The Garbage Disposal Unit
28th September 2010, 16:22
... but I wanted to repost this analysis of the Toronto G20 demonstrations that I thought was, well, interesting at least.
1. "This action will be militant and confrontational, seeking to humiliate the security apparatus..."
- Southern Ontario Anarchist Resistance
"You see the humiliation on the officers faces when this stuff goes on in their city. My members are completely devastated by that."
- Mike McCormack, Toronto Police Association
To say that anarchists' declarations of intent often seem quite unlikely to bear fruit is obvious. For example, in light of our calls to shut down any gathering of ruling elites that comes to our attention, the number of big summits effectively disrupted by anarchists is small. What is significant, then, about the destruction of June 26 in Toronto is that it was an explicit victory: we did what we said we were going to do, and had that fact echoed in the words of our bitter enemies. Our promises were realized on the streets.
Perhaps more importantly, said promises - or their putting-into-practice - resonated outside of the black bloc, outside of anarchists, and outside of "political" actors. In less exclusive language: normal people started fucking shit up. The demonstration - a performance piece of the sort that characterizes North American "countersummits" - was transcended by generalized rioting. Thus, Saturday was a victory for anarchists in a deeper sense. Autonomous direct action against capital and the state ("Burning cop cars and looting stores," Blatz), the anarchist project of attack, was taken up with people outside of an explicit identification with anarchism. Toronto Chief of Police, Bill Blair, observed, "Unfortunately, [anarchists'] criminal activity was made a lot easier by the complicity of the crowd, and so we had to contain and control the crowd in an effort to control those criminals." The broadening of complicities against law and order, even in a temporary way, is a vindication of the premise that the social peace is fragile. When the state loses its capacity to directly assert its monopoly on violence, the people "stand up! fight back!" in an authentic way.
2.
"...A mob is policed a little differently than a lawful, peaceful protest... We told the curious and naive to get out of the way and let us do our jobs. Thereafter, people who stood with the criminals were complicit in their activity."
- Bill Blair, high pig
The largest mass arrests in the history of Canada - as of this writing, the media is saying over nine hundred - occurred in the days following the riot. An anarchist-organized demonstration against prisons, scheduled for the Sunday of June 27, was preempted by a virtual lockdown of the neighbourhood around Bruce Mackay Park, with police stopping and searching anybody unfortunate enough to be wearing a backpack or an article of black clothing. Muzzle blasts and rubber bullets were deployed against non-violent crowds outside of the makeshift detention centre. Still others of the nine hundred were arrested during the forceful clearing of the designated protest zone.
At least seventeen people are facing conspiracy charges, the evidence in which includes a rap video, an umbrella, and an undercover's recording of a spokescouncil in which those present come to a consensus on "no plan" (1). Four of the conspiracy arrests, of the Southern Ontario Anarchist Resistance's "executive directors", occurred in targeted raids early Saturday morning; they weren't even on the streets when shit hit the fan. Not surprisingly, there is a publication ban on the trials.
A press conference on the 29th, attempting to justify police actions, displayed seized "street weapons" such as a copy of anarchist journal "Upping The Anti", shin pads, and golf balls. Also on show were a chainsaw, a crossbow, and other objects which police admitted were unconnected to demonstrators, anarchists, or the summit, but happen to have been seized over the weekend.
This is the reality of social war: when the police are no longer able to discern the difference between protesters and anarchists, between self-proclaimed anarchists and criminals, between civil and uncivil society, they lash out indiscriminately. No doubt, in their attack on everyone unfortunate enough to be kettled in a given intersection, or to have attended a particular meeting, they may have arrested somebody who cracked a window on Saturday. However, the proportion of arrests relative to charges speaks volumes.
Alas! Though these blatant displays of police abuse may play poorly in the media, they were successful. This represents our weakness: Without an infrastructure capable of sustaining the riots, police were able to quickly reassert control. Having retreated from the streets, we will likely go back to paying rent, buying groceries, working shit jobs, and so on, or maybe rebelling against these things individually. This normalcy is the pigs' victory. Until we can feed, house, and take care of ourselves and others without their system, their reality will continue reasserting itself with the arrival of fire departments and repair crews (2).
3.
"...Trashing shops and burning cars does not help anyone. These hooligans obscure the real issues."
- Rajesh Latchman of GCAP South Africa
On June 26, anarchists demonstrated a fierce combativeness that could be controlled neither by the state nor its lackeys on the left. As part of an escalation taking place in actions across the country (countless nighttime attacks and sabotages, the Vancouver Olympics, the Ottawa firebombing), we are obscuring what are presented as the "real issues" - this or that detail of our shitty reality. A space is beginning to open in which it is possible to talk, not about the piecemeal reform of capital, but of an entirely different world. What remains, then, is how to turn a fissure into a rupture. As always, outside the realm of ideologies and big solutions, there are more questions raised than answered. How do we draw the links between our project as "THUGS!" (Toronto Sun front page headline, July 27) and building autonomous community? Now that we're front page news, how do we resonate directly and prevent ourselves from becoming a media spectacle? How do we make more moments and spaces of total freedom in the midst of massive police repression?
If some of us were unsure of ourselves before we headed East on Queen, we are not any longer. If we had not yet begun, we certainly have now. So, how do we go all the way?
____________________
(1) One editor suggested that it should be pointed out that there is other evidence, and that conspiracy charges are, legally speaking, very serious.
(2) An editor pointed out that it is not an either/or situation as regards our autonomy. Between gardening and burning cop cruisers, there is looting - a way a feeding ourselves and attacking simultaneously.
1. "This action will be militant and confrontational, seeking to humiliate the security apparatus..."
- Southern Ontario Anarchist Resistance
"You see the humiliation on the officers faces when this stuff goes on in their city. My members are completely devastated by that."
- Mike McCormack, Toronto Police Association
To say that anarchists' declarations of intent often seem quite unlikely to bear fruit is obvious. For example, in light of our calls to shut down any gathering of ruling elites that comes to our attention, the number of big summits effectively disrupted by anarchists is small. What is significant, then, about the destruction of June 26 in Toronto is that it was an explicit victory: we did what we said we were going to do, and had that fact echoed in the words of our bitter enemies. Our promises were realized on the streets.
Perhaps more importantly, said promises - or their putting-into-practice - resonated outside of the black bloc, outside of anarchists, and outside of "political" actors. In less exclusive language: normal people started fucking shit up. The demonstration - a performance piece of the sort that characterizes North American "countersummits" - was transcended by generalized rioting. Thus, Saturday was a victory for anarchists in a deeper sense. Autonomous direct action against capital and the state ("Burning cop cars and looting stores," Blatz), the anarchist project of attack, was taken up with people outside of an explicit identification with anarchism. Toronto Chief of Police, Bill Blair, observed, "Unfortunately, [anarchists'] criminal activity was made a lot easier by the complicity of the crowd, and so we had to contain and control the crowd in an effort to control those criminals." The broadening of complicities against law and order, even in a temporary way, is a vindication of the premise that the social peace is fragile. When the state loses its capacity to directly assert its monopoly on violence, the people "stand up! fight back!" in an authentic way.
2.
"...A mob is policed a little differently than a lawful, peaceful protest... We told the curious and naive to get out of the way and let us do our jobs. Thereafter, people who stood with the criminals were complicit in their activity."
- Bill Blair, high pig
The largest mass arrests in the history of Canada - as of this writing, the media is saying over nine hundred - occurred in the days following the riot. An anarchist-organized demonstration against prisons, scheduled for the Sunday of June 27, was preempted by a virtual lockdown of the neighbourhood around Bruce Mackay Park, with police stopping and searching anybody unfortunate enough to be wearing a backpack or an article of black clothing. Muzzle blasts and rubber bullets were deployed against non-violent crowds outside of the makeshift detention centre. Still others of the nine hundred were arrested during the forceful clearing of the designated protest zone.
At least seventeen people are facing conspiracy charges, the evidence in which includes a rap video, an umbrella, and an undercover's recording of a spokescouncil in which those present come to a consensus on "no plan" (1). Four of the conspiracy arrests, of the Southern Ontario Anarchist Resistance's "executive directors", occurred in targeted raids early Saturday morning; they weren't even on the streets when shit hit the fan. Not surprisingly, there is a publication ban on the trials.
A press conference on the 29th, attempting to justify police actions, displayed seized "street weapons" such as a copy of anarchist journal "Upping The Anti", shin pads, and golf balls. Also on show were a chainsaw, a crossbow, and other objects which police admitted were unconnected to demonstrators, anarchists, or the summit, but happen to have been seized over the weekend.
This is the reality of social war: when the police are no longer able to discern the difference between protesters and anarchists, between self-proclaimed anarchists and criminals, between civil and uncivil society, they lash out indiscriminately. No doubt, in their attack on everyone unfortunate enough to be kettled in a given intersection, or to have attended a particular meeting, they may have arrested somebody who cracked a window on Saturday. However, the proportion of arrests relative to charges speaks volumes.
Alas! Though these blatant displays of police abuse may play poorly in the media, they were successful. This represents our weakness: Without an infrastructure capable of sustaining the riots, police were able to quickly reassert control. Having retreated from the streets, we will likely go back to paying rent, buying groceries, working shit jobs, and so on, or maybe rebelling against these things individually. This normalcy is the pigs' victory. Until we can feed, house, and take care of ourselves and others without their system, their reality will continue reasserting itself with the arrival of fire departments and repair crews (2).
3.
"...Trashing shops and burning cars does not help anyone. These hooligans obscure the real issues."
- Rajesh Latchman of GCAP South Africa
On June 26, anarchists demonstrated a fierce combativeness that could be controlled neither by the state nor its lackeys on the left. As part of an escalation taking place in actions across the country (countless nighttime attacks and sabotages, the Vancouver Olympics, the Ottawa firebombing), we are obscuring what are presented as the "real issues" - this or that detail of our shitty reality. A space is beginning to open in which it is possible to talk, not about the piecemeal reform of capital, but of an entirely different world. What remains, then, is how to turn a fissure into a rupture. As always, outside the realm of ideologies and big solutions, there are more questions raised than answered. How do we draw the links between our project as "THUGS!" (Toronto Sun front page headline, July 27) and building autonomous community? Now that we're front page news, how do we resonate directly and prevent ourselves from becoming a media spectacle? How do we make more moments and spaces of total freedom in the midst of massive police repression?
If some of us were unsure of ourselves before we headed East on Queen, we are not any longer. If we had not yet begun, we certainly have now. So, how do we go all the way?
____________________
(1) One editor suggested that it should be pointed out that there is other evidence, and that conspiracy charges are, legally speaking, very serious.
(2) An editor pointed out that it is not an either/or situation as regards our autonomy. Between gardening and burning cop cruisers, there is looting - a way a feeding ourselves and attacking simultaneously.