I have just read the comments portion of MoT's post on Black Bloc. The debate about whether property damage is violence continues as does the failure of some to understand why consensus cannot be achieved on what seems a simple issue--that property damage is violence. Imho this debate can be resolved with clear thought and reasoned discussion.
1. Property damage is not violence. Violence is deliberate physical injury to another. That is its legal and dictionary definition. Nor do I consider violence to be in any form civil disobedience. I defy anyone to show me an example where someone called violence civil disobedience. It is precisely criminal disobedience.
When we confuse clear definitions, we only serve to confuse ourselves. And we allow others to confuse us as well, e.g., UC Chancellor Birgeneau, who declares that locking arms is violence.
2. I do not agree that causing "property damage," particularly as it is conceived by others, is always worthy of condemnation. That camping in a public fora may cause the grass beneath to die can be deemed property damage. Indeed, such was nearly the exact pretext for attacking a portion of the Boston Occupy encampment. Taking down a cyclone fence to keep people out of an encampment, as Oakland Occupy did after the first decimation of the camp, is property damage. Occupying an unused foreclosed property is property damage. I do not find the latter two worthy of condemnation, nor the first a reasonable justification for attacking an encampment . These serve a useful purpose, whose destructive side effects, to the extent there are any, are minimal compared to the uses they serve. They same cannot be said of vandalism nor looting, the former of which is purely destructive (even if a speech act) and the latter pure theft.
If the Occupy GA wishing to discuss this issue can simply make the conceptual distinction between useful uses of property and purely destructive uses and, of course, theft, I believe it will make it easy for consensus to be achieved on this issue.