Cut It Out: An Open Letter to Black Bloc Anarchists [View all]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/441-occupy/11562-cut-it-out-an-open-letter-to-black-bloc-anarchists

I like to compare those using Black Bloc tactics at a nonviolent protest to taking a six-year-old kid to the symphony. You'll likely find yourself constantly apologizing to those sitting in your row when the child makes fart jokes every time he hears the tympani. No matter what you do, how nice you are, how appreciative of the music or knowledgeable of the composer you are, the crowd will only remember you for having the annoying kid with you who ruined it for everybody.

The highlight of the historic NATO summit protests in Chicago last weekend was when Veterans for Peace, joined by their families, threw their war medals in the direction of McCormick Place where NATO generals were meeting to denounce the senseless violence they had committed to earn those medals. The veterans also delivered a flag to the mother of a soldier who committed suicide. An Afghan woman tearfully denounced the war that took the lives of her family members. The ceremony was powerful and emotionally gripping, and showed that those members of the military rejected being sent overseas to risk their lives so the 0.1% in the military-industrial complex could profit from wasteful contracts and resource exploitation. And it would have been the media's top story and the topic of everyone's conversations if you didn't have to act like a selfish bunch of assclowns.