Is "Black Bloc" hijacking Occupy Oakland? Peaceful protests by the Occupy Oakland movement were overshadowed this week by violent clashes between a small group of demonstrators and police.
Now there's concern among the majority of protesters that their message is being hijacked. CBS News correspondent John Blackstone looks into this latest development. It could be seen as a battle for the image of the Occupy movement. One demonstrator struggles to put out the flames of a burning barricade as others masked and dressed in black pull him away. It wasn't the only time during a huge Occupy demonstration in Oakland this week that protesters found themselves on opposite sides. One demonstrator, Sheik Anderson, distanced most of the protesters from the violence. "We called the mayor's office the moment we understood what was going on over there," said Anderson. Occupy Oakland riots: More to come? For years, these black-clad demonstrators, known as the Black Bloc, have been showing up at marches in Europe and the U.S.
Anti-Wall Street Terrorists Strike NYC In Upcoming Videogame ‘Rainbow Six: Patriots’ The next installment of Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Franchise will feature terrorists who strike New York City in “retaliation for the greed of Wall Street and the government that acts to protect them.”
It appears to have strong anti-capitalist, class warfare themes. Some bloggers are already saying this is Tom Clancy’s way of taking on Occupy Wall Street from a conservative point of view, but according to website Gameinformer.com, it’s actually more about right-wing extremists. An ominous voice-over introduces the first official trailer of this homegrown terrorism game by saying: “This is the day we’ve been waiting for.
Why #OWS Needs to Denounce Violent Tactics on Display at Occupy Oakland. January 31, 2012 | Like this article?
Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. The Occupy Movement, “the 99 percent,” has, ironically, been hijacked by a small minority within its ranks. I speak of a small percentage of Occupiers who are okay with property destruction. These are Black Bloc tactics and they're historically ineffective at spurring change. Here’s the key point: Occupy is not an armed conflict – it’s a PR war. At some General Assemblies this issue is referred to as “diversity of tactics.”
The Cancer in Occupy - Chris Hedges' Columns. The Cancer in Occupy Posted on Feb 6, 2012 By Chris Hedges The Black Bloc anarchists, who have been active on the streets in Oakland and other cities, are the cancer of the Occupy movement.
The presence of Black Bloc anarchists—so named because they dress in black, obscure their faces, move as a unified mass, seek physical confrontations with police and destroy property—is a gift from heaven to the security and surveillance state. The Occupy encampments in various cities were shut down precisely because they were nonviolent. Black Bloc adherents detest those of us on the organized left and seek, quite consciously, to take away our tools of empowerment. Because Black Bloc anarchists do not believe in organization, indeed oppose all organized movements, they ensure their own powerlessness.
“Of course,” the article went on, “the social struggles of exploited and oppressed people cannot be expected to conform to some abstract anarchist ideal. There is a word for this—“criminal.” How not to block the black bloc. The headline in the Philadelphia Inquirer told us last week that, on the other side of the country, a brick hit a police officer in Oakland and sent him to the hospital.
Civil Rights organizer Jim Bevel predicted headlines like this in the ’60s when arguing about the then-current version of “diversity of tactics.” He said something like: “We want people to talk about our issues, about the suffering of our people from racism and poverty. When you throw the brick, people don’t talk about our issues, or the thousand black people on the streets that day, they talk about the police officer who was hit by the brick.” The question for all those, whether using black bloc tactics or not, who consider adding to the Occupy movement tactics of either property destruction or violence: Do you want the issues of injustice to be talked about, or your bricks? In my own definition, property destruction is not the same as violence—there can be very significant differences between the two. Dr.