To me, the video of a strange solo terrorist with a hammer, breaking windows in an Autozone Store, stands out as chilling. Today there is speculation that he was an agent provocateur, conjuring up images of FBI infiltration of demonstrations during past eras of political turmoil. There is a nonviolent strategy that needs to be considered and adopted widely in Minneapolis, taken from an old protest playbook of 1976. Step over the police barricade and I will share it with you…
It is still a mystery as to who that guy was, but we do know he was a white guy and he came with a weapon ( a hammer) targeting the plate glass windows of a business. He was followed briefly by one brave person carrying a pizza( this part was captured on video). That got a face photo which led to rumors of a positive ID by his ex-wife. The point is, he was trying to hijack the protest and turn the narrative in a different direction so that any legitimate protests of the murder of George Floyd could be re-painted as a Law and Order issue.
In 1976, the Clamshell Alliance was formed to protest the construction of a nuclear power plant in Seabrook, New Hampshire. They carefully planned their strategy to occupy the construction site and showed up with 1,400 ( approx) people.
Self-Policing to prevent a protest from turning violent
As a means of creating unity among the protesters and promoting nonviolence, they conducted affinity group training before the big protest. The phrase has now been adopted by self-guided teams at workplaces, but the original purpose was to form a bond among small groups of protesters that would help them to self-police their members before they resorted to violence which of course would be non-productive.
I wrote this in a comment on another blog and got a reply where the person suggested two resources.
Affinity group explanation
First is this two-page handout from vernalproject.org. It gives practical tips for how to organize an affinity group. If you have a crowd of 1,500 people it’s a mob. If you have a hundred crowds of fifteen people each they are more likely to police each other and stick to a nonviolent plan.
Next was this link to a nonviolent activist site.
Flat Out Advice:
If you are in Minneapolis, share the two documents above with everybody you can think of. The protests can not sustain themselves without some level of a plan, and a nonviolent plan is waaaay better than aimlessly breaking things. No matter how angry you are, go about this with a system. Calm the F**k down.
Each affinity group now could be used to identify bad actors, video and photograph them, and expel them from the protest. In 1976 neither side had the ability to document the faces of their adversary, but here in 2020 it is a potent weapon.
National Guard deployment
I think that 500 National Guard members was not enough, and they need three thousand. When they get there, it will become critical for the protesters to stick to non-violent means of expressing themselves. The National Guard is bound to be an improvement over the amateurish conduct of the patrol officers of Minneapolis.