by m(A)tt
For me, the story begins back in November of 2003. Ill-prepared, exhausted, dehydrated and disoriented, I found myself among a group of black-clad radicals under the Miami sun. Recently disillusioned with the passivity of the antiwar movement, I traveled 2,000 miles to Miami to try my hand at what seemed like something more direct, and in theory, more effective than the permitted marches over the previous year. I was 18, fresh out of high school, and trying to figure things out before committing to college. The object of the protest, the Free Trade Area of the Americas, was almost incidental as far as I was concerned.
The action I joined in Miami had its exciting moments, but before long, we found ourselves boxed in, somewhere in Overtown, with cops on bicycles creating a perimeter around us. It was a long time ago, but I recall that as soon as we stopped moving, they swooped in and surrounded us, long enough for the phalanxes of riot cops to come to the scene. I remember thinking to myself, “Why didn’t we think of that?”
The bike cops rode in formation, moved quickly, and formed perimeters using their bikes as shields. Later on, when we finally negotiated dispersal, the bike cops once again swooped in when we had made our way into a large park. They glided to the inner part of the park, got off their bikes, formed a line, and proceeded to advance on us, holding their bikes in the air in front of themselves like a line of shields, forcing us out. Again, I was impressed with their tactics and use of a very simple object to assert themselves and control space (aided of course with the constant threat and use of all their evil little “less-lethal” weapons).
Over the course of the next few years, I participated in critical mass bike rides large and small, locally and in New York City. Critical mass (CM) is simply a large number of bicyclists, skaters, roller bladers, etc., who ride en masse in a spontaneously-flowing reclamation of the roads. CM originated out of the need for commuters using people-powered transportation to ride safely in numbers, and has since expanded from San Francisco to nearly every city on the face of the earth, at one time or another. For some it is political, for others it is not.
Time’s Up!, the direct action environmental group in NYC, emphasizing the use of bikes both tactically, and as an alternative to the dominant car culture, organized several ” Bike Blocs,” around various mass protests. These blocs differed little from what’s commonly known as a critical mass bike ride, the differences being that they were explicitly political, and offered a step-up in disruptiveness for people looking for a little more militancy the day of the protest. During the 2004 Republican National Convention, CM, Times-Up!, and cyclists in general were badly repressed with mass arrests, legally-dubious ticketing, and assault from cops on motor scooters leading to serious injuries; CM riders in NYC are still fighting that NYPD repression today.
I participated in as many of these things as I could manage. The RNC Bike Blocs were empowering, so long as we stuck together and didn’t allow the cops to flank us. The stated target by Time’s Up! was to simply protest the Bush administration’s environmental policies in a creative way; but for many of us, this was an opportunity to cause some effective disruption in a way that we felt comfortable with. But after the first one or two rides, the NYPD repression had become so bad that they began to simply occupy our meet-up locations, effectively forfeiting any further Blocs.
Since then, I have written briefly about tuning these tactics, specifically as a mobile cluster of affinity groups, for the purpose of shutting down the streets. In this society, particularly in urban centers, everything is quite crammed together; residences, business offices, government buildings, mass transit, industrial plants, and so on. The cities where power is centered are kept alive by the indefinite flow of commuters in and out of the vital organs of capitalist society. Massive highways are the arteries; a labyrinth of avenues make up the capillaries; and fresh blood strolls through the doorway of the cellular membrane.
Even on a good day, there are traffic jams, delays, and business gets off to a late start. In light of that fact, it’s not hard to see that these arteries and capillaries are points of vulnerability in capitalism’s circulatory system. To block a highway or a bridge at the right place and time might just set off a heart attack. But in the particular body we find ourselves in, the immune system is pretty solid. The (mostly) White blood cells are quick to jump on anything it sees as foreign or dangerous, and never hesitates to clear away obstructions to the normal flow. Maybe one way to counter-act such an over-powering force is to be quicker and smarter; to weave in and out and around the blood vessels, making our way to one vital area after another, stopping only long enough to cause havoc, and moving on before being overtaken.
Until the call out for the Anti-Capitalist Bike Bloc at the No War, No Warming day of action, I had no reason to believe that anyone was on the same wavelength as me. But this was exactly what I had been hoping for. To my euphoria, the call was for people to form affinity groups, make their equipment needs known to the local organizers, and meet up Monday morning in DuPont Circle in the hopes of forming a real, organized Bloc to support those doing civil disobedience at the Capitol. The idea was to distract the police from those locking-down at intersections, while creating some traffic havoc of our own. And the rhetorical icing on the cake, the call emphasized the need to abolish capitalism rather than simply, “going-green.” Bikers after my own heart…
I managed to pull together a couple of fellow Connecticut locals who had just joined SDS recently. As minors, the relatively low-risk of a bike action in DC was a good way for them to plug in and still take part in the day’s direct action. Unlike NYC, the DC cops have been legally rebuffed from doing mass arrests, and in most cities, the cops generally don’t come down on CM rides as long as they keep moving.
In this instance, about 30 of us managed to take both right lanes coming down Connecticut Avenue from DuPont Circle, with a battalion of cops on scooters and motorcycles and such in toe. Reaching Union Station, we split up between affinity groups (formal and informal) and headed for the next rendezvous spot. My affinity group got pretty turned around, in large part due to the fact that none of us knew DC that well. When we regrouped, we had largely lost the big police presence, and we headed for the Capitol area. It seemed like two contingents of us rode up, down and around Independence Avenue, effectively turning it into an empty street on a Monday morning at the heart of the empire. At some point we also took an intersection for several minutes, as we rode around in a circle, strongly asserting our occupation of that space and refusing many motorists passage.
The large SDS contingent soon took over the intersection at the top of the hill on Independence Ave, at which point we received the only relevant text message of the day. All the other messages were the same news repeated again and again, to the point where I only started checking them a half-dozen at a time. We joined them at the intersection, where we more symbolically occupied the space that the lock-down had created. We circled the intersection several times, with cops on foot weaving in between us as they prepared to arrest those sitting-in.
At one point, I strongly suspect, a collision occurred between a cop and a cyclist. Because the next thing I knew, someone was shouting, “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” and I turned around to see a cop and a man having a tug of war with a bike. Fortunately, it didn’t last long enough for the cops to amass on the poor guy, as he gave his handlebars one good tug, and he was off, riding like the wind down the long, steep hill on Independence Avenue. At that point, the order was given to close off the intersection, and most of the Bike Bloc dispersed. Cops on motorcycles formed a perimeter, and I casually rode around a police car parked on the side of the road, and met up with my affinity group on the other side of the line. To my knowledge no one in the Bike Bloc was arrested in this instance (or any other), though a number of people were arrested while standing on the sidewalk. Once on the outside of the intersection, I checked on our fleeing comrade to make sure that if his arrest was imminent, that the least I could do was witness it. But he was already at the bottom of that long-ass hill, with no cops in pursuit.
Part of the Bloc formed up once more; we rode around looking for another lock-down to support, but found none. A police helicopter, however, seemed to find us. An abandoned oil rig prop, which some protesters had planned to lock down with, was ominously laying on its side, staring at us from a traffic island. My affinity group had to stop for repairs, at which point we became separated from any Bike Bloc action for the rest of the day. After calling one of the Bike Bloc organizers, we found a gaggle of Bike Bloc’ers and a group of other protesters at the Capitol, including the SDS banner-holders. After being jostled around by a group of ornery cops that couldn’t decide if we had to disperse, or if weren’t allowed to cross the street, we headed over to the Capitol lawn for the end-of-action rally.
Overall, we did marginally fulfill our goals. We created some disruption, we supported those locking down, and we might have even distracted the cops long enough to buy some time for the SDS contingent to lock down, or at least delayed their arrests and prolonged the lock down a little bit. We were a small group of people, and we managed to cause a somewhat high amount of disruption, relative to our numbers.
First, let’s talk about the easy criticisms we can make. To no fault of the organizers, who specifically asked people to form them, there were very few affinity groups in the Bloc. As far as I could tell, 2-3 were present, with most of the Bloc composed of individuals with or without a buddy. As a result, we were pretty loose. My group of 3 had no locals in it, and at times we had to depend on the directions of people who were not a great deal more familiar with DC than ourselves, and what’s more, people who we had no idea if they were cops or not. I would not venture so far as to say that we were nothing more than a CM. We had an objective, and we had a minimal amount of cohesion; CM generally has neither. But as a result of our lack of organization, we spent a great deal of time wandering around looking for each other and for protesters on foot, when ideally we should have been quickly racing from one point of disruption to the next, splitting and re-forming constantly.
The other fairly obvious point was the lack of communication with the rest of the people on the ground. Not only was the flash mob text message system useless, but as far as I know there was no cell phone call-based network to plug into. But in all fairness, it seems as though there was very little for us to support after the SDS lockdown.
One thing local organizers of such a Bloc might consider doing in the future is to have trainings on different maneuvers and formations. Going back to Miami, forming perimeters might have been useful in this context when we took intersections of our own, rather than having an amorphous riding-in-circles, which allowed a small number of motor vehicles to squeeze through. Preferably we would need a greater number of cyclists to accomplish this; for example, we might form lines blocking off two sides of the intersection, while the majority of the Bloc remains in the middle on their bikes in order to keep moving in the event of the cops arriving on the scene. In future actions, we might benefit from using our bikes to actually hold our lines against cops moving in on us, particularly in instances similar to Georgetown on October 19th.
On a broader, strategic note, I’ll say this about the overall day’s actions. I think NWNW was a big step in the right direction. This is particularly meaningful, because I honestly believe it is the first step in the right direction; up ’til now, the antiwar movement has been going in any direction but the right one. The aim of shutting down the Capitol on a Monday morning is exactly what we need to be talking about, and doing. Connecting the antiwar and environmental movements is brilliant. Being inclusive and welcoming to youth organizers (SDS no less) is vital. Getting new people to talk about direct action, no less getting them to do direct action, is vital. The more experience we all have with that, the better off all our movements will be. And taking democracy within our movements seriously is something that will ensure that this is not something that will just go away. Democratic participation, having a real connection to the process, is what keeps people invested for the long haul.
I didn’t participate in the civil disobedience, and that was for very specific reasons. When I see my friends sitting down in the street, getting carried off by the police, I see passivity. And ultimately, I believe it is something that is somewhat contradictory to what we’re trying to achieve, or at least what I see as being our goals. What we need is a movement that is in the streets in free-flowing, organized and uncontrollable masses of pissed off people. When we are primarily stationary in acts of civil disobedience, I think we are depriving ourselves of our true potential. While I’m glad it happened, and I’m glad it will continue to happen, it has to be primarily a first step for people new to direct action. And I even accept it as something that should happen on days like that Monday (particularly given our relatively small numbers). All I am saying is that we need to make an effort at cultivating more types of actions that are different from that, like the Bike Bloc.
Throwing a Bike Wrench in the War Machine… The Anti-Capitalist Bike Bloc at No War, No Warming
February 14, 2008 at 2:20 am | In Movement Commentary, Reportbacks, Strategy and Praxis | Leave a Commentby m(A)tt
For me, the story begins back in November of 2003. Ill-prepared, exhausted, dehydrated and disoriented, I found myself among a group of black-clad radicals under the Miami sun. Recently disillusioned with the passivity of the antiwar movement, I traveled 2,000 miles to Miami to try my hand at what seemed like something more direct, and in theory, more effective than the permitted marches over the previous year. I was 18, fresh out of high school, and trying to figure things out before committing to college. The object of the protest, the Free Trade Area of the Americas, was almost incidental as far as I was concerned.
The action I joined in Miami had its exciting moments, but before long, we found ourselves boxed in, somewhere in Overtown, with cops on bicycles creating a perimeter around us. It was a long time ago, but I recall that as soon as we stopped moving, they swooped in and surrounded us, long enough for the phalanxes of riot cops to come to the scene. I remember thinking to myself, “Why didn’t we think of that?”
The bike cops rode in formation, moved quickly, and formed perimeters using their bikes as shields. Later on, when we finally negotiated dispersal, the bike cops once again swooped in when we had made our way into a large park. They glided to the inner part of the park, got off their bikes, formed a line, and proceeded to advance on us, holding their bikes in the air in front of themselves like a line of shields, forcing us out. Again, I was impressed with their tactics and use of a very simple object to assert themselves and control space (aided of course with the constant threat and use of all their evil little “less-lethal” weapons).
Over the course of the next few years, I participated in critical mass bike rides large and small, locally and in New York City. Critical mass (CM) is simply a large number of bicyclists, skaters, roller bladers, etc., who ride en masse in a spontaneously-flowing reclamation of the roads. CM originated out of the need for commuters using people-powered transportation to ride safely in numbers, and has since expanded from San Francisco to nearly every city on the face of the earth, at one time or another. For some it is political, for others it is not.
Time’s Up!, the direct action environmental group in NYC, emphasizing the use of bikes both tactically, and as an alternative to the dominant car culture, organized several ” Bike Blocs,” around various mass protests. These blocs differed little from what’s commonly known as a critical mass bike ride, the differences being that they were explicitly political, and offered a step-up in disruptiveness for people looking for a little more militancy the day of the protest. During the 2004 Republican National Convention, CM, Times-Up!, and cyclists in general were badly repressed with mass arrests, legally-dubious ticketing, and assault from cops on motor scooters leading to serious injuries; CM riders in NYC are still fighting that NYPD repression today.
I participated in as many of these things as I could manage. The RNC Bike Blocs were empowering, so long as we stuck together and didn’t allow the cops to flank us. The stated target by Time’s Up! was to simply protest the Bush administration’s environmental policies in a creative way; but for many of us, this was an opportunity to cause some effective disruption in a way that we felt comfortable with. But after the first one or two rides, the NYPD repression had become so bad that they began to simply occupy our meet-up locations, effectively forfeiting any further Blocs.
Since then, I have written briefly about tuning these tactics, specifically as a mobile cluster of affinity groups, for the purpose of shutting down the streets. In this society, particularly in urban centers, everything is quite crammed together; residences, business offices, government buildings, mass transit, industrial plants, and so on. The cities where power is centered are kept alive by the indefinite flow of commuters in and out of the vital organs of capitalist society. Massive highways are the arteries; a labyrinth of avenues make up the capillaries; and fresh blood strolls through the doorway of the cellular membrane.
Even on a good day, there are traffic jams, delays, and business gets off to a late start. In light of that fact, it’s not hard to see that these arteries and capillaries are points of vulnerability in capitalism’s circulatory system. To block a highway or a bridge at the right place and time might just set off a heart attack. But in the particular body we find ourselves in, the immune system is pretty solid. The (mostly) White blood cells are quick to jump on anything it sees as foreign or dangerous, and never hesitates to clear away obstructions to the normal flow. Maybe one way to counter-act such an over-powering force is to be quicker and smarter; to weave in and out and around the blood vessels, making our way to one vital area after another, stopping only long enough to cause havoc, and moving on before being overtaken.
Until the call out for the Anti-Capitalist Bike Bloc at the No War, No Warming day of action, I had no reason to believe that anyone was on the same wavelength as me. But this was exactly what I had been hoping for. To my euphoria, the call was for people to form affinity groups, make their equipment needs known to the local organizers, and meet up Monday morning in DuPont Circle in the hopes of forming a real, organized Bloc to support those doing civil disobedience at the Capitol. The idea was to distract the police from those locking-down at intersections, while creating some traffic havoc of our own. And the rhetorical icing on the cake, the call emphasized the need to abolish capitalism rather than simply, “going-green.” Bikers after my own heart…
I managed to pull together a couple of fellow Connecticut locals who had just joined SDS recently. As minors, the relatively low-risk of a bike action in DC was a good way for them to plug in and still take part in the day’s direct action. Unlike NYC, the DC cops have been legally rebuffed from doing mass arrests, and in most cities, the cops generally don’t come down on CM rides as long as they keep moving.
In this instance, about 30 of us managed to take both right lanes coming down Connecticut Avenue from DuPont Circle, with a battalion of cops on scooters and motorcycles and such in toe. Reaching Union Station, we split up between affinity groups (formal and informal) and headed for the next rendezvous spot. My affinity group got pretty turned around, in large part due to the fact that none of us knew DC that well. When we regrouped, we had largely lost the big police presence, and we headed for the Capitol area. It seemed like two contingents of us rode up, down and around Independence Avenue, effectively turning it into an empty street on a Monday morning at the heart of the empire. At some point we also took an intersection for several minutes, as we rode around in a circle, strongly asserting our occupation of that space and refusing many motorists passage.
The large SDS contingent soon took over the intersection at the top of the hill on Independence Ave, at which point we received the only relevant text message of the day. All the other messages were the same news repeated again and again, to the point where I only started checking them a half-dozen at a time. We joined them at the intersection, where we more symbolically occupied the space that the lock-down had created. We circled the intersection several times, with cops on foot weaving in between us as they prepared to arrest those sitting-in.
At one point, I strongly suspect, a collision occurred between a cop and a cyclist. Because the next thing I knew, someone was shouting, “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” and I turned around to see a cop and a man having a tug of war with a bike. Fortunately, it didn’t last long enough for the cops to amass on the poor guy, as he gave his handlebars one good tug, and he was off, riding like the wind down the long, steep hill on Independence Avenue. At that point, the order was given to close off the intersection, and most of the Bike Bloc dispersed. Cops on motorcycles formed a perimeter, and I casually rode around a police car parked on the side of the road, and met up with my affinity group on the other side of the line. To my knowledge no one in the Bike Bloc was arrested in this instance (or any other), though a number of people were arrested while standing on the sidewalk. Once on the outside of the intersection, I checked on our fleeing comrade to make sure that if his arrest was imminent, that the least I could do was witness it. But he was already at the bottom of that long-ass hill, with no cops in pursuit.
Part of the Bloc formed up once more; we rode around looking for another lock-down to support, but found none. A police helicopter, however, seemed to find us. An abandoned oil rig prop, which some protesters had planned to lock down with, was ominously laying on its side, staring at us from a traffic island. My affinity group had to stop for repairs, at which point we became separated from any Bike Bloc action for the rest of the day. After calling one of the Bike Bloc organizers, we found a gaggle of Bike Bloc’ers and a group of other protesters at the Capitol, including the SDS banner-holders. After being jostled around by a group of ornery cops that couldn’t decide if we had to disperse, or if weren’t allowed to cross the street, we headed over to the Capitol lawn for the end-of-action rally.
Overall, we did marginally fulfill our goals. We created some disruption, we supported those locking down, and we might have even distracted the cops long enough to buy some time for the SDS contingent to lock down, or at least delayed their arrests and prolonged the lock down a little bit. We were a small group of people, and we managed to cause a somewhat high amount of disruption, relative to our numbers.
First, let’s talk about the easy criticisms we can make. To no fault of the organizers, who specifically asked people to form them, there were very few affinity groups in the Bloc. As far as I could tell, 2-3 were present, with most of the Bloc composed of individuals with or without a buddy. As a result, we were pretty loose. My group of 3 had no locals in it, and at times we had to depend on the directions of people who were not a great deal more familiar with DC than ourselves, and what’s more, people who we had no idea if they were cops or not. I would not venture so far as to say that we were nothing more than a CM. We had an objective, and we had a minimal amount of cohesion; CM generally has neither. But as a result of our lack of organization, we spent a great deal of time wandering around looking for each other and for protesters on foot, when ideally we should have been quickly racing from one point of disruption to the next, splitting and re-forming constantly.
The other fairly obvious point was the lack of communication with the rest of the people on the ground. Not only was the flash mob text message system useless, but as far as I know there was no cell phone call-based network to plug into. But in all fairness, it seems as though there was very little for us to support after the SDS lockdown.
One thing local organizers of such a Bloc might consider doing in the future is to have trainings on different maneuvers and formations. Going back to Miami, forming perimeters might have been useful in this context when we took intersections of our own, rather than having an amorphous riding-in-circles, which allowed a small number of motor vehicles to squeeze through. Preferably we would need a greater number of cyclists to accomplish this; for example, we might form lines blocking off two sides of the intersection, while the majority of the Bloc remains in the middle on their bikes in order to keep moving in the event of the cops arriving on the scene. In future actions, we might benefit from using our bikes to actually hold our lines against cops moving in on us, particularly in instances similar to Georgetown on October 19th.
On a broader, strategic note, I’ll say this about the overall day’s actions. I think NWNW was a big step in the right direction. This is particularly meaningful, because I honestly believe it is the first step in the right direction; up ’til now, the antiwar movement has been going in any direction but the right one. The aim of shutting down the Capitol on a Monday morning is exactly what we need to be talking about, and doing. Connecting the antiwar and environmental movements is brilliant. Being inclusive and welcoming to youth organizers (SDS no less) is vital. Getting new people to talk about direct action, no less getting them to do direct action, is vital. The more experience we all have with that, the better off all our movements will be. And taking democracy within our movements seriously is something that will ensure that this is not something that will just go away. Democratic participation, having a real connection to the process, is what keeps people invested for the long haul.
I didn’t participate in the civil disobedience, and that was for very specific reasons. When I see my friends sitting down in the street, getting carried off by the police, I see passivity. And ultimately, I believe it is something that is somewhat contradictory to what we’re trying to achieve, or at least what I see as being our goals. What we need is a movement that is in the streets in free-flowing, organized and uncontrollable masses of pissed off people. When we are primarily stationary in acts of civil disobedience, I think we are depriving ourselves of our true potential. While I’m glad it happened, and I’m glad it will continue to happen, it has to be primarily a first step for people new to direct action. And I even accept it as something that should happen on days like that Monday (particularly given our relatively small numbers). All I am saying is that we need to make an effort at cultivating more types of actions that are different from that, like the Bike Bloc.