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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
The media has blown the story, but there's a growing fringe of activists who believe property destruction isn't "violent," and are bent on convincing the rest of us.
Dec 10, 1999 | In the week since the dramatic World Trade Organization protests, in which a massive nonviolent blockade was overshadowed by attacks on stores like Niketown, Starbucks and the Gap, the media reporting about the activism has been as confusing as some of the protests themselves.
Most reports simply labelled the rioters "anarchists," missing the fact that many among the peaceful blockaders consider themselves anarchists, too. And news organizations have repeatedly named anarchist writer John Zerzan as the rioters' guru, vastly overstating his influence. By far the most important influence has been the tempestuous forest activism that has taken place in the Eugene, Ore., area over the last four years.
Attempting to clear up misconceptions about the WTO rioting, one collective involved in it felt moved to issue a statement, the "N30 Black Bloc Communique," in order "to diffuse some of the aura of mystery that surrounds the black bloc and make some of its motivations more transparent, since our masks cannot be."
The so-called "black bloc" is advocating "direct action at the point of consumption," damaging corporate retail outlets and hurting their sales. Despite the storm of criticism these militants have faced, they view the Tuesday riot as a ringing success. "Ten million dollars of lost revenue, plus the 2 million they're saying there was in property damage, is a big chunk out of their holiday cheer," exults one member of the "Eugene Brick Throwers Union Local 666," as a loose organization of Oregon anarchists chose to identify themselves last week.
The young Brick Thrower has only contempt for the nonviolent blockaders: "A lot of these people are going to be buying burgers at McDonald's and shopping at the Gap next week. Everybody's going to go home and have a really nice Christmas and forget all about this."
The masked protesters who trashed downtown Seattle last Tuesday are mostly in their late teens or early 20s, but contrary to many people's assumptions, they are not mostly male. Young women have been some of the most outspoken and influential figures in the loose scene that gave rise to the WTO riots, and represented a good percentage of the rioters.
The prominence of young women goes back to the movement's origins in Earth First anti-logging activism of the 1980s. About 10 years ago Earth Firsters split between so-called "deep ecologists" and activists (of whom the late Judy Bari was the most prominent) who were looking to fuse deep ecology with the agenda of the cultural and social left. At the time of the split, people talked about "the feminization of Earth First." Since that time, women have been in the forefront of many of the local and single-issue campaigns that form the building blocks of the broad movement on display in Seattle.
Clearly, the most important influence of all has been the tumult in the Eugene area over the last four years. When federal action threatened a forest in Oregon's Warner Creek watershed in 1995, protesters blocked the main logging road -- and maintained the blockade for an astounding 343 days. "There were these two signs on the gate, white and red striped signs like candy canes with reflectors on them," remembers a young man named Cloud, who took part in the encampment. "So we wrote, 'Cascadia Free State' and claimed it as our own."
The 11-month Cascadia Free State was an unprecedented experiment in anarchist principles of self-management, a "temporary autonomous zone" where activists enacted their dreams of the good society. The experience of creating such a world for themselves, and then seeing it destroyed by Forest Service bulldozers, fostered a rare fearlessness and audacity, which continues to define the activist climate of Eugene.
When four young women who took part in the blockade were jailed in Eugene, dozens of activists stormed the jail, causing a ruckus and smashing one window before being arrested themselves. Later, someone torched a nearby Forest Service ranger station, burning it to the ground.
Over the last two years, as police have repeatedly used pepper spray against nonviolent forest activists in the Northwest, the Eugene militant scene has become a hub for people weary of traditional nonviolence and supportive of property destruction as direct action.
