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What the National Guard is doing for New Year's Eve
If the world doesn't end at the turn of the millennium, the FBI warns that militia groups and religious nuts might try to help it along.
By Sam Stanton and Gary Delsohn
[12/10/99]

How victors split their spoils
Trent Lott was all set to funnel yet another military project to his home state of Mississippi until Arkansas Sen. Tim Hutchinson took him on.
By Suzi Parker
[12/09/99]

McCain vs. New York
The GOP presidential candidate says he'll sue if the state's byzantine laws keep him off the ballot.
By Andrea Bernstein
[12/09/99]

Lost in New Jersey
Garden State Republicans are in disarray following Gov. Christine Todd Whitman's decision three months ago to abandon the race for an open Senate seat.
By Victorino Matus
[12/08/99]

The seeds of Seattle
As anti-globalization protesters ask themselves, "Where do we go from here?" Seattle enters the lexicon of civil disobedience.
By Bruce Shapiro
[12/08/99]

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Even the nonviolent blockaders are comfortable with some level of interfering with property rights, disrupting traffic and preventing business as usual. It was the nonviolent blockade, after all, that forced the WTO to cancel its opening ceremonies on Nov. 30, and that prevented delegates from reaching the convention center.

For the most part, the blockaders share the rioters' belief that destroying property is not "violent." Their objection is a strategic one. Brooke Lehman, an activist with Reclaim the Streets/NYC who helped organize the Direct Action Network (DAN) blockade, expresses the views of many. "I personally am not against property destruction. I don't consider it a violent action," she says. "I consider it often a stupid action but not a violent one. It's usually not wise in a crowd situation because it endangers the public and makes things escalate."

But in making property destruction integral to their activism, the members of the "black bloc" are returning to the original meaning of direct action, as it was defined by the early 20th century Industrial Workers of the World. The witty and defiant Wobblies, as they are commonly known, hold a special fascination for young radicals today. In the days before the WTO protest, for example, groups of activists could be found singing "Hallelujah, I'm a Bum" and other Wobbly standards.

The Wobblies' basic approach was what they called "direct action at the point of production," by which they meant strikes, slowdowns and workplace sabotage, rather than indirect action via traditional trade unions or the political process.

But the mask-wearing Seattle anarchists are not acolytes of Zerzan, a Eugene anarchist who has made news because of his contacts with jailed Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski. The 56-year-old writer is a leading voice on "anarcho-primitivism," a philosophy that melds deep ecology, radical anti-capitalism and amateur anthropology to advocate the dismantling of civilization.

While primitivist ideas certainly have a following among the more bookish people in anarchist circles, their impact on activist strategies and visions has been indirect. At best, they've helped promote the idea that radicals must oppose the totality of contemporary human society: "Trees and animals are way more important than the human race. The human race is a greedy, destructive organism," explains one teenage boy who identifies himself as a member of the Eugene Brick Throwers Union.

A more important intellectual influence has been "Pacifism as Pathology," a recently reissued 1986 essay by Native American advocate Ward Churchill, and "Reflections on June 18," a compendium of essays on last summer's huge Reclaim the Streets action in London, which caused millions of dollars in property damage. In the week preceding the WTO protests, activists held numerous formal and informal discussions of the Churchill essay, focusing especially on its claim that pacifism is a privileged stance with little relevance to the lives of the most oppressed.

"Challenging the limitations of nonviolence is the most important thing we can do," declared one young woman at a discussion I attended. Another -- in utter seriousness -- argued that kidnapping need not be viewed as a violent act.

Most nonviolent protesters are resisting the pull toward property destruction, but many confess to some attraction. "There's a small part of me that is pretty excited to see people smashing the windows of Starbucks, to say, 'We don't want these things in our community anymore. We don't want McDonald's, we don't want Nike, we don't want Starbucks, and we're taking them out,'" says Nina Narelle, a young activist who handled mobile communications for the Direct Action Network. "But I'm pushing that part of myself down."
salon.com | Dec. 10, 1999

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