The important thing to recognize about black bloc is something you describe in your commrnt, but I want to highlight it: they are escalatory. Black bloc is generally not a carefully organized and principled group that carries out operations with the wider community strategy in mind. They are pissed off “autonomous” (read: unorganized) people who want to intimidate their enemies (usually cops) and destroy private property.
Both of those things are awesome in most contexts, but in situations like, say, Portland being targeted for fed harassment, black bloc is solely helping to manufacture the feds’ excuse for being there.
Another example: blacl bloc folks love to set dumpsters on fire and build flaming barricades. Those are cool by themselves, yeah nice fire and such. But most often I have seen this, again, simply become an excuse for the powers that be to enter community-organized spaces. Fire is a safety concern, etc etc. Did the flaming dumpster really provide protection? It didn’t stop the cops from entering the space at all. Surely there should be some kind of evaluation of whether you are ready to defend the flaming dumpster before creating it as a supposed deterrent. Usually black bloc seems to “disperse” or retreat at those exact moments when cops and firefighters show up in numbers to put out the flaming dumpsters and invade the community space. They didn’t organize sufficient numbers to actually hold the space, did not understand6 their capacity, and simply escalated.
The important thing to recognize about black bloc is something you describe in your commrnt, but I want to highlight it: they are escalatory. Black bloc is generally not a carefully organized and principled group that carries out operations with the wider community strategy in mind. They are pissed off “autonomous” (read: unorganized) people who want to intimidate their enemies (usually cops) and destroy private property.
Both of those things are awesome in most contexts, but in situations like, say, Portland being targeted for fed harassment, black bloc is solely helping to manufacture the feds’ excuse for being there.
Another example: blacl bloc folks love to set dumpsters on fire and build flaming barricades. Those are cool by themselves, yeah nice fire and such. But most often I have seen this, again, simply become an excuse for the powers that be to enter community-organized spaces. Fire is a safety concern, etc etc. Did the flaming dumpster really provide protection? It didn’t stop the cops from entering the space at all. Surely there should be some kind of evaluation of whether you are ready to defend the flaming dumpster before creating it as a supposed deterrent. Usually black bloc seems to “disperse” or retreat at those exact moments when cops and firefighters show up in numbers to put out the flaming dumpsters and invade the community space. They didn’t organize sufficient numbers to actually hold the space, did not understand6 their capacity, and simply escalated.