Author: F B Date: To: Bricolabs startup mailinglist Subject: Re: [Bricolabs] Rome, October 15th 2011
In italian historical contest I feel that black-block tactics are as wrong as the mass pacific demonstration is futile.
Colors, nice youth in the sun look to "get the picture on the press" feels just Societee du Spectacle. Same it goes for few euros of private property on fire.
And is too easy.
A big, angry, compact demonstration, that can stand it's ground towards the police aggression and has the courage to be angry and ugly is what they fear. Let's keep focus and give them a little of it. Is a battlefield of a strange kind, and makes me curious what kind of lessons we could learn from medieval tactics in our cities. Being buy now universally known that to stand as individuals, with hands on the air and a pacifist attitude just buys you a ticket to the hospital.
In december, when angry crowds have put the center of Rome in fire because of the scandalous vote in the chamber, as you might remember, we were close to something new. A more "french" attitude in our landscape. A compact potentially dangerous crowd scares them. Especially because is not easy to manipulate.
Few lay lines can archive that. The right type of shoes, how to stand the ground against CS teargas, how not to brake when the charge arrives, how to throw stones, how to set cars on fire, never to let alone a friend in the hand of a cop, to have a legal team, to have cameras, to get out ready to all... I wander how many more they can find out for themselve. But you stay with this display in your shoes, because what can make you dangerous to them is NOT to use it first, but to be a tough cookie and stay put behind your arguments. That's your strongpoint.
The italian student movement seems better taking the street, because is not proactive but -eventually- reactive. The cops were quite scared. And so the circus of the media.
What I would like to stress again is the difference between gaining a position of force and using it wisely to bring your arguments to a victory point or abandon yourself to violence (either you are the violent irrational screamer or the victim of state violence).
A movement that has on his side both arguments and numbers is very strong if is compact and can give adequate support to it's agenda. And on the net arguments fly... the whole society is there to be redesigned to new principles, is a job to keep happy generations, the greatest opportunity in ages to mankind: the suicide of capitalism... What do you want more :)
That is why the only way to keep the majority in the representative democracy - fear state is to create fairy tales in the media, and adequate consumerism to the arguments of the reason (like a carbon free intercontinental flight, a diet coke, a corporate responsibility protocol and all that bullshit).
The movement arguments are specific, clear, and well spoken, if we can stand our ground OUT THERE and produce the necessary horizontal tactics, than a political movement with many heads and one body is self designing as an EMERGENT phenomena. This makes a difference because is carrying a altogether different culture and not only because can get voted by 5% of the people...