The plan for the next day was simple enough: you all arrive separately, and then, on cue, mask up and inflict as much damage as possible in retaliation for your comrades in jail. When you arrive at the police station there are about a thousand other people in attendance. Not bad given such short notice. The atmosphere is completely different from the day before. Gone are the bright slogans and colourful banners of yesterday, replaced with cardboard signs hastily scrawled with magic marker. Today things are much more personal much more raw. Many people in the past twenty four hours have seen their friends and family members brutalized at the hands of the pigs, who stand above the crowd like a bunch of stone gargoyles. Their very presence is a symbol of state power and oppression. People are emotional and tensions are running high. A good sign, you think as you take your position. The local mouthpiece for the state subservient Social Democrat Party is at the microphone.
“As your representative in parliament, it is my honour and privilege to serve this community. Yesterday was indeed a dark day for our city. But let us not forget the reasons that have brought us all together: This government’s profit-before-people policies, their lack of action on the environment. Those are the reasons that we took to the streets yesterday, and it would be a disrespect to those in jail right now to let this become a discussion about law and order…”
A brick flies through the air and connects with the front window of the police station turning it into a cascade of broken glass. This is your cue. You bend down out of sight and pull a mask across your face.
“NO JAILS, NO BORDERS! FUCK LAW AND ORDER!” you chant alongside your co-conspirators.
A group of do-good Samaritans attempts to de-escalate the situation by separating your group from the police. They move to form a chain between you and the cops. Taking advantage of this human shield you set to work destroying a police cruiser. Another window drops and the entire crowd erupts into chaos. Frightened people try to flee the scene as a crush of reporters and camera crews rush forward, all vying for the best shot. As the crowd desperately tries to squeeze their way out they find the way is blocked, which adds to the growing sense of panic. People find themselves unwittingly participating in a riot, shoving up against lines of police who are now holding the whole street under lockdown. You duck out of view, whip off your mask, and join the crush of people trying to push their way through a hastily erected barricade. Heaving your weight against a riot shield you struggle for control of the streets until suddenly, you feel a firm grip on your wrist and you are flung forward through the police line onto the ground, the weight of more than one body pressed against your back as your hands are wrenched behind you and locked in handcuffs.
You are dragged to a nearby city bus that the police have commandeered for their own purposes as a prisoner transport. You’re thrown inside with a bunch of other startled looking prisoners and cuffed to one of the seats in-front of you. As the conflict rages on outside, you take a quick glance around and see no one else from your group, which is both relieving and worrisome at the same time. You pray that you won’t be identified as an instigator. Just play it cool and you’ll be released in a day or two with everybody else. This comforting illusion quickly dissolves as you turn your gaze to the prisoner beside you who’s staring at you with knowing eyes. ‘I saw what you did back there’ they seem to say. You squirm in your seat under that accusatory glare. It’s amazing how uncomfortable they can make you feel with without uttering a single word.
The ignition starts, filling your ears with the rumble of a diesel engine, and the bus starts moving. It stops and starts numerous times as you slowly make your way through traffic. It must seem like a regular city bus to the passers-by on the street who can’t see and don’t realize that all of the passengers are handcuffed to their seats.
“HELP US!” you shout out, but nobody misses a step or even turns their head. If any one does notice, they pretend like they don’t.
“Fucking sheep! You wouldn’t stop shopping if your own mother was being hauled off by the pigs!” You slump back in your seat, frustrated with people’s apathy and your own sense of helplessness.
The bus accelerates as you leave downtown, presumably towards some industrial park where they’ve set up a temporary prison to house the hundreds of people detained in mass arrests.
“Those people are the same ones we need to convince to rise up and regain their power if we’re ever gonna beat this system. But you’re never going to sell them on it by attacking the franchises they shop at and calling them sheep,” the prisoner beside you speaks up.
“What are you? Some cop-loving limousine liberal? Spare me the lecture about the power of peaceful protest will you?” you respond.
“You shouldn’t assume that just because someone isn’t out there smashing windows that they’re automatically part of the bourgeois elite. We are all alienated workers. I’m no liberal reformist and I certainly don’t sympathize with the police.”
“Well what does that make you?”
“Anarcho-pacifist. In fact that is precisely why I’m opposed to the brutality of the police. As anarchists we oppose all forms of hierarchy and coercion. Violence is just the simplest most brutal form of coercion. The police use organized violence as leverage to back up the hierarchy of the centralized state.”
“I hear you comrade! Fuck the Pigs!”
“But I don’t see how actions like the one at the police station today does anything to change that.”
“The black bloc is fighting directly against the very oppressors who defend the elite in our society. We defy those sycophants who enforce the laws and protect the financial system. We confront the ones who stand guard for the G20 leaders and who arrested hundreds of our brothers and sisters yesterday. If we don’t retaliate against them, then we send a message that it’s okay to brutalize people in the streets, that they can make arrests without cause and that people will just sit there and take it. They don’t give a shit if we march in the streets. The only way they’re gonna listen, is if we make ‘em!”
“And I propose that aside from violating the very principles of anarchy, militancy, which is an obvious form of coercion, is just not the best strategy to accomplish your political goals.”
“Well it seems to have been pretty effective for our oppressors. It worked wonders for the Catholic Church when they wanted to eradicate the pagans from Europe. And it worked pretty well for the colonizers when they stole the Americas from the indigenous. In fact we’ve been effectively silenced over the past two days by violent police actions. So how can you say violence isn’t effective?”
“You’ve just brought up the perfect examples of why violence cannot be used effectively for anti-oppressive movements. The state has a monopoly on violence. They can use the centralized resources of all the worlds’ poor to burn down our houses and murder us in the streets with industrial efficiency. Any movement capable of defeating such a centralized power would necessarily have to become more violent and even more repressive. You really think you can take on the same powers that defeated the Soviet Union and invaded Iraq with rocks and Molotov cocktails?”
“There’s more oppressed than oppressors. When people see the truth and begin to unite around the world…”
“… Then that will be their greatest weapon; education, empowerment, and solidarity,” the other prisoner cuts in.
“And armed resistance. All the solidarity in the world won’t stop a bullet. We’ve got to confront them in the streets! We’ve got to take the power back. They’re not going to give it up voluntarily.”
“They’re not going to want to give up their power but they’re going to have to. Because if people become disillusioned with the nation state then it will no longer be able to justify the use of force, which is only a source of power superficially. Any regime that fails to realize that and relies solely on the use of force has a very limited shelf life. The real source of power is people’s faith in the system. Most people don’t obey the laws because they’re afraid of the police, they obey the laws because they have faith in the political system. As soon as people lose that faith, and believe in a different system, all the police in the world won’t stop them.”
Though you’ve long since left the downtown core in your city-bus turned prisoner transport, for quite some time now you haven’t moved an inch, idling instead amongst a collection of non-descript buildings, whose bland facades give no hint at their true purpose. Outside, the police escort of a half a dozen cruisers sit parked, and you can hear the static crackle of radio chatter punctuating the monotonous buzz of high voltage transformers. Trapped in limbo as you are, time crawls by unmarked. Even the suns passage through the sky is obscured by the cities smog.
A prisoner cries out “Oh my god! I’m totally gona pee my pants if they don’t let us off this bus soon!”
This is met by general laughter and people start telling jokes to pass the time.
“Why do socialists drink herbal tea? Cause proper-tea is theft!”
“How come anarchists can’t draw straight lines? Cause they haven’t got any rulers!”
“Seriously though. We must be somewhere near the detention centre. I wonder why we’ve been stopped here so long. Something must be going on.”
Almost as if in answer to the question, an officer steps onto the bus and announces.
“Demonstrators have seized control of the area. Everyone is to be transferred.”
Though it’s not clear exactly what this means, you are each un-cuffed and escorted from the bus one by one. Flanked by an officer at each side you are led around a crowd of rank and file constables taking refreshments at a snack wagon, past another small group of senior officers wearing grave expressions giving orders into walky talkies, and through a cluster of police cruisers parked in a line with their lights flashing that make up the rear guard of a police road block. Ahead of you stands a large formation of riot police beyond which you can see a banner that hangs from lamp posts across the street. You can make out the faint sound of chanting that gradually grows stronger as you are led towards the front line. All of a sudden you find yourself face to face with a loud, energetic crowd of people who cheer as you emerge from behind a row of riot shields. To your complete surprize you are unceremoniously released into the welcoming arms of your brothers and sisters in the Solidarity Collective
Original photo by: emerica84