I'm a regular reader of the World Socialist Web Site, and they had an analysis of the protest in Oakland on Saturday. These two paragraphs caused me concern:
Some protesters—members of the anarchist “black block”—retaliated with rocks, bottles, and other small projectiles. The police managed to push the large crowd away from the abandoned convention center, making several arrests and continuing to fire rubber bullets, bean bags, flash grenades, and smoke bombs into the retreating crowd.
Saturday’s demonstrations were more heavily-dominated by “black-block” anarchistic tendencies than earlier demonstrations in Oakland. Their bankrupt politics has often in the past coincided with infiltration by police with the aim of creating a provocation to be used to justify mass arrests. The mid-day demonstration was organized in part by a faction of anarchists within the Bay Area Occupy movement that calls itself “Bay of Rage”.
My first thought after reading the above two paragraphs is any tendency to the use of projectiles to respond to even violent, police tactics should be marginalized and discouraged openly and vigorously by any contingent of the Occupy movement. Granted, I do not live in Oakland, but I have been a part of mass protests after Katrina, and we never considered violent approaches, although violence was committed against us by the NOPD.
I do not know the extent of the vandalism in City Hall in Oakland. Again though, vigorous efforts should be made to discourage those with tendencies to using such opportunities for vandalism, and/or, returning violence to violence.
Granted none of this equals the economic violence, and foreign policy violence dished out by the 1% and our own government. Nevertheless, here in New Orleans, under no circumstances would I be a part of the Occupy movement if the use of violence and vandalism were an approved tactic.
I say all of this with caution as I was there in Oakland, and am an observer looking on. I agree with the analysis on the socialist web site that the presence of provocateurs could occur in such groups as the "Black Bloc". The presence of provocateurs could occur generally speaking, but the tactics of provocation generally is a magnet for such.