Re: eyewitness account of genoa (fwd)

At the risk of dredging up thirty year old debates which may be of no
interest to some of the younger members (or older members) on WSN, I'd like
to offer a slightly different interpretation from that of Louis Proyect
about some of the 1960's demonstrations.  So to those of you not interested,
you've been warned, and can delete this now, without having to feel like
your time was wasted.

Louis Proyect is largely correct in his criticisms of provocateurs, both in
Genoa and during the 1960's and 1970's. The provocateurs fell into two
groups: those paid by the police, and those who were mainly "liberals with
explosives" acting out their rage in ways that expressed a kind of liberal
outrage--making a "statement" that posed no threat to the power of the
ruling class. The role of cops in the movement, from "Tommy the Traveller"
carrying explosives in upstate New York to the undercover cop leader of a
protest that burned an ROTC building in St. Louis, to Mayor Daley displaying
golf balls with nails and charging that they were used against police (when
in fact they were made in a police laboratory)  has all been well
documented.  The National leadership of SDS between 1968 and 1969
(especially the "Weather(men)(Underground)" largely reflected the second
type of group, and it's no accident that many of that group eventually
"turned themselves in" and did very little jail time---less, in fact than
many less famous---and some of them are now deeply involved in traditional
liberal politics.

But there were times when mass violence was justified. There was violence in
shutting down San Francisco State, Columbia, Harvard, Wisconsin and hundreds
of other universities. (Not to mention urban rebellions of self-defense
against police terror.) The campus protests were often not provocative
actions--these were mass actions intended to physically disrupt the system,
to be part of a movement to hurt the war effort.  Some of the "anti-violent"
groups opposed that strategy in ways that prevented the mass movement from
trying to weaken the war effort.  I witnessed, with my own eyes, an odd,
contorted set of reasoning on the Wayne State University campus in the early
1970's. There was a demand for the university to abolish ROTC and
cooperation with the military. Students went on strike to shut the school
down and were blocking buildings. The Young Socialist Alliance (Fred
Halstead's group) insisted that such a demand was "reformist" and that a
truly revolutionary demand would be to take over the university and turn it
into an anti-war university (whatever the hell that means under capitalism
in Detroit.) The university agreed to some of those demands, giving an
office, printing supplies, etc. to an anti-war group and allowing them to
"use the university as a center for anti-war activity."  HOWEVER, ROTC WAS
STILL KEPT INTACT AS A PART OF THE UNIVERSITY. Many students saw through
this ruse and declared that the strike would continue until ROTC was
abolished. The Young Socialist Alliance, however, declared that Wayne State
was now an "anti-war university" and that the strike was over.  And on more
than one instance, they supported right-wing students who used force to
break the picket lines to try to re-open the university. (I don't know if
the YSA itself physically attacked the strikers, so I won't make that
charge.)  To many in the anti-war movement, this pseud-revolutionary
position really just amounted to getting bought off, and pretty cheap at
that---office space and some printing paper! It reminds me of Hardt and
Negri, claiming that all the protests are not revolutionary enough (I agree
with that), but concluding that they are therefore bad, or at least
"misdirected."
In an instance in the mid-1970's, a multi-racial group attempted to go,
together, to a "white only" part of a public beach in Boston. A group
organized by the NAACP opposed this as "provocative" and along with the YSA,
attempted to stop the multi-racial group from its legal gathering.

THE POINT OF THIS POSTING IS NOT TO CRITIQUE LOUIS PROYECT, and this
shouldn't be taken as a personal or political attack on him. Nor is it to
open up thirty year old debates--the posting of a comment by Fred Halstead
did open the door to a response, but that is not the point of this posting.
It is only to say that mass violence can certainly be appropriate under some
circumstances. And as we critique both the police agents, many of which
appear to be active in  Black Bloc, and also critique the "infantile"
egotistical characters who want to "feel" like they are striking blows for
justice, we should not assume that all militant actions are the work of cops
or egotistical "posers."  I realize that the WSN is intended to mainly
discuss analysis of international politics and economics, but understanding
the strategies of rebellion is an aspect of that.


Alan Spector

===========================================================
----- Original Message -----
From: "Louis Proyect" <lnp3@panix.com>
To: "World Systems Listserv" <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
Sent: Saturday, July 28, 2001 5:20 PM
Subject: Re: eyewitness account of genoa (fwd)


> On Sat, 28 Jul 2001 17:42:25 -0400 (EDT), colin s. cavell wrote:
> >The provocateur tactic of infiltration of
> >peaceful demonstrators by
> >members of the so-called "black bloc" and
> >their alliance with the
> >Italian police indicates the preference for
> >violence to enforce adherence
> >to the new global superbarons of capitalist
> >globalization.
>
> The broad left will have to come to terms with this 'black bloc'
> phenomenon. I use the term in quotes because there is some question
> about who it is and whether or not it was involved in the Genoa
> debacle directly. The real question is not "who did it" but "why".
>
> For the answer to this question, it is useful to look at the Vietnam
> antiwar movement for analogies. I was 23 years old in 1968 and an
> activist in the Trotskyist movement, which was to the antiwar
> movement as the NGO's and trade unions are to the
> 'anti-globalization' movement today. By our insistence on peaceful,
> legal mass demonstrations, we earned the reputation of being
> 'reformists' by the SDS'ers, the yippies, et al. My own mailing
> list--interestingly enough--has been the arena of an intense
> ideological struggle over the past week or so between old-school
> Marxists like myself and younger (and those who admire the young)
> supporters of the black bloc.
>
> I found this passage from a book by a Trotskyist leader of the
> antiwar movement useful. I hope you do also.
>
> Fred Halstead, "Out Now: a Participant's Account of the American
> Movement Against the Vietnam War" (Pathfinder Press):
>
> Chicago, 1968
>
> On Wednesday, August 28, the day of the nomination, some 10,000
> demonstrators gathered at a National Mobe rally in the bandshell area
> of Grant Park, a mile or so south of the center of the Loop. The
> rally was orderly until a young man lowered the American flag from a
> flagpole. Some cops moved to arrest him and were heckled by members
> of the crowd seated in that area. Seizing on this incident, a phalanx
> of about forty cops waded into that part of the crowd, clubbing
> freely. People scrambled out of the way, desperately climbing over
> overturned benches. Some were hurt. Another part of the crowd began
> to face off at the police.
>
> Rennie Davis, who unlike [Jerry] Rubin was inclined to be in the
> thick of things even after they got sticky, moved with a line of
> marshals between the crowd and the cops, facing the crowd and trying
> to get people back in their seats. Some of the cops charged again and
> Davis was clubbed from behind and knocked unconscious.
>
> At this point it is necessary to set the geographical scene, Grant
> Park lies between Lake Michigan on the east and Michigan Avenue on
> the west. Across Michigan Avenue from the park are hotels where many
> delegates were staying and where convention caucusing was going on.
> The strip of park directly on Michigan Avenue is separated from the
> rest--including the bandshell area--by a deep railroad channel which
> must be crossed by bridges.
>
> Dellinger wanted to lead a nonviolent march from the rally across the
> nearest bridges, then south on Michigan Avenue toward the
> Amphitheatre. This route would not have taken the marchers directly
> in front of the convention hotels, since they would have emerged onto
> Michigan Avenue somewhat south of the hotel area.
>
> "He proposed that the crowd divide into two parts: those who were
> willing to face arrest would march to the Amphitheatre, and those who
> did not could either go north through the park or disperse. As the
> march to the Amphitheatre moved west it found the bridges blocked by
> police and National Guard units, including military vehicles with
> racks of barbed wire attached to their fronts. Dellinger then started
> a sit-down.
>
> Tom Hayden, however, had delivered an impassioned speech to the rally
> after Davis was knocked out, which was not entirely in line with
> Dellinger's plan. According to the Chicago Daily News, Hayden said:
>
> "This city and the military machinery it has aimed at us won't permit
> us to protest in an organized fashion.
>
> "Therefore we must move out of this park in groups throughout this
> city, and turn this excited, overheated military machine against
> itself.
>
> "Let us make sure that if blood flows, it flows all over the city; if
> they use gas against us, let's make sure they use gas against their
> own citizens. If the police run wild, let them run wild all over
> Chicago--not just over us sitting in the park. If they are going to
> disrupt us and our march, let them disrupt the whole city."
>
> Part of the crowd following Dellinger did not sit down. Some of them
> simply dispersed, especially after tear gas was used. But part of
> them swung around and joined the group moving north, making about
> 3,000.
>
> They found each bridge blocked until they reached Monroe Drive, about
> a mile north, where they swarmed across. By coincidence at just that
> time a parade of about a hundred Blacks and a mule wagon, led by the
> Rev. Ralph Abernathy of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference,
> was coming south on Michigan Avenue. This group had a parade permit
> and a police escort. The crowd from Grant Park joined in a move south
> along with the mule wagon toward the hotels on Michigan Avenue.
>
> Then the police made what would appear later as a first-class
> blunder. Instead of letting the march continue south on Michigan
> Avenue, at least as far as some more isolated spot, they halted it in
> front of the Conrad Hilton, one of the main convention hotels, where
> a lot of McCarthy delegates were staying. Meanwhile another couple of
> thousand people, not all of them demonstrators, had gathered in the
> general area of the Hilton. Speakers in the crowd shouted to move on
> with the march. While TV cameras rolled, the cops waded in with clubs
> swinging. Some of the action was later described in the Walker
> report:
>
> "A part of the crowd was trapped in front of the Conrad Hilton and
> pressed hard against a big plate-glass window of the Haymarket
> Lounge. A reporter who was sitting inside said, 'Frightened men and
> women banged . . . against the window, that it might get knocked in.
> As I hacked away a few feet I could see a smudge of blood on the
> glass outside."
>
> "With a sickening crack, the window shattered, and screaming men and
> women tumbled through, some cut badly by jagged glass. The police
> came after them.
>
> "'I was pushed through by the force of large numbers of people,' one
> victim said. 'I got a deep cut on my right leg, diagnosed later as a
> severed artery. ... I fell to the floor of the bar. There were 10 to
> 20 people who had come through. ... I could not stand on the leg. It
> was bleeding profusely,' A squad of policemen burst into the bar,
> clubbing all those who looked to them like demonstrators."
>
> The report described the beating by police outside the Hilton of a
> youth who looked about fifteen years old, and then continued:
>
> "A well-dressed woman saw this incident and spoke angrily to a nearby
> police captain. As she spoke, another policeman came up from behind
> her and sprayed something in her face with an aerosol can. He then
> clubbed her to the ground. He and two other policemen then dragged
> her along the ground to the same paddy wagon and threw her in."
>
> Meanwhile Dellinger and the group he was with had finally made it to
> the street in front of the Hilton. He remembers the scene as follows:
>
> "As I approached, several vans came up a side street and unloaded
> police reinforcements. The new arrivals jumped out of the vans and
> charged into the crowd, swinging their clubs and chanting, 'Kill,
> kill, kill'; We had no sound system capable of rebelling the crowd,
> no plan of action, no training of marshals (most of whom were
> scattered, arrested, or bleeding from previous assaults) adequate for
> the occasion. All day long I had felt betrayed by the absence of most
> of the movement's pacifist leadership, some of whom had stayed away
> from Chicago altogether, some of whom had engaged in a small,
> separatist 'pacifist action' the day before, aloof from the major
> dynamics of the week's struggle. Meanwhile a number of the more
> vocal, visible leaders had been arguing for several hours that 'This
> is the end of nonviolence in America. It simply won't work anymore.'
> I felt completely defeated by the situation, incapable of doing
> anything useful.
>
> "I shall never forget the spontaneous actions of the demonstrators.
> Of course, some rocks flew and some fists went into action in
> attempts to ward off the attackers--desperate acts of angry
> self-defense. But mainly the protestors parried the blow while
> retreating slowly and in remarkably good order, then surged forward
> again as each police attack momentarily spent itself. ... It took a
> long time to push us back, to clear the streets for a couple of
> blocks. And when the streets were finally cleared and lined with
> police, the demonstrators were still there, massed on the grass
> across from the hotels, chanting antiwar slogans, singing movement
> songs, shouting to the delegates."
>
> Meanwhile, back at the convention, Humphrey had been nominated,
> McCarthy defeated, and a number of the delegates had returned to
> their hotels, only to become swept up in the melee around the Hilton.
>
> Mayor Daley would later complain that his administration and the
> Chicago police did not get sympathetic press and TV coverage from
> their actions of Wednesday night.
>
> On Thursday, August 29, a crowd of some 5,000 gathered in the strip
> of park opposite the Hilton for another rally sponsored by National
> Mobe. According to the original schedule this was to have been a
> "massive People's Assembly to project the directions and tasks which
> were supposed to have developed out of the workshops and activities
> of the week. But McCarthy turned out to be the principal speaker.
>
> Formally, the National Mobe rally was adjourned before McCarthy was
> introduced, but neither the major media nor the bulk of the crowd
> drew the fine distinction. The crowd gave McCarthy a standing
> ovation, and he emerged as the martyr of the hour.
>
> After McCarthy spoke, another attempt was made to march to the
> Amphitheatre. This time some 2,000 people led by Dick Gregory and
> Eric Weinberger, as well as a number of accredited delegates to the
> convention, made it as far as Michigan Avenue and Eighteenth Street
> where they were stopped by police and National Guard units. Only
> delegates would be allowed beyond this point, they were told.
>
> About twenty-five of the delegates, including columnist Murray
> Kempton, removed their badges, moved forward with Gregory and some
> fifty others, and submitted to arrest. Then police and guardsmen
> tear-gassed the rest of the crowd and chased it north, back toward
> the Hilton and Grant Park, where sporadic demonstrating and attacks
> by the police and National Guard continued until early morning.
>
> About 5:00 a.m. Friday, police raided a suite on an upper floor of
> the Hilton rented by John Kenneth Galbraith and others and used as a
> McCarthy headquarters. (The cops claimed that ever since Wednesday
> night people in the hotel had been throwing ashtrays, beer cans, and
> other things out the windows at them, and that they had pinpointed
> this suite as a source of such missiles. The last of the
> demonstrators were leaving the street by 8:30 in the morning. The
> Chicago Democratic Party demonstrations were over.
>
> Some 660 people had been arrested in connection with the actions,
> probably over 1,000 injured, and one killed. He was Dean Johnson, a
> seventeen-year-old Native American from South Dakota who was in Old
> Town when the police made a sweep. He allegedly drew a gun on them
> and was shot down.
>
> There was enormous publicity around these demonstrations, both in the
> United States and worldwide. Millions of people watched the police
> attack at the Hilton Wednesday night on TV. Some twenty-two newsmen,
> including reporters from such prestigious media as Associated Press,
> United Press International, the Washington Past, and Business Week,
> accused the police of assaulting them, and in the early reports at
> least, the Daly administration did not get a good press. Daly himself
> played an important role in the convention, and the controlling
> machine within the Democratic Party came off with a black eye. An
> article in the Chicago Daily News declared:
>
> "The antiwar 'movement' came to Chicago, hoping to establish in the
> public's mind, that the nation's ruling party is plagued by a
> militaristic over-reaction-at home and abroad.
>
> "And while their heads are bloodied, they may have succeeded--with an
> unexpected boost from Mayor Richard J. Daley and the Chicago police.
>
> "The 'medium became the message' as their threats of massive
> demonstrations against militarism elicited the largest display of
> military force in the history of political conventions. Even the TV
> commentators and liberal delegates have dubbed this convention city a
> 'police state.'"
>
> In that sense the leadership of the action counted it a victory, and
> were at first euphoric. Not for nothing did Rubin have a reputation
> for exploiting the publicity media. But the antiwar movement itself
> was in something of a shambles, badly divided, and that part of it
> which had organized this action soon entered a prolonged crisis.
>
> Years later Dellinger would write:
>
> "Despite the small turnout for the convention protests, the
> government partially saved us when it decided to withhold permits and
> to turn loose the Chicago police. . . .
>
> "There was a limit, however, to how far a repressive government and
> rampaging police could save a movement that was as divided and
> confused as we were. They could save us from immediate public
> embarrassment, even cause a temporary outpouring of sympathy in our
> behalf, but they could not heal our internal wounds. In practice they
> exacerbated them. They helped create a movement mystique of
> revolutionary derring-do and heroic street encounters as goals in
> themselves. This polarized the movement around the question of street
> violence and gradually led to a tragic separation between the
> organized movement and large sections the antiwar public. Although
> the immediate result of the Chicago police riots was to increase
> antiwar sentiment, the long-run effect was to make more difficult for
> that sentiment to express itself in an organized, effective fashion."
>
> When Dellinger speaks here of "a tragic separation between Organized
> movement and large sections of the antiwar public," he
> is--consciously or not--referring to only a part of the "organized
> movement," the part that at the time of Chicago he considered most
> important. This included the de facto current leadership of National
> Mobe, a group of graduate SDSers, and the current SDS leadership and
> milieu. All these were deeply involved in the Chicago actions.
>
> When Rennie Davis and Tom Hayden set up the Chicago operation they
> enlisted the efforts of a number of graduate SDSers, including Kathy
> Boudin, John Froines, Carol Classman, Vernon Grizzard, Paul Potter,
> Jeff Shero, and Lee. Webb. Much of the work involved in the Chicago
> actions was done by this force. Carl Oglesby also played a certain
> role through the SDS national office, for which he still worked.
>
> The new SDS leadership, elected at the East Lansing convention in
> June, included Mike Klonsky as national secretary and Bernardine
> Dohrn as inter-organizational secretary. Both had recently announced
> themselves as "revolutionaries."
>
> The SDS national office at first opposed the Chicago actions, in part
> because it rejected antiwar demonstrations and in part because it
> rejected McCarthy and electoral politics in general. But as the
> demonstrations approached, the SDS leadership became attracted,
> precisely because the publicity of confrontation was building. They
> decided to mobilize several hundred SDSers to come to Chicago as
> organizers to try to recruit among the large number of McCarthy youth
> expected to attend. They set up several workshops, the largest in the
> Old Town area, and found themselves in the thick of the
> confrontations when they occurred. They were enraptured by the whole
> experience, particularly by the fact that a certain number of
> ordinary Black and white Chicago youth, looking for adventure or
> angered at the police riot in their haunts, became involved in the
> street fighting.
>
> The SDS leaders exaggerated this and drew the most romanticized
> conclusions from it. At the Grant Park rallies both Mike Klonsky and
> Jeff Jones, a leader of the New York regional office, declared that a
> new revolutionary force had been tapped and the way to organize it
> was to get into more such street action. The September 9 issue of New
> Left Notes carried a wall poster which made the same point, along
> with an outline of street fighting techniques, and even suggested
> that it might be possible to expose the national election the way
> they felt they had succeeded in exposing the Democratic Party
> convention. At the time, Dellinger himself considered the Chicago
> demonstrations to be a victory, though he noted and warned against a
> tendency among some of the leading participants to draw conclusions
> that were deeply disturbing to him.
>
> "We came off well in Chicago [he wrote shortly after the events]. It
> was a clear-cut victory because the police acted abominably and our
> people showed courage, aggressiveness and a proper sense of values.
> But if street fighting breaks out when the police are restrained and
> if we act contemptuously of other peopled rights, the sentiments of
> those who should be our allies could turn against us. More important,
> we will begin to lose sight of our objectives and develop a Movement
> style that attracts lovers of violence rather than lovers of justice
> and brotherhood. . .
>
> "There is of course a delicate line to be drawn here. The war makers
> would like nothing better than to carry on 'business as usual,'
> challenged only by token dissent and static demonstrations. . . . But
> to be effective, disruption and disorder must be discriminating and
> purposeful."
>
> Once again we come to the problem that Dellinger had wrestled with in
> the Pentagon march and which still occupied much of his attention. He
> rejected the mass action approach of the SMC as "token" and "static."
> Perhaps he did not agree that under the given circumstances
> demonstrations had to be orderly to be massive. But in any case he
> considered the mass aspect to be less important than the disruption,
> and tended to sacrifice the one for the other. He viewed the SDS
> milieu, which was attracted to disruption, as very important.
>
> But to that milieu the ''delicate line" essential to Dellinger's
> disruptive nonviolence was becoming more and more difficult to draw.
> What was involved here on the movement side was not real violence.
> There was very little of that during or even after Chicago. What was
> involved was provocative rhetoric and romantic fantasies about
> reliving in the modern United States the guerrilla warfare
> experiences of some colonial revolutions. Thus removed from reality,
> a "movement style" of escalating rhetoric developed which fed on
> itself, contributing to a more and more sectarian syndrome.
>
> Dellinger tried to counter this after his fashion, but in my view he
> had a fantasy of his own. In his October 1968 article analyzing the
> Chicago events he said: "Our aim is to destroy power, dissipate it,
> decentralize democratize it if you will. This process must begin here
> and now in the organizations and institutions which we set up as
> training centers and pilot projects for the new society." As if the
> time had come for pure anarchy. Unfortunately this approach was far
> more effective in dissolving the authority of the National
> Mobilization Committee than that of the government. Dellinger's
> concept of democracy did not include the formalities, and his concept
> of struggle did not include organizational discipline. What
> materialized in life was the transformation of the National
> Mobilization Committee from a broad coalition into a name used by a
> self-appointed group of prominent figures with an organizational norm
> of do-your-own-thing.
>
> Dellinger attempted to influence the SDS milieu by accommodating to
> its mood, and by having National Mobe call actions designed to
> attract SDS toward nonviolent resistance. It didn't work. The
> denouement would unwind in the course of the next year and would not
> be without its element of tragedy. But all this concerned only a part
> of the organized movement.
>
> Other parts of the antiwar movement drew different conclusions from
> the Chicago actions. Lew Jones commented in a report to a joint
> SWP-YSA meeting:
>
> "It's important to see this demonstration [Chicago] in the context of
> the history of the struggle within the antiwar movement for a line. .
> . . There are essentially two alternative lines before the antiwar
> movement. Our line says that around two or three simple themes, such
> as end the war, bring the GIs home now, the movement should go out
> and mobilize people into mass actions in the streets. The other line,
> which Dellinger has more and more deepened and tried to organise
> around, is the idea that what is necessary is get small brigades of
> youth, confront armed authority, by doing that expose the real nature
> of the system, and by doing that masses of people are influenced.
> It's the so-called spark theory. That's what was really involved in
> this demonstration . . . .
>
> "Now, what do we say to people about this demonstration? First, we
> condemn the Daley machine up and down for being brutal, suppressing
> every notion of civil liberties with the most brutal police methods.
> Secondly, we solidarize with those youth there on their civil
> liberties.
>
> "But . . . more of these kinds of demonstrations are not going to
> radicalize people. On the contrary, it will have a demoralizing
> effect and it will turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy about
> repression in this country."
>
> --
> Louis Proyect, lnp3@panix.com on 07/28/2001
> Marxism list: http://www.marxmail.org