists stage a
Funeral for Democracy, surrounding the White House
dressed in black mourning and veils. If they expect
us to walk up quietly in groups of five to get
arrested, we disappear and reappear somewhere else
entirely. If the hardcore streetfighters pull down a
fence, the 88-year-old nuns are the first through
into the red zone.
If
they block off the meeting and concentrate their
defenses on a wall, we claim the rest of the city. If
they hide the summits in inaccessible locations, we
choose our own turf.
These
are hard challenges, but these are hard times, too,
and they're not getting easier. I've already seen too
many movements splinter and fail or grandstand
themselves to death in ever more extreme and suicidal
acts, or suffocate from self-righteous moralism. I
want to win this revolution. I don't think we have
the ecological and social leeway to mount another one
if this fails. And the odds of winning are so slim
that we can't afford to be anything but smart,
strategic, and tight with one another. We need to
stand shoulder to shoulder, even when we disagree.
And if we can do that, if we can hold these
differences within our movement, we'll have taken a
step toward meeting the much greater challenges we'll
face when we do win, and come to remake a deeply
diverse world.
Starhawk is
the author of "The Spiral Dance", "The
Fifth Sacred Thing", and other books that link
an earth-based spirituality to action to change the
world. She will also be co-facilitating a workshop
with famed permaculturalist Penny Livingston (see
announcements in this issue for details). You can
learn more about her at www.starhawk.org.
She thanks Lisa Fithian, Hilary McQuie and David
Miller for discussions that contributed to this
piece.
