Bloc the Livestream (or How Occupy Should Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Bloc)

I haven't been totally at ease that the issues stemming from the assault on Tim Pool, aka @Timcast, at Sunday's (Second) Oakland Solidarity March in NYC have been totally put to rest. There has been much written in both the mainstream press and in the blogosphere about what happened, and many a conversation on Twitter has been had on the subject. I neither intend nor believe that I will put these issues to rest here, indeed they have the potential to be divisive enough to cause people to leave the movement. I do believe, however, that certain things deserve clarification, particularly in regard to what is called "Black Bloc," and specifically the supposed 'contingent' here in NYC.

In several articles there has been a conflation of Tim Pool's attacker as a member of the Black Bloc simply because he was wearing a mask. An article in Tech News Daily (http://www.technewsdaily.com/3716-smartphone-journalists-resistance-sides.html) that highlights not only the attack on Tim Pool but other attacks on Livstreamers (by protesters or police) at occupations around the country defines them as "fringe anarchists who resort to vandalism and are shunned by other protesters." This definition is very similar to the one I saw in a local NYC NBC article about Sunday's March. I find it problematic in many ways, and also pervasive even within the confines of the Occupy Movement itself.

If one concedes that there is a Black Bloc in NYC (which I contend that as such there is not) I seriously implore anyone to show photographic or videographic proof of any property destruction that has happened in NYC since September 17, 2011 by their actions. By this I mean broken store windows, destruction of luxury cars, graffiti, things that one would legitimately call "vandalism." I am trying to narrow the definition here because I have indeed witnessed attempts by "Black Bloc" to build roadblocks using things found on the street (orange traffic cones, metal barricades, trashcans and bags of trash) but as these aren't permanent and can't have a dollar-sign attached to them, they don't qualify as "property damage" or "vandalism." Even when Zuccotti Park was evicted the "Black Bloc" did not resort to these tactics, although in one incident that night it was perhaps the closest that it ever has. After the eviction and a March, a large crowd gathered on Broadway and Pine. Tim Pool was there livestreaming and came upon a group of masked protesters releasing air from NYPD vehicles' tires. He was approached by these masked protesters ("Black Bloc") and a confrontation ensued when he refused to stop livestreaming their illegal actions. Here the Tim Pool connection is a bonus, and not really the point of me relating this story. The point is that this is the closest I have seen in NYC of so-called "Black Bloc" resorting to vandalism and that this particular action, as a tactic, had a definite goal (that the NYPD wouldn't be able to load brothers and sisters into them and take them away) and wasn't capricious aggression.

I'd like to take a moment here to say why I believe there is no legitimate "Black Bloc" in NYC, and why we should take to calling what there is that resembles a Black Bloc something else. First off, Black Bloc, as a tactic, is supposed to involve everyone wearing all black clothes and black masks so that authorities will have a hard time pinning a particular action on a particular person (especially in the case of their arrest). For this tactic to work a Black Bloc not only needs the proper attire, but also large numbers and organization. If there are only two or three people in masks in an area the tactic is far less effective than if there are twenty or one-hundred. On this level there is no organized Black Bloc in NYC, as I have never seen an actual organized Bloc on the streets, but perhaps only what could be defined as affinity groups of two to six people at most. That said, one can dress in all black, don a black mask, and never engage in a 'Bloc' of any kind (you might even throw a bottle at a cop and run away like a coward or assault a livestreamer). Many of the people I have seen engage in "Bloc" activities in NYC, myself included, think wearing all black is tantamount to putting a huge bullseye on your back, so many people simply wear normal clothes and don a mask. I think this is effective in first of all shedding the connotation of all black with property destruction, and also elevating effective tactics to the forefront of what a Black Bloc does.

A hallmark of Black Blocs in North America has been property destruction, and when they hear the phrase "Black Bloc" many people rightly think of broken windows of Starbucks and McDonalds locations from the Battle of Seattle. However, as I have pointed out at length above, I have never seen any of this in NYC. What I have seen are two things that are incredibly important to every protester, whether "peaceful/non-violent" or willing to engage with the police. These are unarresting people and breaking kettles. I have yet to hear a convincing argument against either of these things, especially kettle-breaking, kettling being one of the most heinous things a police department anywhere can engage in. In many ways I'd rather be a victim of police violence than be kettled. There is nothing fun about going to jail and facing criminal charges. Having a bullshit felony or misdemeanor on your record could ruin your life, and so especially if you are a peaceful protester with no inclinations toward resistance of any kind (when people say 'non-violent resistance' they really mean 'non-violent submission') you have to wonder who is going to break that kettle, or who is going to help you up from the floor before the police do. This is something I have seen time and time again on marches in NYC. Whenever a man gets helped up from the pavement, pulled from the clutches of a cop and certain incarceration, and whenever a kettle is broken and hundreds of people come streaming through what used to be a line that demarcated those who were free and those who were not, it is always a bunch of people in masks (not necessarily black ones) who are putting their safety and freedom on the line to make sure these things happen.

If we can accept that there will be selfish, violent people in any large grouping of human beings, and that things like a bottle thrown randomly here or there are going to happen, we can take heart that Black Block is taking "peaceful/non-violent" protesters' feelings into account by not engaging in property destruction (which benefits nobody) and only doing things that are beneficial to everyone. Before I continue, I want to point out that in a true Black Bloc the safety of other demonstrators is always taken into account and so they tend to break off from the March to engage with the police or destroy property.

So now when we reconsider where we started off, with Sunday's attack on Tim Pool at the (Second) Oakland Solidarity March, we have no reason to tie the attacker to the Black Bloc, and furthermore we have no reason to say that a Black Bloc does or even should exist in NYC. However, by making the conversation about "black bloc" on a flimsy correlation and not the person's action itself, you deflect from the discussion about the efficacy of livestreaming and onto the very existence of Black Bloc and resistance against police. Why would anyone not want Tim Pool to livestream? Why was he specifically targeted while Dwayne_wins and Luke Rudkowski went on filming unmolested? In that article from Tech News Daily, after caricaturing the Black Bloc's function and what people think about them they add this, literally parenthetically.

"(Several people, including Pool, theorize that Sunday's attacker may have been an undercover officer acting as a provocateur.)"

If we are reasonable about this and don't fetishize non-violence (remembering that it is only a tactic, and like any tactic should be used to reach a goal, and when the tactic becomes destructive of those ends it should be discarded) I think more of Occupy can learn to stop worrying and love the Bloc.