The riots in Greece that began in late 2008 were the result of the murder of 15 year old Alexandros Grigoropoulos by police. An accompanying newspaper headline from the following week: 

Greece ‘runs out of tear gas’ during violent protests

Greece has issued an international appeal for more tear gas after supplies ran low because police fired so much of it during a week of violent protests across the country.

Check out this clip for more, or you might be interested in the blog of a Greek anarchist who lives in the Skaramaga squat.    

As the BBC says: they wear pink saris and go after corrupt officials and boorish men with sticks and axes.

The several hundred vigilante women of India’s northern Uttar Pradesh state’s Banda area proudly call themselves the “gulabi gang” (pink gang), striking fear in the hearts of wrongdoers and earning the grudging respect of officials.

The pink women of Banda shun political parties and NGOs because, in the words of their feisty leader, Sampat Pal Devi, “they are always looking for kickbacks when they offer to fund us”.

Two years after they gave themselves a name and an attire, the women in pink have thrashed men who have abandoned or beaten their wives and unearthed corruption in the distribution of grain to the poor.

They have also stormed a police station and attacked a policeman after they took in an untouchable man and refused to register a case.

Great video here, watch 8:30 to 9:00 and get inspired. More here. 

The majority of the public are averse to the possibility of a revolution that requires violent resistance. Propertyistheft explores the issue:   

Revolution is violent. I don’t want my existence and the people I love to be destroyed in civil war.

None of us want civil war. The more well-supported a revolution is, the less violent it tends to be. The most successful revolutions in history have all been marked by significant mutinies with the armed forces and sometimes the police refusing to fight or even joining the revolution, and such anti-militarist agitation has long been a part of anarcho-syndicalism. The importance of wide and deep support for revolution is why we organise now for something that can seem so far away. The anarcho-syndicalist revolution in Spain in 1936 followed 70 years of organisation by anarchists and other working class militants.

We also fight to assert our needs because it’s the only way to defend our collective living standards, but we don’t kid ourselves the ruling class will concede without a fight. When picket lines are attacked by the police or bosses’ thugs, we think it is only right that workers should defend themselves appropriately. Likewise in a revolutionary situation, we think workers should defend occupied workplaces and the homes they have seized from landlords and speculators.

We should also not forget how violent the status quo is. Capitalism can only exist because the organised violence of the state that protects and extends it. The most obvious examples are the constant, pointless wars around the world where rulers send the ruled to kill one other. The ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are only the latest example, not to mention the bloody, intractable central African wars which have claimed millions of lives. But you also have to consider the millions of preventable deaths from poverty, hunger and disease, as well as the daily low-level violence of being bossed around at work or suffering the enforced poverty of unemployment.

Nelson Mandela: Full story on the significance of 46664 here, and more mosaics here.

While its an exaggeration to say all social change requires violence, this is certainly a strong case stating that those attempting major change should be open to the full range of tactics. Well worth watching: take 10 minutes. 

Pacifying Resistance

http://endciv.com

Some of the most celebrated social justice victories of the 20th century are attributed to the great pacifists of our time, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. This constitutes a historical whitewash, as these “victories” were achieved when the state weighed its options and chose the lesser of two evils: the pacifists. In this segment Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith, Aric Mcbay, Harjap Grewal, Gord Hill and Peter Gelderlus deconstruct the Gandhi myth and show us why militant action plays an important role in movements of resistance.

(via cuntymint via berealisticdemandtheimpossible. You might also be interested in a previous post, or hit ‘full range of tactics’ in the tag cloud at the top of the page). 

Uruguay’s answer to Chomsky, Eduardo Galeano, nailed it when he said: 

Power, which practices and lives by injustice, sweats violence through every pore 

En route to liberating the town hall, a little Greek village wrung out the towel in late 2008:  

VIOLENCE is to work 40 years for peanuts and wondering if you will ever retire. 

VIOLENCE is state bonds, stolen pension funds, the stock market scam. 

VIOLENCE is the right of an employer to fire you any time he or she likes. 

VIOLENCE is unemployment, insecurity, 700 euros salary with or without social security. 

VIOLENCE is workplace “accidents” because bosses reduce their costs at the expense of their employees’ safety. 

VIOLENCE is taking psychotropic drugs and vitamins to cope with exhausting hours. 

VIOLENCE is to be an immigrant, to live in fear that you are likely to be deported any time and experiencing constant insecurity. 

VIOLENCE is to be an employee, housewife, and mother at the same time. 

VIOLENCE is to be groped at work and told: “Smile, we are not asking you for much, are we?”

(via introtoclasswar via sum1)

Ann Hansen and the Wimmins Fire Brigade were undeniably and unashamedly violent: they set fire to sex shops and cruise missile factories. But what’s more violent? The destruction of three sex shops, or a society that permits suburban stores to sell the produce of violent and forced exploitation of women? 

When people fight back, it’s considered violence. When the status quo is maintained, it’s called doing business (via bradicalmang). In sociology, most of it is called structural violence (via sum1). 

The Situationist Raul Vaneigam argued that everyday life is the ultimate measure of all things and the ground on which all revolutions must unfold. Its hard to judge the actions of Ann Hansen and other violent resisters as unwarranted given that every pore of our everyday life exudes violence. When will the public wake up?

(Image via rheaball via killsociety)

Ann Hansen was a member of a violent resistance group by the name of Direct Action. She was convicted of bombing a cruise missile factory and spent eight years in jail.

After non-violent resistance failed to stop distributors of violent bootleg pornography (Red Hot Video) setting up in suburban Canada, the Wimmin’s Fire Brigade started a firebombing campaign. This audio is Ann Hansen talking about the Wimmin’s Fire Brigade and their activities of late 1982 (and briefly about the bombing of the cruise missile manufacturer).

This is one of 29 tracks on Reflections on Armed Resistance. 

Wikileaks posted this Department of Homeland Security report on environmental and animal-rights militants. Its an interesting review and well worth a read if you’re interested in the ‘full range of tactics’. In it: 

• Some prime examples of militant groups, including the Animal Liberation Front, Earth Liberation Front and Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and their stated objectives.  
• A list of frequent targets. 
• A brief overview of tactics like sabotage, infiltration, hoaxes, blackmail, arson and even cyber attacks.     
• A long compilation of militant operations between 1984 and 2008. 
• Some of the personalities of the militant activist world.

Unsurprisingly, the Department quickly labels the activists as ‘ecoterrorists’. The use of violent resistance has always been controversial, but a passage within the report highlights why some activists turn militant: 

Perhaps the ALF exists because of complacency. After all, if peaceful dialogue worked, there would be nothing for the ALF to do; it would not have a job. So when a hundred years or more of writing polite letters fails to effect vital change, should we condemn those who are compelled to try something stronger or condemn those who refused to change?”

Recounted from an anonymous internet post made after an arson attack, another statement reads:

In pursuance of justice, freedom, and equal consideration for all innocent life across the board, segments of this global revolutionary movement are no longer limiting their revolutionary potential by adhering to a flawed, inconsistent “non-violent” ideology. While innocent life will never be harmed in any action we undertake, where it is necessary, we will no longer hesitate to pick up the gun to implement justice, and provide the needed protection for our planet that decades of legal battles, pleading, protest, and economic sabotage have failed so drastically to achieve.”

The report does also mention some further reading… Recommended online publications include Memories of Freedom and websites like The Final Nail. See page 25 for more. 

The use of violent resistance as a legitimate tool of social change appears to the mainstream as a polarised debate: You’re either a respectable member of society (anti-violence) or a fanatical / juvenile lunatic (pro-violence).

I read a great (little) book the other day that frames the use of violence as another option on a continuum, rather than a discrete, up-front choice as to whether its ‘acceptable’ or ‘unacceptable’ in the pursuit of social change. 

I was interested, but skeptical at first. I mean, I’m more familiar with social change as it applies to public health… and I can see the changes that have occurred in relation to smoking (for example) through the almost exclusive use of non-violent advocacy.

Gelderloos argument that violent resistance must be considered within the suite of tools to bring about social change is compelling. Major social change has traditionally only been achieved through the use of “the full range of tactics”. Civil rights in the US, the end of apartheid, the end of british rule in India: they’ve each had their own elements of violent resistance (each to be subjects for another post). More recent examples, like the genocide in the Balkans / Kosovo, highlight issues that were unlikely to ever be resolved through any amount of letter-writing, public petitioning, protests, research or even the intervention of the UN. 

While generally downplayed, violent resistance is sometimes condoned by the mainstream media (and sometimes romanticised) where a group is faced with armed oppression and an easily identified ‘evil’. The mainstream media’s support wanes rapidly once those simple conditions for acceptability are blurred, and those who support violence (like the recent G20 protesters adopting black bloc tactics) are quickly marginalised in the public eye. 

Of course, its in the interest of those in power to downplay the effectiveness or legitimacy of violent resistance when it threatens their interests. History has made a concerted effort to conceal the elements of violent resistance in successful social change and instead highlight the non-violent aspects of the campaigns almost exclusively (think Luther King and Gandhi).

Given that major social change is unlikely to occur in the absence of violent resistence, those in power will obviously go to great lengths to undermine the legitimacy of violent actions and encourage non-violence. As Gelderloos points out, the government and media’s embrace of non-violent resistance gives the illusion of a functioning democracy without the risk of any major changes.  

Those that pursue a simple ‘yes or no’ decision on the acceptability of violent resistance as part of the tools for social change fail to acknowledge that violence is a legitimate part of many campaigns facing the most oppressed groups of society. On this basis, Gelderloos’ central tenet is that the categorical exclusion of violent resistance is racist, statist, sexist, classist and actually limits society’s ability to effect social change.

There are situations that warrant the use of violent resistance, where its use is the only means to effectively bring about change. These situations tend to be faced by the non-white, the poverty-stricken, women and those without real political voice. The use of violent resistance rails against the sensibilities of the white middle-class, but only because we’re unaccustomed to using it to get what we want and halting its use prevents others from getting what they want.    

Violent resistance needs greater recognition as a legitimate tool for social change. Of course, that’s not to say its suitable all the time, but surely the debate needs to shift from ‘if’ to ‘when’ is it acceptable to use violent resistance.

For a far more rigorously researched piece, see here, or if you’d rather the case made for the inclusion of violent resistance without all the pain of actually reading it, take ten minutes on youtube.