In November of 1999 the Black Bloc tactic seemed new to many Americans partly because the actions and ideas of the autonomist movement in Europe were mostly blacked out of the American media and have been barely written about at all in English.
However, ignorance of the Black Bloc also stems from the fact that most Americans get news of domestic events from a corporate-controlled media that ignores any happenings that don’t fit their view and purposes, and which represents every event that takes place as singular spectacle disconnected from past and future, to be forgotten in a blur even when it is only a few months old. Radicals in the U.S. have never been totally ignorant of the actions and ideas of European autonomists, and the development of the punk rock subculture in the U.S. throughout the 1980s in many ways mirrored that of the autonomists.
By the beginning of the 1990’s anarchists and other radicals in the U.S. were masking up at marches and protests to build solidarity and create anonymity for militants. When the Gulf War was going one protest in the streets of Washington D.C. included a Black Bloc that smashed in the windows of the World Bank building.
That same year on Columbus Day in San Francisco a Black Bloc showed up to help show militant resistance to the continuing genocide of North American domination by Europeans. Personally, the largest Black Bloc that I’ve ever seen was at the Millions March For Mumia in Philadelphia in April of 1999. I’d say there were at least 500 dressed in Black, masked up, and carrying banners such as “Vegans For Mumia.”
Though there was no street fighting and no particularly noticeable property destruction, some kids did manage to get into a parking garage along the march route, climb to the roof and wave the black flag.
via ainfos.ca
Part A Hardline Oppression, Militant Resistance, And the Origins of the BLACK BLOCK
