I am older than 22. I am ashamed of you. Reread my comment. I said nothing about fire, nothing about violence to take power. I said that protecting onesself from the inevitable lashes that power will dole out to those who resist, even symbolically, is warrented. Can you really be so dense that you construe wearing a gas mask a violent act? Do you decry bicyclers who wear helmets for their violence against those who would hit them with their cars? What the hell ground are you standing on? Who the motherfuck are you?

"You go up to the police with violence, you can expect violence."

Quit the movement. Seriously. You are worse than a fucking cop. Who went up to the police with violence? NO ONE. The violence was initiated by the police and acted upon the protesters ALL DAY. Who came to the protest with offensive weapons? The POLICE. Did the protesters ram motorcycles into crowds of unarmed police officers? I DON'T FUCKING THINK SO. You remind me of those assholes who blame rape victims for their victimhood because they were "asking for it." You make me sick.

PS: You tell the parents of the mutilated children in Iraq about the love and compassion you have for their child's murderers. You tell the millions of people starving to death in stinking hovels in third world countries while you throw away bruised apples that you want "peace" which denies them a full stomach just as much as war does. You tell the people of the internal US colonies (black/new afrikan, native american, Xicano) that they should wait to change the system from the inside, an inside that has been denied them for 500 years. You are dripping with white upper-class privelege, and people around you are starving to death. Wake up, liberal.

I may reek with "white upper-class privilege" but I am actually Latino and I can tell you that I am in no "colony." I can only speak from my experience which is that the anger that is so clearly dripping from every vitriolic word you write may be useful to mobilize you to action but thats about it. Don't delude yourself for a moment that by hating the cops, or hating Bush, or hating the government you are going to save any Iraqi babies. There is very little in the realm of progress, equality or justice that comes from that anger.

My experience has been that a lot of young people get mixed-up in these movements with personal grievances and project that onto the movement with the hopes of somehow vindiacting some early personal life injustice. I hate to tell, but, it doesn't work that way and it ain't gonna happen. On the contrary, you'll just end-up becoming a victimizer yourself in the process or eventually an extremely bitter person...

I'm not saying wait on anything. I'm just saying why don't your start with yourself first. You want Bush to stop being such an angry asshole, why not start with yourself first? You can't change him, but I guarantee you can change you...

No. I'm not after Bush because he's an angry asshole. I could give a shit whether he's angry, and I meet plenty of assholes just walking down the street who are totally harmless. Its the fact that Bush orders people to kill hundreds of thousands of people because he can that I am after him.

I have no early personal life injustice I am trying to vindicate. Your last two sentences are moronic. Bush orders people to kill hundreds of thousands, and I am supposed to redirect my vitriol against Bush towards myself, to make myself LESS angry? You, liberal, are the worst therapist I have ever heard of. My beef isn't with "anger," its with people who commit genocide.

Force and violence are two different things. Noncooperation, monkeywrenching, and the like, can be powerful forces without using violence. The police used force (blocking people) and violence (hitting people) (though I couldn't see the latter) to close off public space. The protesters east of 3rd Street used nonviolent noncooperation to defeat police violence: moving around the police lines, moving through gaps in the police lines, etc. It's a small example. Consider the Underground Railroad, union organizing, working around the Salt Tax, bus boycotts, etc. Those are larger examples.

this guys description is more accurate of the bloc this day. people in the bloc didn't move past police lines by using weapons, projectiles or fists etc..
just something to think about.. [how a group moves as a whole and stays together.]

I hadn't thought about this, but the usual descriptions of 'breaking through the police lines' and the like may obscure more than they reveal.

I guess we feel bolder when we set up these fences of words, and say, 'I am on the militant-active side; they are on the timid-passive side' but these barriers make it harder for other people to join us.

I usually write most of my accounts in the 1st person (singular or plural as the case may be). I wrote most of this account in the 3rd person because I wasn't up for more risky stuff, and I was busy checking the street signs at every turn (and stopping to scribble it down), so I was too busy reporting to really participate.