Monday, May 14, 2007

Violence at critical mass

Via Unfogged

Update: Story here. Police are saying the bikers threw their bikes under the car. I'm taking the word "motorist" out of the post title to be more evenhanded about the confrontation.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately, I've seen things like that happen. Usually when someone insists on driving through in Chicago, we try to stop blocking them and escort them out safely. Otherwise things just escalate and people get hurt.
Once in awhile some "u-lock justice " goes down, too. Which I would never advocate but it certainly gets the drivers attention and usually they stop then.
Its hard for a lot of drivers, and also the police, to wrap their brains around the fact that if you see a person in front of your car -or several people- and you keep moving you are then assaulting them with a deadly weapon.
It so boils my potatoes!

Anonymous said...

I must challenge those of you thinking you are "revolutionary"


This does not apply to those among you who believe that treating your fellow humans with compassion is a revolutionary act. It is.

I am addressing the stale mindset, that requires villains in order to promote causes. the mindset that requires pumped up emotions, rather than observation and action. the mindset that many in CM appear to have is very entitled, and strong evidence of a feeling of upper class superiority that they enforce on all around them.


This is an already failed part of leftist politics that destroyed a good deal of the left by alienating thousands here in the Bay Area who would have been glad to support good causes, had they not been so throughly insulted and villainized by over-zealous, and often violent and toxic people claiming to "represent" such causes.

Common sense seems to have been lost. I have seen this before.
Allow me to put forth examples of how this alone can often make the difference between a group of protesters, or activists, and a mob, or lynching party.


Black Panthers

Grey Panthers

SDS

Spartacus Youth League

Peace and freedom Party

these are all examples of ideas, that in their prime were legitimate progressive movements. then the egos took over. those more well-to-do began looking down on others that did not have the benefit of an upper class education. insults would fly, fights were started for things as trivial as manner of clothing, or what one's parents did for a living, or where someone came from.

This tore the left apart from within. COINTELPRO only finished off what the left had let die: respect for individuality. it died without a prayer, and along with any hope of passing down the lessons learned effectively to the next generation, which incidentally was the generation that then put the right in power.

I see so many similarities. the mob mind. the denials of responsibility. attempts to revise incidents. the use of symbols, children, and an "either you are with us or you are against us" mentality. (I do not have to point out the most recent famous source use of THAT thinly veiled threat)

If you are serious about this movement, you must police yourselves. that is the duty of any seriously leftist movement.

And my challenge:

I notice something strange: your routes are exceedingly in non black neighborhoods. in fact the routes are almost a sightseeing tour of the more wealthy, white populated areas, including malls, shopping area, and stores.

Why doesn't CM have routes that go through the Black and Latino neighborhoods?


You're not racist are you?

No?

Maybe there is another reason.
Maybe the reason is the "people" you claim to want to help and educate, are only the "people" from the same privileged backgrounds and of the same skin color as yourselves?

No?
Prove me wrong.

do a critical Mass in East Oakland on a weekend. like down International to 60th, and on to the Acorn

I am trying to be a little more respectful here than in my initial post,. I was exceedingly angered by the use of crying toddlers for a questionable photo op, by someone who moments before had ripped off a windshield wiper. I am well versed in the use of staged photo ops, by gifted liars, and this one wins the years best, in that category. it was a seriously shameful display if cruelty and hubris, and anyone defending or supporting it is not, in theory nor practice a "leftist" not "progressive"

It is tired, old, ego-driven dead politics that serve only what I am now coming to call the "dead left", for their outdated, psychologically unstable displays of hubris and toxicity.


Time for a change.

Piero Amadeo Infante