By Mick Sweetman

First off, it's been interesting to read the many responses, some in agreement, some in disagreement, and a lot with a mix of both, to my blog post “We need a mass movement not a black bloc”.

I'm glad that my post has resonated with people and contributed to the larger debate on strategy, tactics, and politics in the anarchist movement and on the left generally. That kind of lively public debate is healthy for a movement to honestly evaluate both our successes and our shortcomings as a movement. Public critique in our movements should not be suppressed in a misguided attempt to enforce “solidarity” between activists and sweep our disagreements under the carpet. Sometimes that means we have to talk frankly about the movements we're in and address what we see as mistakes.

While I have no time to respond to every comment on my post from the various forums it's been re-posted to I do want to address one. In my frustrated use of the word “idiot”, while an honest gut reaction to something I feel was deeply counter-productive, was rightly criticized as an unthinking use of ableist language that could be seen as insulting to people with intellectual disabilities and it also personalized my critique of the actions of property destruction that we saw in the “heart attack” march. For that comment I would like to apologize.

I agree that this isn't a question of “good protesters” verses “bad protesters” but rather one of good strategy verses bad strategy. As Harsha Walia, a community organizer in Vancouver and a participant in the “Heart Attack” march, pointed out in a public debate on the concept of “diversity of tactics” people involved in the black bloc actions can also be found in many community based struggles such as the Olympic tent village which is highlighting the gentrification of the Downtown East Side. I'm more than happy to take her word on that and it's consistent with contradictory actions that I've seen taken by activists over the years.

Where I disagree with Walia is that personal involvement in movements that build mass community and labour struggles does not counter-act the damage to those movements that happens when bad strategy and tactics are used – even if it's done by the very same people whose community work it damages! At times I myself have advocated and participated in confrontational actions that in hindsight were counter-productive to building mass movements. We all make mistakes, but it is important that we try and learn from them and not repeat them.

Of course, we don't just want just any mass movement, we want a militant and democratic one. However, in evaluating strategy and tactics I still maintain that it's only through long-term involvement in existing mass movements, such as the labour and community movements, that anarchism will be able to break out of being a fringe political ideology on the margins of the crucial struggles of our class.

A good example of this would be too look back at the decisive moment of the 1999 WTO protest in Seattle when large numbers of rank and file union members broke away from the AFL-CIO sanctioned march and went downtown to support the non-violent civil disobedience protesters who were being gassed, pepper-sprayed, and beaten by the police. This was only achievable because of a long militant left tradition in the longshore union that was on strike that day across the west coast in protest of the WTO whose respected shop-floor militants defied the AFL-CIO marshals and broke away thousands of workers to support the “turtle kids” who were being attacked by the police.

In contrast,take the 2001 protests against the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City. At the union march there were attempts by young radicals to encourage workers to break away from the march and support the confrontational protesters who were attacking the fence. While there were many factors at play in Quebec City that were different from Seattle I believe that one of the strongest factors that kept the vast majority of union members marching to the “middle of nowhere” was unlike Seattle the argument for a break-away march towards the confrontational protests was made largely by activists from outside the labour movement instead of militant shop-floor and local leaders that had the confidence of rank and file members.

The examples of mass movements becoming radicalized, while rare, are still more numerous than of fringe radical movements taking on a true mass character. In B.C. The 1983 “operation solidarity” strikes and the 2004 Hospital Employees Union strike that saw widespread solidarity strikes by the Canadian Union of Public Employees as well as wildcat strikes by BC Hydro and ferry workers remain examples of mass struggles radicalizing with the active participation of community organizations and far-left support. Now it's worth noting that both of those mass struggles were popularly seen as having been sold out by the union bureaucracy before taking on the character of an all-out general strike. Regardless of that, both examples show the potential of mass working class unrest using direct action through their existing mass organizations on a scale that no comparable radical movement in B.C. has even come close to.

This is not to say that smaller community-based struggles are less important than large scale labour struggles or that as activists we have to wait for a general strike before we can organize against exploitation and oppression. Far from it, I believe it crucial that we organize where we are at and smaller local struggles that are unlikely to take on a mass character should not be neglected. The objection I have with tactics like the black bloc lie in the fact that often, as recently seen in Vancouver but by no means confined to it, sometimes militants are trying to substitute themselves for that mass movement.

When members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers are on strike and don balaclavas to avoid identification and reprisals by management I have no objections. When activists at a demonstration organized by the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty physically defended themselves against a police attack in the “June 15 riot” at Queens Park in 2000 I helped organize for their defense fund. When activists from the Six Nations territory at the Douglas Creek reclamation repelled an attack by the OPP and erected barricades I drove down with donated supplies and stayed the day with many other solidarity activists to help deter a future attack.

The crucial difference between the use of those militant tactics by community and labour organizations and that of many black blocs is that in many cases the tactics are divorced from the broader struggles. I'm all for pushing the envelope of militancy in community and labour struggles, as anarchists that's part of our job, what I am critical of is pushing past the level of militancy that people in those mass struggles are ready to support and isolating ourselves from the base of support that all militant mass movements need to survive and thrive.