APPLES AND ORANGES: An open letter to Michael Albert from Ken Freeland.

(Note: the open letter below is a response to the essay "Who Owns the
Movement?" by Michael Albert,. editor of Z-Net. It can (and should) be
read at http://www.zmag.org/who_owns.htm)

"If anarchists are capable of authoritarian attitudes ... I should no
more hail one as a comrade, sight unseen, than I would a statetrooper
or used-car dealer. The label is not a warranty." -- My Anarchism
Problem by Bob Black --


Dear Michael,

Your recently published and widely circulated essay, "Who Owns the
Movement?," is an excellent example of the politics of inclusion.
However, your admission that you are yourself "not non-violent"
betrays a bias, or perhaps we should charitably call it a fatal blind
spot, that colors your conclusions, and renders them unacceptable to
those who do practice and defend non-violence. I would like to
dailogue with you about the problematic nature of your proposal from
the non-violent point of view:

In the tradition of Gene Sharp et al., you have undertaken a serious
methodological analysis of the question from the purely tactical,
perhaps we should say pragmatic standpoint. I recognize that there are
others like you, especially on the Left, who see nonviolence as a
sometimes useful, sometimes not-so-useful approach to effecting social
change. In such a view, there is no qualitative distinction between
the two approaches: One is a hammer and the other is a screwdriver --
the job at hand determines which tool will work to greater effect.

What I think you fail to appreciate is that, as opposed to its Vietnam
era predecessor during which both you and I apparently cut our teeth ,
the contemporary peace and justice movement includes many activists
who are impelled by strictly religious or "spiritual" motives -- by
some moral, metaphysical or perhaps even mystical understanding that
transcends the merely practical question. To such people, nonviolence
is not a "strategy-du-jour," it is a commandment, or at least a
lifetime commitment, which does not admit of compromise. It is an
absolute principle -- "if something cannot be done in the spirit of
non-violence, then it should not be done at all." (Better to tolerate
an existing evil for the time being, than to attempt to overcome it by
evil of our own, which can only add to the aggregate of evil in the
world, leaving us in a morally poorer world than the one that existed
before our action., etc.)

My purpose here is not to provoke debate about such beliefs, but to
advertise their existence among a wide cross-section of the existing
peace movement. Those who take non-violence this seriously are not
only unwilling and unable to consider violent solutions to social and
political probems, they also do not, as a rule, hold common cause with
those who advocate and actively participate in those counterproductive
tactics (counterproductive because morally backward). The thought of
sharing a protest activity or any other event with those so avidly
pulling in the opposite direction is an abhorrent prospect to the
dedicatedly nonviolent activist. Advocates of more forceful and
destructive methods often claim to have the same aims as their
non-violent counterparts, but they are just as often often regarded as
wolves in sheep's clothing, however unwitting -- their claim is seen as
belied by their actions .

An activist by the name of Jeffrey White circulated a copy of the M30
Black Bloc ACME collective's manifesto (http://216.173.206.96/display.
php3?article_id=508) [to which your earlier missive,"On Trashing and
Movement Building," was meant as a response], to a group of 300 or so
fairly liberal folks on the East Coast. Here is a sample of the
feedback he received , by a correspondent named Sondra Shaievitz, a New
York lawyer:


"I think these people are so fucked up to destroy other people's
property and livelihoods. They use what they personally believe in to
lull themselves into a strong enough feeling of self righteousness and
narcissism to purposefully delude themselves into thinking their
actions are justified. And this bit about their non-violence? Is that
a joke? They sure as hell would think it was violent if someone
destroyed their property. They must know that some poor schmuck who is
trying to make a living from owning one small Starbuck's or McDonald's
(if these are franchises) has no influence over corporate decisions.
Isn't it nice for them that their lives are so cushy that they don't
have to depend on a job working in some chain store to feed and clothe
their families?

"Of course, these people probably are not old enough to have families
of their own yet. They may see things alittle differently when that
time comes. Although I totally agree with the changes in policy that
these people are trying to achieve, THEY ARE ATTACKING THE WRONG
PEOPLE. They should target the corporate decision-makers of these
stores, in a TRULY non-violent way, not the working stiffs trying to
support themselves. How dare they invade other people's lives in such
a destructive way? I don't care if my opinion is not "cool."

"When these people get alittle older, perhaps they will develop more
empathy for people just trying to make their way in this world. It's
not so easy once you no longer are heavily subsidized by your parents.
Peace."


Sondra's comments seem to me to typify the response of many thinking
people to the wanton property destruction that took place in Seattle,
and its specious justification by the anarchists in question.

In the first place, as she observes, these anarchists hit pretty wide
of the real target, the decision-makers at the WTO. In the second
place, the practical results of their destructive activity for real
working people and struggling small business owners is brought into
focus, a consideration entirely ignored by these anarchists themselves.
Query: did activists go to Seattle to ignore the needs of real
working people, and to make their lives more difficult, or to protest
and/or block those who were doing so (i.e., the WTO)?

Another woman highly critical of this tactic, Tresy Kilbourne, offers
this eyewitness account in response to the communique:


"What a bunch of horseshit. Let me tell you about the "anarchist bloc",
which I had the memorable experience of following on their initial
rampage:

"I first came across them at Westlake Center, where they were engaged
in overturning newspaper vending machines and stomping on them,
scattering their contents far and wide. To the repeated pleas of the
nonviolent protesters to stop, they responded in their preferred argot:
a string of profanities. "This is OUR fucking thing, aright?" one of
them intelligently screamed. "If you don't like it, you can go do your
own fucking thing somewhere ELSE!! Got it?!?"

"'But why must you destroy everything?' pleaded one. 'What possible
good can come of this?'

"'Because it's the whole fucking system, man, that has to be torn
DOWN! I HATE this fucking place!'

" 'But WE don't! We live here! We LOVE Seattle! Can't you just let us
have our city?'

'NO!!! I HATE your fucking city!!! It makes me SICK! I want to tear
it all DOWN!! You know that? I want to destroy fucking everything
and.... and... plant a fucking GARDEN!!!"' Whereupon a comrade tapped
him on the shoulder, they cranked up the thrash metal on their boombox
(good for gardening, I hear), and they mounted their bikes for their
next destination. Which was where I photographed their initial rampage
against local businesses
"This is where the hypocrisy in the referenced communique really
shines. They make it sound like their targets were carefully selected.
They weren't. Everything in their path was trashed. Note the picture in
Day3 of my website [http://www.kilbourne-quirk.com/WTO/World.html] of
the nonviolents cleaning an abandoned 5-and-10 storefront of graffiti.
Some oppressor of the working class! Also choice was their
justification for trashing Starbucks ("peddlers of an addictive
substance whose products are harvested at below-poverty wages by
farmers who are forced to destroy their own forests in the process").
With nicknames like "Meth," it should hardly be surprising that
everyone of them was a heavy smoker. You didn't notice any smoke shops
being put to the torch. As for their pious distinction between
violence against property and violence against people, that's horseshit
too. Not only did one vandal try to spray paint me when I took a
picture of him, but later several of them tried to mug me with crowbars
for the same offense. The papers carried accounts from other
participants to the same effect."

So maybe the ACME Collective's "communique" was less of a manifesto
and more of an a posteriori rationalization for a "collective"temper
tantrum. Who is to say? But Tresy's piece, like Sondra's, points to
yet another similarity between these anarchists and their WTO
counterparts: an elitist, anti-democratic approach to decision-making.
Indeed, they imposed the character of their actions on the rest of the
demonstrators, and were quite willing to allow their nonviolent
comrades to take the heat, as they carried their coals to the Newcastle
of police wrath, then boasted openly about not getting caught or hurt,
while others in the demonstration were suffering serious injury,
arrest, even torture according to some credible accounts.
Meanwhile, many (including this ACME collective themselves) have
reported the existence of agents provocateurs in the midst of the
Seattle melee. Doing what? Instigating the demonstrators to trash
property, in order to justify, even adfter the fact, the extensive
police repression. The ACME collective of anarchists thus demonstrates
its affinity with the goals of the police.
And how does this modus operandi contrast with nonviolence?
Nonviolent action is transparent and open, whereas these anarchists hid
their identities behind black masks. Nonviolence insists on, indeed
welcomes the legal consequences of its civil disobedience. The ACME
collective boasts of having evaded the police, while others less
violent bore the brunt of the police repression their actions served to
escalate. Nonviolent activists frequently pledge to avoid property
destruction, whereas precisely this seems to have been the top priority
for these anarchists. Truly nonviolent actions require returning love
to the agent of repression, even in the case of physical attack
("nonresistance"). whereas the ACME collective was proactively violent,
at least towards property.( And really, how much moral intelligence
does it take to understand that if there is something wrong about
buying and selling- Nike running shoes because of the economic
exploitation involved in their producition, it must be doubly wrong to
steal them ? The ACME collective proudly boasts of having looted a
Nike store -- apparently, economic exploitation is not a problem when
its beneficiaries are politically correct enough . . .)
To say that these two horses are unequally yoked is an understatement;
it is all too obvious that violent and non-violent tactics pull in
opposite directions. They mix together about as well as oil and water.
So, even going beyond the earlier logical (or metaphysical) analysis
of their incompatibility, the PRACTICAL impossibility of trying to link
these two approaches together in the same event is apparent.
You, Michael, have argued that "social struggle is not and will never
be perfectly choreographed." I suppose that in the literal sense this
is a truism. But in closing, I would like to propose careful
consideration of the nonviolent model, as it has been sedulously
implemented by the annual School of the Americas protest at Fort
Benning, Georgia for nine years running. True, the leadership of this
event is established and not "democratic," but on the positive side,
there is universal and voluntary accession to the principles of
nonviolence by each and every participant. There has never been any
trouble with the local police, with whom cooperative relations are
carefully cultivated. There is no one to resent the volunteer
"peacekeepers" among us, who help maintain order and logistical control
(how can you have perfect choreography with no choregraphers?) And
year after year we can return in increased numbers, the townspeople
showing little resentment because after as many as 12.000 people have
overwhelmed the little burgh of Columbus, Georgia, "we don't even leave
a gum wrapper on the ground." (I think this is about as near "perfect
choreography" as we can get in a protest event). Yes, we undertake
civil disobedience, but on the army base itself, at the School, which
is the focus of our concern. Because of the comprehensive and
unremitting non-violence of our approach, there has yet to be a
disruption of our activity by police agents or anyone else brandishing
a contradictory agenda. If they tried, they would be politely and
intelligently confronted by all who surrounded them, because our
unified purpose and homogeneous methodology provide a normative force
that no instigator can easily penetrate. [This annual nonviolent civil
disobedience campaign is coupled with an ognoing lobbying effort, and
the House last year approved a funding cut for the School, though it
was bargained away in conference with the Senate over the Defense
Appropriations Budget . Each year, the number of nonviolent protesters
showing up at the School of the Americas has doubled . . .]

The volatile admixture that was Seattle has left a burning question in
the minds of many activists, a question that cannot be answered by
facile attempts to square the circle. I can only foresee three
possible outcomes: 1) The movement embraces non-violent discipline and
repudiates the juvenile antics of the more violent; 2) The movement
accepts the validity of routine property-destruction as a tactic, and
rejects the discipline of nonviolence; 3) The movement splits over the
issue, each persuasion holding entirely separate events and activities
The question of non-violence is a methodological issue of the first
importance, not a side issue; it cannot be finessed or put on the back
burner -- it must be directly confronted and addressed. At this point,
l I leave off my analysis, in hopes that it will suffice to provoke the
debate on this issue that is so terribly needed.

Peace,
Ken Freeland
Houston, Texas
mailto:kenfree@...