Update: anarchist news and information from all over the world - 5.12.2019

Today's Topics:

   
1.  freedom news: We are here, even if Macron doesn't want it:
      One year of the Gilets Jaunes, Analysis, Dec 1st
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
2.  France, Union Communiste Libertaire AL #299 - Read: Comics,
      The Wind of Libertarians (fr, it, pt)[machine translation]
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
3.  France, Union Communiste Libertaire AL #299 - Cinema: The
      Key Revival, an artistic utopia in a capitalist environment (fr,
      it, pt)[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
4.  solfed: Company Targeted Low Income Elderly People to
      Mis-sell Funeral Plans by manchester sf (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
5.  France, Union Communiste Libertaire UCL - Campaign "Losing
      your life to win? never! ", All the UCL material to order (fr,
      it, pt)[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
6.  CALL ON NATIONAL DAY Solidarity Day: THURSDAY 5 DECEMBER
      2019 By APO [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
7.  ait russia: "Yellow vests" came out on the 55th "protest"
      [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
8.  anarkismo.net: From Nukes to Occupy by Robin J. Cartwright
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)


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Message: 1






On November 16th the Gilets Jaunes movement marked one year since it burst onto the scene and threw a spanner in the works of President Macron's agenda. The
protests that began on November 17th 2018 were triggered by a rise in fuel prices which for many was simply the straw that broke the camel's back amid mounting
concern with inequality and the cost of living. It did not start as a rebellion against the police, yet one of the key factors that has kept people returning to
the streets week after week is the anger at the injuries, arrests and repression of the movement. This dynamic of police responses to social movements fuelling
those same movements has become increasingly common in France and a notable trend since 2016. ---- Over the course of the last year the state has brought the
full power of its police force against the Gilets Jaunes. According to one count 24 people have lost an eye or suffered severe damage (one more injury from
November 16th this year can be added to the count) and 5 people have lost a hand while the Ministry of the Interior itself estimates 2,448 injuries.[i]One
woman, 80 year-old Zineb Redouane, was killed by a police tear gas canister in December. By September 2019 the same Ministry of the Interior count claims police
have used 19,071 of the infamous LDB plastic projectile rounds and over 5,000 sting-ball grenades. An estimated 3,000 court sentences have been handed down,
while during the movement's first phase in November and December last year 3,300 people were arrested and 2,354 detained.[ii]In Paris alone on the December 8th
last year 1,082 people were arrested.[iii]Currently there are over 300 open enquiries by the police watchdog (IGPN) into conduct by the forces of order. The
first trial, for an officer filmed throwing a paving stone at demonstrators on May 1st, has only just got under way. The slow pace of investigations into the
police contrasts with the rapid processing of demonstrators and is hardly surprising since the head of the IGPN declared in June that she "completely refuses
the term police violence".[iv]

The movement that erupted in November last year threw the government into panic. After three consecutive Saturdays of barricades and clashes on some of the
world's most luxurious streets the fuel tax was first frozen and then hastily scraped. For the next Saturday the centre of Paris was put into a state of siege.
Metro stations were closed, shops and banks boarded up and the streets were eerily empty. The police force that was deployed to deal with this situation was
little short of an army. In addition to their usual array of plastic projectiles and grenades, armoured vehicles rumbled up and down the boulevards. As the
crisis continued into the next year the military were put on standby to supplement the police as the anti-terrorist military detachments deployed in French
cities since 2015 were directed to guard fixed points. The state got to the point where the only remaining step of escalation was to put the military in direct
contact with the protesters.

In subsequent months police powers were augmented. An anti-protest bill made it an offence to cover your face at a demonstration.[v]This is a common move, seen
in Greece in 2009 and recently in Hong Kong. In any state where tear gas is deployed this measure is a backdoor way to criminalise protest as covering your face
under the gas is a necessity but doing so automatically makes you a criminal. Undeclared demonstrations have been cracked down on and large parts of city
centres declared off limits for demonstrations. Official protests can now be surrounded by police before they begin, and the force has increased powers to
pre-emptively detain people. While complaints about the police's ‘non-lethal' arsenal have grown no weapons have been withdrawn and a new mobile police force
has been deployed.

Formally police powers have increased considerably. Informally their position has also been enhanced. While the police have been unable to end the protests,
they did show in the winter of last year that they were successfully able to defend the panic-stricken government. The police were not slow to utilize the
leverage this gave them. Sections of the police started their own spontaneous demonstrations demanding better pay and bonuses in late December. Some hinted that
they were open to joining the ongoing protests. Wisely Macron quickly granted their requests and paid up.[vi]As unpopular governments become more dependent on
the police, the police themselves become more independent and more willing to push their own demands and policies.[vii]

Despite the repression the Gilets Jaunes kept coming back. Every Saturday they were there. The government was taken by surprise in March when the police again
lost control of the Champs-Élysées months after the movement was believed dead. Macron having been forced to cut short a skiing weekend in the Pyrenees, hastily
fired the chief of police. Over time the Gilets Jaunes began to support other sectors in their struggles. On May 1st the traditional demonstrations were
augmented by the Gilets Jaunes and for all that a new hard-line police policy was meant to put a stop to the movement the widespread clashes of that day meant
that the Interior Minister could only boast that "the worst had been avoided".[viii]During the summer Gilets Jaunes were present at the protests over the death
of Steve Canico who drowned in the Loire after riot police charged a late-night concert by the river. September saw Gilets Jaunes join the climate march in
Paris before it was violently dissolved by the police. Numerous Gilets Jaunes will be joining the major strikes planned to begin on December 5th against
Macron's plans for the pension system.

Many of the movement's participants had not been politically active before and when they mobilised to express their grievances around the cost of living they
were shocked to be greeted with grenades, armoured vehicles and permanent injuries. Weapons and tactics which previously had mostly been used on the margins of
society, against the working class and diverse population of the suburbs or on the ZAD, were turned against a section of the mainstream of society. The Gilets
Jaunes reacted by incorporating criticism of the police into their movement. From early on this year it was notable that the central slogan calling for Macron's
resignation had been lengthened to demand the imprisonment of the Interior Minister. Anti-police slogans gained more currency as time wore on. Calls for bans on
the most dangerous elements in the police's arsenal became central to the movement along with solidarity to the arrested and injured. The police response to the
movement did not crush it, instead it added a further reason to mobilise.

In this respect what we have seen over the last twelve months has been a reply of the social movement of 2016. Between March and July of that year a movement of
strikes, occupations and demonstrations contested the loi travail, a series of changes to the labour code. What began in March and April with small groups
clashing with the police constantly grew till by early summer large riotous demonstrations were taking place almost every week. Every time the riot police tried
to disperse these demonstrations more and more people came forward to oppose them. Those who joined the clashes or stood in solidarity with those who did went
to the front of the demonstrations and formed the autonomous and heterogeneous, cortège de tête. By summer this breakaway section was as big as the official
blocks marching with the trade unions. Riot police tactics based on close contact only inflamed the situation and in the end all the police could do was
surround the marches with fences and barriers to contain, but not end, the chaos. This movement ended with the passing of the loi travail and the police on the
verge of banning further demonstrations. Significantly though the crowds who formed that movement were never defeated. Over the next eighteen months people
searched, unsuccessfully, for moments to resume the momentum of 2016.

This was the atmosphere when the Gilets Jaunes burst onto the scene. The current situation is in many ways the same as that in the summer of 2016. On November
16th this year the majority of Gilets Jaunes in Paris were contained by the police in Place d'Italie and bombarded with tear gas for several hours stifling the
day's demonstrations. The police have been able to tactically check the Gilets Jaunes in the same way they did the movement of 2016 by smoothing gatherings
beneath a blanket of total control. However, despite a year of unprecedented repression thousands of people still came out onto the streets of France to mark
the movement's first anniversary. Thousands of people withstood the police barrage in Place d'Italie for hours before setting off on a series of spontaneous
demonstrations. Just like the movement of 2016, the Gilets Jaunes have not been defeated and will likely continue to search for ways to act.

Police actions in 2016 and 2018/19 no doubt radicalised many while only temporarily bringing back a sense of control. Should the French state continue on the
path of violence and repression it has followed in recent years it has little room to escalate before it arrives at extreme measures. Around the world we are
seeing another wave of uprisings and protests as governments of every stripe are incapable of addressing the multiplying signs of crisis. In such times
governments become beholden to the security forces which have become their primary response to unrest. As we see principally in Chile and Hong Kong there is
just as much chance that police measures will increase the popular response. The more riot police units are militarised the more they lose their ability to
control the streets without dangerously increasing tensions. This is the trap that confronts the French state as well. Its police are becoming ever more
powerful, armed and assertive yet social movements keep popping up and so far despite everything they have thrown at those on the streets they can only claim
that the "worst has been avoided".

Citation:
[i]https://alloplacebeauvau.mediapart.fr/
[ii]https://www.bastamag.net/gilets-jaunes-champs-elysees-justice-repression-condamnations-violences-police-loi-anti-casseurs-prison
[iii]http://en.rfi.fr/france/20181209-1700-arrested-france-paris-takes-stock-destruction-after-yellow-vest-protest
[iv]https://www.bfmtv.com/police-justice/la-patronne-de-l-igpn-refute-totalement-le-terme-de-violences-policieres-1712147.html
[v]http://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20190313-french-senate-backs-controversial-anti-riot-bill-yellow-vests-gilets-jaunes
[vi]http://en.rfi.fr/france/20181220-French-police-win-pay-rises-after-post-Yellow-Vest-protests
[vii]For a full examination of this pattern see the Invisible Committee Now
[viii]http://www.rfi.fr/en/visiting-france/20190502-worst-avoided-says-french-government-after-may-day-clashes-police-woes-not-

https://freedomnews.org.uk/we-are-here-even-if-macron-doesnt-want-it-one-year-of-the-gilets-jaunes/

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Message: 2






This comic, written by Philippe Thirault and put into images by Roberto Zaghi, is the fictionalized story of Nestor Makhno. Two volumes are planned, the first
has just been published. ---- The first part shows us (re) one of the most outstanding figures of anarchism from his childhood to the beginning of his political
commitment. At the death of his father, his mother, not having enough to feed his children, decides to have it adopted by a bourgeois family, owning land and
having the right to life and death over its employees. He can not get used to this new universe that exacerbates in him the desire for combat and revolution. He
becomes anarchist and, following a failed attack, he is imprisoned.
It is in prison that he makes his political education through the reading of anarchist books and through his meeting with Piotr Archinov. Freed during the
revolution of 1917, he takes up arms and fight in Ukraine. It is on the movement of expropriation and collectivisation of the lands that the authors decided to
close this first volume. Not without having already mentioned the dissensions with the Bolshevik party represented here by two emissaries of Lenin, already
worried about " deviations from the principles advocated by the government of the soviets ". " Here, decisions are made by the people and alone. Are the
Bolsheviks against the people? Retorts Makhno.

The authors also mention from the first pages and throughout the book, alternating flashbacks, the last days that Makno spent in Paris in 1934, where he is
suffering from pneumonia, and where he must work at Renault factories to survive.

This comic book, based on a solid documentary, makes the choice of the novel of historical adventures to exalt the life of a free man in a period and a place
full of promises. The postface of Yves Frémion puts into perspective the story told in this book and recalls some truths about the Leninists' desire to destroy
the image of man: bandit, chicken thief, anti-Semite, everything is good to denigrate the one who fought " the reds and whites " until the summer of 1921. The
drawing is classic and of excellent quality and enjoys a very safe color setting.

GR (friend of AL)

Philippe Thirault and Robert Zaghi, The Wind of Libertarians, Volume 1, The Humanoids Associates, August 2019, 56 pages, 14.50 euros.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Lire-BD-Le-Vent-des-libertaires

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Message: 3






In April 2018, La Clef cinema lowered the curtain. Far from the commercial logic that prevails in the world of the seventh art, this associative cinema created
in 1969, the only one of Paris, proposed another vision of the world. ---- The works council of the Savings Bank of Ile-de-France, owner of the place, was
resolved to the non-renewal of the contract which bound it to the managing association of the place and opposed even to the sale of the walls. ---- But for The
Key, the hour of the last session had not yet come. The momentum of support that was then expressed in favor of this place of free expression was not
extinguished. A little more than a year later, the association Home Cinema supported by the collective of spectators Let us the Key decide to occupy the places.
Since September 21st, La Clef has come back to life every night with a motley alternative and militant program decided in a monthly general assembly.

The spectators are at the rendezvous, proof if it was that next to the machines of derebric of the industry of the entertainment, there is still a place for a
cinema of quality and demanding. If today the place occupied tends to become a laboratory of fertile artistic experiences, it is to be hoped that the cultural
project does not sacrifice to the political and the social, these three dimensions being equally essential in the construction of the alternatives to the order
capitalist.

David (UCL Grand Paris South)

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Cinema-La-Clef-Revival-une-utopie-artistique-en-milieu-capitaliste

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Message: 4






Staff at a call centre where customers were described as "gazelles" to be hunted have been subjecting, low income, elderly people, to dozens of calls a week to
sell them expensive funeral packages. The company, Prosperous Life,  based in Stockport, Greater Manchester, sells more than 1,000 pre-paid funeral plans every
month. Staff at the company report that they are put under pressure to push people to sign up for schemes with little regard for their income. ---- Prosperous
Life runs a workplace culture inspired by The Wolf of Wall Street movie, as a means to pressurise staff into mis-selling funeral plans to vulnerable people.
Staff were encouraged to refer to themselves as "lions" and potential customers as "gazelles". A life-sized cardboard cutout of Leonardo DiCaprio as the
disgraced fraudster Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street movie was placed in the office.
Ex-staff claim that managers instructed staff to suggest to low-income customers who said they could not afford deposits for the £4,000 packages should split
their payments over several weeks - even if they had to use a credit card to do so.  Households were also subjected to dozens of calls - even after they said
they were not interested or hung up on sales people. One customer said he received 57 calls in a week.
One former employer explained that Managers would often listen to calls with potential customers. When you were at the stage of closing the deal they would
explicitly instruct staff to push people hard, in the process putting staff under enormous pressure to go to any length to get the sale. Staff were also
encouraged to "guilt trip" people into signing-up to the £45 a moth funeral plan, even when it was clear they would not be able to keep up the payments. Another
ex-worker explained that staff would often crack under the pressure, ending up crying at their desk.

One of the co-owner of Prosperous Life, Ian Blackhurst, is certainly getting prosperous, owning a historic £5m house set in National Trust parkland. The other
co-owner, is that fine example of all that is best in humanity, James Murtagh, who previously owned a number of debt management firms, 3 of which were
compulsory struck off by Company House and one went into liquidation. Since then he has moved on deciding there was more money to be made selling funeral plans.

Prosperous Life

http://www.solfed.org.uk/manchester/company-targeted-low-income-elderly-people-to-mis-sell-funeral-plans

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Message: 5





Posters, stickers, leaflet, special issue of Libertarian Alternative ... All the intervention material of the UCL. ---- For several decades, we have been facing
a major decline in our social rights. These rights were torn from the employers by strong, enthusiastic and vigorous struggles. We must reconnect with these
energies to put an end to a real social haemorrhage. ---- The Macron-Philippe government is only continuing the undermining work of previous leaders. The "
reforms  " of pensions and unemployment insurance destroy purely and simply those tools of solidarity for which yet we work and contribute. Poverty is
increasing in France and no doubt that will continue. Do we really want to work more, longer, harder, in conditions always deteriorated, all that to fall into
poverty in the first period of unemployment, after retirement, and even during periods worked? While money, there is, full: France is the country where
billionaires get rich the most!

The social response of scale will be built from the ground up, in the boxes, mobilizing with our colleagues and building a democratic movement through general
assemblies and strike committees, where everyone can find his place. By fighting, we can lay the foundations of another society. A society emancipated from all
exploitation where we will decide together the organization of our lives.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Tout-le-materiel-UCL-a-commander

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Message: 6






In the face of the state repressive campaign and the ultimatums of far-right political management we call upon all and all occupiers, anarchists,
antiauthorists, strikers, base fighters across the country to take a step forward and take action. December 5, the day of the end of the public order ministry's
ultimatum. In the face of the barbarism of power and its repressive staffs, to erect barriers of solidarity for all the oppressed, to oppose a host of militant
and mass resistances that will make the ultimatum rags in practice. Because we are right on our side and we will win! ---- NO DELIVERY - NO RECOVERY ---- NO
PASARAN! ---- ATHENS DECEMBER 5: SOLIDARITY SOLUTION DEMONSTRATION & THE WORLD OF THE RACE,   6 pm PROPYLAIA ---- Participation in the demonstration of December
6th, a day of resistance and remembrance eleven years after the murder of A. Grigoropoulos and the outbreak of the social uprising

NO MARKET!

http://apo.squathost.com/

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Message: 7






On the eve of the general strike scheduled for December 5, the yellow vest movement, which announced its support, decided to limit itself to holding small
protests in the framework of the 55th Act on Saturday, November 30. To a large extent, performances were held this time outside major cities (with a few
exceptions). ---- In the Paris region, a rally was organized in Mélène (department of Seine-y-Marne). The march was peaceful, but along the way, protesters
broke into a local hypermarket, protesting against capitalist consumerism. ---- A demonstration of hundreds of people in yellow took place in Tarbes (Upper
Pyrenees). ---- Citizens of the private and public sectors are one struggle, the government is making a fool of us," the banner read. Here, as in Meleon, there
were calls for a strike on December 5th. "In a few days, we will enter a new stage in our struggle (...) We need everyone to go on strike (...) The government
will not retreat in one day, it is necessary to block the economy. They will be scared when we touch their wallet," he said one of the protesters at the rally.
"The yellow vest is not the one who repairs violence. The yellow vest is the one who fights for the right to a decent life," another echoed.

In Montpellier, participants in a small march clashed with the police, heading for the Polygon. At the police station on Comedy, demonstrators were stopped by
police and street clashes ensued.

Demonstrations of "yellow vests" took place in larger cities such as Toulouse or Lille. In Toulouse, the protesters gathered, as usual, at 2 p.m. near the Jean
Jaures metro and moved to the city center (the authorities, as usual, forbade access to the Capitol Square). The march was held under the slogans: "Against
universal precarization. For social, tax, climate justice and real democracy", "5 days before a complete and unlimited blockade of the country." The march ended
in clashes with the police who used gas.

Some "yellow vests" gathered on Saturday at symbolic protest sites - at the roundabouts - for example, to distribute leaflets at the southern roundabout of
Pont-Saint-Esprey (in Gar) or the rally in Espas-Anjou in Angers.

In Marseille, hundreds of people took part in a march in memory of 80-year-old Zineb Reduan, a mortally wounded grenade with tear gas on December 1 last year.

Source: https://francais.rt.com/france/68452-melun-tarbes-montpellier-pour-acte-55-gilets-jaunes-mise-action-locale;
https://actu.fr/occitanie/toulouse_31555/toulouse-gilets-jaunes-acte-55-compte-rebours-enclenche-avant-debut-la-greve-illimitee_29774791.html;%C3%82%C2%A0

https://aitrus.info/node/5372

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Message: 8






The Rise and Fall of the Non-Violent Direct Action Movement in the United States, 1976 - 2012 ---- The "Battle of Seattle," which began November 30th, 1999, was
a major event in the history of US radical struggle, and one of the high-points of the "non-violent direct action movement." Exactly 20 years later, Robin J.
Cartwright analyzes the the rise, fall, and inner contradictions of the non-violent direct action movement, as well as the lessons we can learn from it today.
---- NOTE TO EDITOR: Is it possible to publish this November 30th (20th anniversary of the 1999 "Battle of Seattle"? ---- [The following is a guest post
submitted to the Radical Education Department and appearing November 30th, 2019 ---- https://radicaleducationdepartment.com/)] ---- Shortly after activists in
Seattle shut down the third ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization in 1999, neoliberal New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote, "these
anti-W.T.O. protestors ... are a Noah's ark of Flat-earth advocates, protectionist trade unions, and yuppies looking for their 1960s fix." These anti-WTO
demonstrations were actually the largest expression up to that point of a particular trend of leftist protest that had persisted in many social movements since
the late 1970s and would continue to do so until the early 2010s. In some time periods this tendency was the dominant practice among activists; in other times
it was a dissident minority faction, usually to the left of other factions in the same movement. This trend was characterized by a combination of consensus
decision-making with mass non-violent direct action, as well as feminist rhetoric, an impulse towards inclusive community-building, and claims that the movement
was leaderless. Many participants in this tendency, but not all, embraced prefigurative politics and were anarchists or anarchist sympathizers. In her history
of the origins of this trend Barbara Epstien calls it the non-violent direct action movement. This term is potentially misleading because the movement was not
the first or the only movement to use non-violent direct action. Nonetheless, I have chosen to use her term anyway because I do not have a better one to replace it.

The non-violent direct action movement originated in the anti-nuclear power movement of the late 1970s / early 1980s. Inspired by the German anti-nuclear
movement, activists organized occupations of construction sites for nuclear reactors, aiming to insure no new plants were built. The processes, organizational
structure, and culture adopted by these activists differed sharply from the movements of the sixties and early seventies. The later were influenced by Marxism,
the former by anarchism. Sixties movements usually had elected leaders, while the anti-nuclear movement used consensus (which was introduced to the movement by
its Quaker participants). Radical political organizations of the sixties often had a single political line, while this new movement sought to be more inclusive
and tolerant of internal dissent.

The anti-nuclear movement organized itself into a series of regional federations, each focused on a particular nuclear power plant. The first was the Clamshell
Alliance, which attempted to stop the construction of a nuclear energy plant near Seabrook, New Hampshire through a series of non-violent occupations. It was
the inspiration and model for a series of other regional federations throughout the country, all of which also attempt to use mass non-violent direct action to
disrupt the construction of nuclear power plants.

Each federation was based on affinity groups and spokescouncils, not general assemblies or hierarchies. Participants were usually required to undergo training
in non-violence and consensus decision making; many affinity groups were formed by people who met each other at a training session. Lone individuals were
usually not permitted to participate in occupations (or spokescouncils) and were typically turned away if they showed up.

The movement met with mixed success. Some occupations were crushed through mass arrests. Others lasted for several weeks before disbanding, faced with the
difficulty of occupying a location on a long-term basis. They delayed the construction of some nuclear reactors, but all of their targets were eventually built.
Despite this, the legitimacy of nuclear power in the public eye was undermined. Those plants already under construction were completed, but the construction of
new plants was not authorized until the Obama administration a quarter-century later.

The movement's impact on radicals and other social movements was arguably greater than its impact on nuclear power. The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 caused
a resurgence of a variety of different leftist and liberal social movements in response. The non-violent direct action movement persisted through the 1980s, now
as part of the radical wing of these movements rather than as a separate movement focused on nuclear power. The movements of the 1980s mostly tended to be more
liberal or, at most democratic socialist, rather than anarchist, and usually eschewed prefigurative politics. They largely rejected consensus and openly
supported hierarchy, electing leaders to run their movements. Non-violence was widely embraced in the movements of the 1980s, but they often enacted it through
permitted protests, lobbying, voting, and/or symbolic arrests coordinated with the police rather than the disruptive mass civil disobedience advocated by the
non-violent direct action movement.

The movement's impact on the (much smaller) anarchist movement was significantly greater. The majority of the anarchist movement embraced the ideas and
practices of the non-violent direct action movement. Consensus became the default form of decision making for anarchists in the US. By the end of the century it
had become so widespread in anarchist scenes that many mistakenly assumed that consensus was intrinsic to anarchism. In fact, anarchists have not used consensus
for the majority of our history. The CNT-FAI in the Spanish Civil War was not consensus based, and neither was the anarchist-wing of the First International. It
was not until the 1970s and 1980s that anarchists in the United States adopted consensus on a large-scale; in some countries anarchists did not adopt consensus
and continued to use majority or super-majority vote.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the election of Bill Clinton caused most liberal & leftist social movements to shrink (or collapse entirely) during the
1990s. When leftist dissent began to revive in the later part of Clinton's second term the global justice movement was among the leading and more visible
elements. Unlike the movements of the 1980s, the non-violent direct action movement was not part of the radical wing of the movement but was rather the dominant
force. Although they were now trying to shut down summits of international financial institutions (or other world leaders) rather than nuclear power plants, the
style and all the other elements of the movement were brought back. Like the anti-nuclear movement, the global justice movement utilized spokescouncils,
consensus-based decision making, affinity groups, and mass disruptive direct action. It advocated non-violence while purporting to be leaderless. Anarchism
again occupied a prominent role; many of the participants were were either anarchists or anarchist sympathizers. As in its other iterations, not all
participants fully embraced every aspect of this political culture, but the majority of participants embraced most of its elements.

The main phase of the global justice movement only lasted two years; it was brought to a premature end by 9-11. Protests against the International Monetary
Fund's annual meeting in Washington, D.C., scheduled for September of 2001, were expected to be large and militant, but the I.M.F. canceled the summit in
response to 9-11. Consequently the scheduled summit protests were called off and small anti-war protests were held in Washington, D.C. instead. Activists in the
Workers World Party / International Action Center quickly founded International A.N.S.W.E.R. and began organizing anti-war demonstrations. The center of focus
for much of the left shifted away from the global justice movement towards the anti-war movement. The later eventually grew much larger (once the Bush
administration shifted its focus to Iraq) but it was much more timid and was less influenced by the non-violent direct action movement. There were multiple
attempts to revive the global justice movement and shut down summits of global leaders in the decade after 9-11, but the police developed a new set of
aggressive tactics (the "Miami model") that proved effective at insuring summits would never be shut down again. In the long run police repression was probably
more important in terminating the global justice movement than 9-11 (which might otherwise have only been a temporary pause).

Despite its brief lifespan, the global justice movement had a major impact on both the American left and the international financial institutions it was trying
to disrupt. The FTAA and many other proposed free trade agreements were stopped in their tracks by the movement. The WTO's "Doha round" of negotiations was
delayed by two years due to the direct action in Seattle, and then ultimately died. After 2001 the IMF increasingly found that countries wanted nothing to do
with it, refused to take out new loans, defaulted on current loans, and threatened to default on additional loans if more favorable weren't reached. For a time
it looked like the IMF might go bankrupt and cease to exist, but it found a new life after 2008 - this time in Europe. Much of this success was primarily due to
movements outside the United States. The US global justice movement was a small part of a much larger movement against neoliberalism and its international
financial institutions that was centered in the third-world and eventually started overthrowing governments for working with the IMF.

In some respects the period from 2001-2011 parallels the 1980s in that the non-violent direct action movement persisted as a dissident radical faction in the
movements of the day, standing in opposition to more moderate trends with a different political style and culture. However, its influence in this period was
significantly greater than it was in the 1980s. Consensus decision making, in particular, enjoyed its heyday during this time period, where it became the
default form of decision-making for most local radical groups. One participant in the global justice movement, David Graeber, wrote in 2007:

"I joined NYC DAN[Direct Action Network]right around the time of A16. At the time DAN as a whole saw itself as a group with two major objectives. One was to
help coordinate the North American wing of a vast global movement against neoliberalism, ... The other was to disseminate a (very much anarchist-inspired) model
of direct democracy: decentralized, affinity-group structures, consensus process, to replace old-fashioned activist organizing styles with their steering
committees and ideological squabbles. At the time we sometimes called it "contaminationism", the idea that all people really needed was to be exposed to the
experience of direct action and direct democracy, and they would want to start imitating it all by themselves. ... these were pretty ambitious goals, so we also
assumed even if we did attain them, it would probably take at least a decade. As it turned out it took about a year and a half. ... While the anti-war
coalitions still operate, as anti-war coalitions always do, as top-down popular front groups, almost every small-scale radical group that isn't dominated by
Marxist sectarians of some sort or another - and this includes anything from organizations of Syrian immigrants in Montreal or community gardens in Detroit -
now operate on largely anarchist[consensus-based]principles. They might not know it. But contaminationism worked."

When the Occupy movement erupted in 2011, it inherited this model. Inspired by the Spanish Indignados movement and the Arab Spring, Occupy was the largest and
arguably most successful iteration of the non-violent direct action movement. Like previous iterations, it used consensus decision making, espoused
non-violence, purported to be leaderless, and engaged in mass civil disobedience. The initial core of the movement was mostly made up of anarchists and
anarchist sympathizers, but it quickly gained a thick layer of liberal participants, some of whom became more sympathetic towards anarchism, or at least towards
anti-capitalism, as a result of their experiences in Occupy.

Occupy differed from previous iterations of the NDA in several important respects. One is that Occupy's targets were far more numerous and distributed: public
squares and financial districts in nearly every city or town in the United States. Both the anti-nuclear movement and the global justice movement drew people
from a variety of different locations to target a specific global or regional target, rather than encouraging participants to focus primarily on their own
communities. As these movements were much smaller it would have been more difficult for activists to focus exclusively on their own communities; it is difficult
to occupy a public location or shut down corporate/government meetings with only fifteen people. By massing people from multiple locations at a single target
the anti-nuclear and global justice movements were able to compensate for their smaller size.

Another other major difference, in part, stemmed from the first: Occupy largely dispensed with affinity groups and spokescouncils, opting for general assemblies
(essentially enormous meetings) instead. In the global justice movement and the anti-nuclear movement many of the participants traveled in small groups to their
target and those small groups were easily turned into affinity groups. In such a context using spokescouncils to link these different groups together made
sense. At the height of the global justice movement using general assemblies to make decisions would have been impossible because there were too many
participants at the summit protest to fit everyone in the same space. You cannot have a general assembly with fifty-thousand participants.

As a result of of emphasizing general assemblies instead of spokescouncils and affinity groups, the consensus process ran into more problems during Occupy than
it had during previous iterations of the NDA. Occupy encampments repeatedly ran into problems with individuals or small numbers of people blocking consensus,
leading to gridlock and lengthy meetings. The issue of blocks preventing the group from doing anything or slowing decision making was not a new one, but
previous movements largely developed better methods of coping with it. Critics of consensus often see the ability of a minority to veto decision-making as a
reason to reject it, but proponents of consensus often regard it as a feature on the grounds that it protects the rights of the minority.

The very first NDA organization, the Clamshell Alliance, dealt with this problem very poorly. At a contentious meeting where they could not reach consensus on
several controversial issues, a faction of the organization resorted to metaphorical arm twisting to compel participants to ‘stand aside' and not block
consensus, leading to a split. One participant, Murray Bookchin, wrote of his experience using consensus in Clamshell:

"within the Clamshell Alliance, consensus was fostered by often cynical Quakers and by members of a dubiously "anarchic" commune ... This small, tightly knit
faction, unified by its own hidden agendas, was able to manipulate many Clamshell members into subordinating their goodwill and idealistic commitments to those
opportunistic agendas. The de facto leaders of the Clamshell overrode the rights and ideals of the innumerable individuals who entered it and undermined their
morale and will.

In order for that clique to create full consensus on a decision, minority dissenters were often subtly urged or psychologically coerced to decline to vote on a
troubling issue, inasmuch as their dissent would essentially amount to a one-person veto. This practice, called "standing aside" in American consensus
processes, all too often involved intimidation of the dissenters, to the point that they completely withdrew from the decision-making process, rather than make
an honorable and continuing expression of their dissent by voting, even as a minority, in accordance with their views."

Bookchin overgeneralized from his experience and rejected consensus entirely, contending that consensus always leads to the same results as it had in Clamshell.
In contrast to the idea that consensus protects minority rights or gives the minority too much power, Bookchin believed that consensus was unfair to the
minority and suppressed dissent (as it had in Clamshell). He wrote, "In majority decision-making, the defeated minority can resolve to overturn a decision on
which they have been defeated - they are free to openly and persistently articulate reasoned and potentially persuasive disagreements. Consensus, for its part,
honors no minorities, but mutes them in favor of the metaphysical ‘one' of the ‘consensus' group. ... Any libertarian body of ideas that seeks to dissolve
hierarchy, classes, domination and exploitation by allowing even[a]"minority of one" to block decision-making by the majority of a community, indeed, of
regional and nationwide confederations, would essentially mutate into a ... nightmare world of intellectual and psychic conformity."

The Abalone Alliance, founded to stop the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant near San Luis Obispo, CA, introduced key changes that avoided many of the problems
Clamshell encountered. In 1981 they decided consensus at statewide meetings could only be blocked by an affinity group, not by an individual, and only if that
affinity group reached internal consensus to block consensus. They also decided to distinguish between enthusiastic consensus, with all groups supporting the
proposal, and lukewarm consensus, where up to one-third of groups stood aside but none of them blocked. This modification to consensus, along with differences
in its internal culture, enabled Abalone to avoid the pitfalls Clamshell encountered. The Abalone alliance lasted longer than Clamshell, successfully shut down
the Diablo Canyon plant, and spread its model across the country and into dissident wings of other movements. Its restrictions on blocking consensus were copied
by all subsequent movements that used consensus on a large scale, with the partial exception of Occupy.

The global justice movement not only inherited Abalone's restrictions on blocking consensus, it unintentionally introduced other changes that made it less
likely for consensus to result in gridlock and endless meetings. At summit protests activists arrived in affinity groups from around the country, and sometimes
from other countries, but, unlike in the anti-nuclear and Occupy movements, did not think of themselves as being members of one big organization. Spokescouncils
were negotiations between numerous separate groups, and if consensus could not be reached those groups were free to do their own thing. Gridlock was avoided by
splitting whenever irreconcilable differences prevented consensus; because activists did not think of themselves as one big group they could split and reunite
at will, without animosity. In some cases affinity groups that wanted to do different things each formed their own separate set of spokescouncils. For example,
affinity groups that participated in black blocs often formed their own spokescouncils away from the main spokescouncils used by everyone else; they could join
the later when both sides felt it was appropriate.

Certain features of Occupy make the flaws of consensus more apparent in this movement than they had been in previous movements. During the 1980s and early
1990s, as well as the 2001-2011 period between the Global Justice movement & Occupy, activists who used consensus usually did so in small groups where they
often shared similar praxis. If the odds of someone blocking are only one-percent, blocks in a small group may be uncommon enough that they do not pose a
problem, but a group with over a hundred members will regularly encounter blocks, causing gridlock and endless meetings in a never-ending attempt to appease a
small number of blockers. The anti-nuclear and global justice movements had methods of circumventing individual blocks in large movements, but they were
connected to the structure of affinity groups and spokescouncils. Occupy's decision making was primarily organized around large general assemblies.
Consequently, a block could be done by a lone individual (or a tiny handful of individuals), not just by a unified affinity group. Furthermore, because they
were all part of one big assembly, it was difficult to simply split into separate clusters of affinity groups that did different things when consensus could not
be quickly reached. Occupy also had control of collective resources that were not available to previous movements, like public spaces and large donations, which
were not easily amenable to simply having different affinity groups go their separate ways.

In the later part of Occupy some chapters experimented with alternatives but this proved too little, too late. Occupy Wall St. eventually set up a
spokescouncil, but it was based on working groups and caucuses rather than true affinity groups. Some encampments experimented with allowing blocks to be
over-ruled if they make up less than a certain percentage of members, de facto shifting to a form of super-majority voting.

The principle drawback of consensus is that it makes it difficult to make collective decisions and leads to long drawn-out meetings; this drawback can be
mitigated through various modification but in doing so it essentially shifts the decision-making process away from consensus towards some other model. In the
Clamshell Alliance they dealt with the issue by unofficially shifting to a more top-down process and compelling dissenters to stand aside. Most other
modifications de facto shift towards majority or super-majority voting. Putting limits on blocks, like the Abalone Alliance did, amount to a form of
super-majority vote because they require anyone wishing to block to be sufficiently numerous and well-organized to do so. Requiring blocks to exceed 20% of the
membership to be valid is functionally equivalent to a majority-vote process where proposals require at least 80% support to pass. Quakers do not mind meetings
taking a long time because they believe the process helps bring them closer to god's will, but god does not exist and social movements need to make collective
decisions in a reasonable amount of time to be effective.

Like consensus, Occupy inherited non-violent ideology from previous movements. It loudly proclaimed its adherence to non-violent principles, much as the
anti-nuclear and global justice movements had done. Non-violent ideology reached its heyday in the 1980s and early 1990s, when most activists espoused some sort
of rhetorical commitment to non-violence. Social movements of this era often policed themselves to ensure none of their members did anything violent by
expelling potential troublemakers and using protest marshals to keep protesters in line. To maintain the illusion of militancy some negotiated staged arrests
with the police. The authorities often preferred to negotiate with protest leaders, and have those leaders control their members under the guise of
non-violence, than to directly crack down on protesters themselves.

Proponents of non-violence saw themselves as following in the footsteps of the Civil Rights Movement and the Indian independence movement. However, as Ward
Churchill argued in Pacifism as Pathology, there is a major difference between the classical non-violence practiced by the CRM & IIM and the non-violence
practiced by American social movements after 1965. The former took actions designed to provoke violence against themselves and then refused to retaliate or run
away, simply allowing themselves to be assaulted. In contrast, the later adopted non-violence in the hopes that it would lessen the amount of repression they
were subjected to (and thereby increase turnout for their actions). Consequently, post-1965 non-violence took on a more submissive tenor that tried to police
activists to insure they did not do anything to provoke the authorities.

Today rhetoric about being non-violent is often associated with liberals or moderate leftists, but it was not perceived that way in its heyday. Radical
supporters of non-violence thought that since violence is a central feature of contemporary society a complete rejection of all violence is actually more
revolutionary than radicals who maintain the need for some level of violence. At its height non-violence was embraced not only by liberals and democratic
socialists, but by anarchists and Marxists as well.

There were arguments over non-violence from the start. In the later part of the Clamshell Alliance some activists wanted to use wire-cutters to cut open a fence
around a nuclear power plant. Other activists objected they should not do this because cutting through fences was violent and consequently would cause greater
repression (and thus lower turnout for the second occupation). Those who wanted to cut open the fence accepted non-violence, but maintained that fence cutting
did not count as violence. If everyone agrees that we should never do anything violent, what counts and does not count as violence becomes very important and a
source of conflict.

These types of arguments intensified after anarchists in black bloc formation smashed store windows during the Seattle demonstrations against the WTO at the
dawn of the Global Justice Movement. Despite the fact that property destruction at subsequent protests in the US almost never happened, there was intense
infighting over the acceptability of property destruction. Many activists opposed property destruction on the grounds that it was violent, while others argued
that property destruction is not violent or rejected non-violence altogether. The idea of a "diversity of tactics" was originally invent to overcome this
infighting. Protesters agreed that different groups could use whichever tactic they wanted (legal protests, illegal but non-violent civil disobedience, and/or
property destruction), would keep different actions separate in time and space, and not publicly denounce each other. Initially its most prominent use was at
the anti-FTAA protests in Quebec city in spring 2001, but its most developed form was the St. Paul Principles written for the 2008 protests against the
Republican National Convention in Minnesota. Newer anarchists sometimes mistakenly assume diversity of tactics is some sort of core anarchist principle
extending back to Proudhon or Bakunin, but it was actually invented relatively recently to solve a problem in the Global Justice Movement.

Although most activists, both in the NDA and outside it, continued to espouse some form of non-violence during this time period and for the next ten years,
property destruction, the ensuing debate over property destruction, and the acceptance of a diversity of tactics weakened the hold of non-violent ideology on
activists. A significant minority outright rejected non-violence, while the majority both tolerated their existence and refused (or were unable) to force them
to abide by it. This made it more difficult for the police to get protesters to police themselves; part of the reason the Global Justice Movement was initially
successful was precisely because the police had grown accustomed to protesters controlling their own members and were caught off guard when this was no longer
reliable. As a result the police started shifting towards other methods of controlling summit protests (mainly brute force).

Events during the Occupy movement made the function of non-violence as a form of internal movement policing abundantly clear, while the same ideology failed to
deter police violence. During the Oakland general strike pacifists violently assaulted black bloc militants in order to prevent them from engaging in property
destruction.

Note that this violent pacifist justified non-violence in seemingly radical terms (its the most effective way to change the system) yet his actual practice was
the opposite of radical - defending a bank's private property. This contradiction was typical of the non-violence that dominated activist circles from the 1970s
through the early 2010s. The absurdity of pacifists being violent in the name of non-violence highlighted the fact that non-violence wasn't actually non-violent
and had the effect of encouraging social movements to obey authority and police themselves. In practice, pacifists put protecting private property ahead of the
actual people they assaulted.

Pacifists violently assaulting other protesters in the name of non-violence was not new. During the Seattle anti-WTO protests some of them attacked black bloc
militants who were engaging in property destruction. During Occupy, however, their violence against people was captured on video and there was already a large
minority of activists who rejected non-violence before the movement even began. Consequently, their views spread and support for non-violence among radicals
declined in the wake of the movement.

Subsequent events reinforced these lessons. One of the better known cases of violence during Occupy was the assault of University of California - Berkley
student protesters by the police.

The authorities appealed to non-violence to defend this violent act. The Chancellor of the University along with two other senior administrators released a
joint statement arguing that:

"some protesters chose to obstruct the police by linking arms and forming a human chain to prevent the police from gaining access to the tents. This is not
non-violent civil disobedience. By contrast, some of the protesters chose to be arrested peacefully; they were told to leave their tents, informed that they
would be arrested if they did not, and indicated their intention to be arrested. They did not resist arrest or try physically to obstruct the police officers'
efforts to remove the tent. These protesters were acting in the tradition of peaceful civil disobedience, and we honor them. ... to take down tents and prevent
encampment, the police were forced to use their batons to enforce the policy ... We call on the protesters to observe campus policy or, if they choose to defy
the policy, to engage in truly non-violent civil disobedience and to accept the consequences of their decisions."

 From the late 1970s through the early 2010s most of the activists who adopted non-violence did so, at least in part, in the hopes that it would reduce police
violence against them. At this protest not only did it not do that, non-violence was actually used to justify police violence against activists. Furthermore,
the insistence by the Chancellor that non-violence means activists must not do things he doesn't like, such as linking arms (a classic non-violent tactic), and
instead meekly submit to arrest made it clear that the authorities were using non-violence to justify telling activists what to do and not do, as a means of
controlling protests.

In early 2012 Christopher Hedges published his notoriously incendiary article "The Cancer in Occupy," which demonized the black bloc and insisted that every
activist be required to abide by non-violence. His article sparked a number of critical articles in response. Arguably the best known was David Graeber's
rebuttal "Concerning the Violent Peace Police." Graeber noted that, "there have been physical assaults by activists on other activists, and, to my knowledge,
they have never been perpetrated by anyone in Black Bloc, but invariably by purported pacifists against those who dare to pull a hood over their heads or a
bandana over their faces, or, simply, against anarchists who adopt tactics someone else thinks are going too far." The general backlash against Hedge's article
consolidated the growing sense among radicals that non-violent ideology should be thrown overboard.

In the years since Occupy most radical activists have abandoned non-violent ideology and rhetoric, correctly recognizing it as a flawed praxis. Despite the
rejection of non-violence, there has not been a resurgence of armed struggle. Most of the things activists do are still non-violent, but the participants do not
see the need to publicly proclaim their adherence to non-violence and agree that there are circumstances where violence is justified. Even in the antifa
movement, although there is lots of talk of punching Nazis, actual use of violence against the alt-right has only happened a handful of times. Most antifa
activity consist of things that are non-violent, like surveillance of fascists, doxing them, organizing boycotts, etc. Although the move away from non-violence
is mostly positive, it also opened the door for excessively violent online rhetoric, usually accompanied by gulag and guillotine memes. Some leftists forget
that our goal is to make the world a better place, not drown it in blood.

In the years since Occupy ended the Non-violent Direct Action Movement has largely disappeared. Elements of it persist, there is still an anarchist movement for
example, but no one really puts together those elements in the way the NDA did. Consensus is no longer the default decision making method for activists. Last
year's Occupy ICE movement, for example, largely used majority vote rather than consensus. The most popular type of decision making structures for activists
have shifted from Leninist-style central committees in the 1970s, to elected representational leadership in the 1980s & early 1990s, to consensus from
1999-2011, and now to majority vote today. There are still activists who use consensus (usually anarchists) and activists who adhere to non-violence ideology
(usually liberals and democratic socialists) but today it is uncommon to combine the two. Although the legacy of the Non-violent Direct Action Movement will
continue to influence social movements for decades, it seems unlikely that it will ever be revived.

The Non-violent Direct Action Movement kept the left alive during a conservative period of American history, and pressed social movements to rely more on direct
action and adopt a more egalitarian form. It ultimately turned much of the public against economic inequality, laying the groundwork for later campaigns
including the Fight for $15 and Bernie Sanders' presidential bids. It shows that activists ought to avoid being too closed minded towards minority viewpoints
within their own ranks and instead adopt an attitude of "I disagree with what you're saying but I support your right to say it." Support for consensus and
non-violence were the dominant views among activists for a long time, but the minority of activists who rejected them were eventually proven right. Similarly,
views held by a minority of activists today may be proven right by events in the future; excessive intolerance towards minority viewpoints runs the risk of
suppressing views that are actually right. The rise and fall of the NDA shows that social movements can change drastically over the course of several decades.
What is common sense in one time period is controversial or unthinkable in other time periods. We should not be too confident in the righteousness of today's
activist trends - yesterday those trends were different and tomorrow they will be different yet again. The left changes as radically as the social change it
seeks to bring about.
Related Link: http://radicaleducationdepartment.com

Embedded Video Description: Man tackles bank smasher at Occupy Oakland General Strike

Embedded Video Description: Assault of University of California - Berkley student protesters by the police

https://www.anarkismo.net/article/31663


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