Today I went to an Indivisible/OFA meeting in my neighborhood. We talked about many things. town-halls, social media, connecting with other groups, etc.
We also talked about all the demonstration that were going to happen within driving distance and how we could participate and get supporters to join.
One subject matter that popped up was a possible Black Bloc disruption;
‘Black bloc’ protests return for Trump era, leaving flames, broken windows from D.C. to Berkeley
They’ve been around for decades, but in the past three months they’ve been especially visible: protesters in head-to-toe black clothing and ski masks, charging through the streets in public demonstrations, provoking police and leaving a trail of broken windows and flaming piles of debris in their wake.
Pockets of them sowed chaos during peaceful protests in Portland the week Donald Trump was elected president, smashing electrical boxes and spray-painting buildings, and prompting a volley of rubber bullets from authorities.
They turned out by the hundreds at Trump’s inauguration in January, vandalizing a Starbucks and a Bank of America and torching a limousine in downtown Washington.
And on Wednesday, swarms of them shut down a planned speech by the conservative provocateur and Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos at the University of California at Berkeley. Some 1,500 people had showed up to demonstrate against the event when a black-clad mob of a few dozen started breaking windows and setting fires at the campus.
Two things came to my mind that others present thought made sense;
1. Start a sit down
By sitting down you show you do not support their action. Make sure you do this at a distance.
2. Offer the merchants affected help
Wait until things cool down and go with a group. Do tell the merchants that you were the peaceful protesters.
Being associated with Black bloc by the tRumpers is not useful, even Breitbart.com agrees;
Activists: Anti-Trump Protests are the New ‘Occupy’
The San Francisco Chroniclereports that the Bay Area’s non-violent anarchists are worried that the violent tactics used by “Black bloc” activists to disrupt Breitbart tech editor Milo Yiannopoulous’s appearance at the University of California, Berkeley last week will cause the anti-Trump protest movement to lose credibility, as Occupy Wall Street protests did in 2011.
And as other Kossacks expressed;
Stop Calling Black Bloc Anarchists "Protestors" & Lumping Them In With Non-Violent Democrats.
So let’s get out on the streets but let’s keep an eye on Black bloc types and let’s not let the tRumpers paint us with the same brush.
I welcome any feedback.