Sociology of the Anarchists - Gozips.uakron.edu - The University of ...

Further, the focus upon anarchists after N30 centered only on the black bloc (and property
destruction), and not, as Crass (2001) noted, all the other activities anarchists were
involved in:
While the media obsessed over anarchists who destroyed
property – the real story was that anarchists were simply
everywhere doing a hundred different things. Anarchists
were doing jail support, media work, making meals for
thousands, doing dishes, facilitating strategy meetings,
leading workshops and discussion groups. Anarchists were
doing medical support work, security at the warehouse
space, communications between affinity groups and
clusters, organizing marches and blockades and lock downs
and tripod sits and forming human chains. Anarchists were
making puppets, banners, signs, leaflets, press releases,
stickers, and costumes (like the lovable sea turtles).
Anarchists were starting chants, designing posters and
newspapers, playing music, negotiating with the police and
jailers to get our comrades out of jail. Anarchists were
squatters occupying an empty building and attracting
national media to the issues of property, poverty and
homelessness. Anarchists were held in solitary confinement
for being such effective organizers of mass non-violent civil
disobedience that rocked Seattle and ignited the
imaginations of the world. Anarchists organized child
care!!! And yes anarchists targeted corporate chainstores.
Simply put, anarchists significantly contributed to one of
the most effective mass actions in recent US history. (p. 9)
Gillham and Marx (2000) detail various structural and protester-police interaction-related
ironies and ten effects which they argue helped produce them in Seattle: spill-over or fly
paper, reciprocal and neutralizing, escalation, non-enforcement, excitement, role reversal,
strange bedfellows, secrecy, prior reform, and value conflict effects. They write:
“Authoritarian societies are defined by order without liberty. Yet democratic societies can
only exist with both liberty and order” (p. 229, emphasis in the original). As such, they
suggest that not all demonstrations must end in violence or a revocation of civil liberties.
However, their general premise overlooks the fact that in Seattle DAN knowingly risked
police violence and the removal of its “rights” in order to physically stop the WTO
meetings. For example, Gillham and Marx suggest that the authorities could have
established “clearly defined (reasonably contiguous) protest and no-protest zones before
the event” (p. 227) in order to ensure the “delegate's freedom of movement”. DAN
intended to stop the meetings and in the process to deny delegates the freedom of
movement, since they thought that allowing delegates to meet would produce a more
violent result that the revocation of their freedom of movement. Thus, Gillham and Marx
ignore that the compromises they advocate clearly conflict with the goals of DAN, just as
the goal of police is to repress dissent that endangers capital and State. The above
suggestion would benefit capital and State more than DAN.
[ Williams 91 ] [ this is a draft. do not cite. ]