Times Square Recruitment Station Damaged by Explosive Device

March 6, 2008 at 10:45 pm | Posted in Counter-recruitment, In-House Writing, Movement Commentary, Strategy and Praxis | 8 Comments

‘Propaganda of the deed,’ the lazy person’s direct action

By m(A)tt, The War Stops Here

The NYPD is alleging that a small bomb caused minor damage to the military recruiting center in Times Square, New York City this morning. The AP is reporting that police have video footage of a hooded bicyclist riding away from the scene, and that several congressional offices have recieved envelopes with photos and manifestos claiming responsibility.

I will not speculate about whether or not this was an act by actual antiwar activists, police provocateurs, or wingnuts. Some important things to keep in mind, however, include the fact that Times Square is not the kind of place where things such as this can just happen without the authorities having a whole lot more to go on than such a vague description; local police forces, and the NYPD in particular, are notorious for creating pretexts for repression against movements they don’t like. But regardless, this situation raises an important point about tactics and strategy, what is or is not defined as direct action, and what types are going to take us the farthest in a movement that can effectively bring the war to an end.

I personally have an inclusive definition of direct action. It doesn’t necessarily have to remedy a problem in the immediate sense, such as when workers might collectively decide to clock out after the amount of hours they’re willing to work. It’s a relative term, depending on what stage you might find yourself in; at the recent guerilla theater action at the University of Alabama by SDS and IVAW members, it was direct in the sense that it was an action that forced the campus to witness a sample of the day-to-day reality that is the occupation of Iraq. Compared to recent actions in DC or Olumpia, WA, it may seem tame; but in their own context, it was direct because it was an un-mistakable, direct message that could not be ignored. In such a conservative setting, oftentimes the most direct thing you can do is get your message across.

Assuming for a moment that the Times Square incident was carried out by activists, in a broad sense, it too may have been a form of direct action. Certainly it closed down the recruitment center, and cost the military a little cash. But, in the long-run, the important question to ask ourselves is this: how will this make us stronger? When you factor in the impending media campaign of criminalization, possibly widespread and indiscriminate repression of the movement at the hands of the NYPD and Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), and a sense of danger among newcomers to the movement, this “action,” is clearly enormously high risk, and at best, had a modest impact.

I’m also going to avoid the question of property destruction, because at the core of that particular issue is a concept known as violence. In all the ways that matter, violence is what we percieve to be violent, and not necessarily what our ideological definitions of it may be. While I may believe that violence is only something you can do to a living thing, and while I may be opposed to the very concept of property, in reality violence is something that exists in the eye of the beholder. Smashing a window is fairly violent, though clealy much less so than an explosive device. Gluing the locks of a building shut (like a recruitment center) would probably be considered more a nuisance than violent by most reasonable people, yet it has much the same physical effect of both the explosion and the act of smashing. As I alluded to above, the DC SDS kids have managed to shut down their local recruitment center simply by briefly occupying the space in a festive display of youth power that has excited anybody who has seen the video.

When we have so many other equally- or more-effective tactics at our disposal, it’s not hard to figure out whether or not the use of explosives should be a part of our strategy to end the war. Strategy is a very big concept, factoring in constituencies, messaging, alliance-building, process, and tactics. If our tactics preclude all the other crucial aspects of an effective, mass movement strategy, then it is clearly worse than useless. It displays an isolation from any sense of community (be it the neighborhood or the movement) when the best that someone can come up with is an easy, sporadic, and careless act such as this, with the ill-concieved notion that it could possibly move others to action.

I will conclude by stating that none of this, nor anything else anyone writes on the subject, should be used as a bludgeon against the suspects in this or any other similar incident. While I reject this form of action, under no circumstances should we sit idly by while others in common cause are given politically-motivated inflated sentences. When Manhattan College student David Segal was arrested after trying to set fire to a Bronx recrtuitment center, he faced up to 20 years in prison. Many of us at the time recognized that such a sentence would set a very bad precedent in the future for any of us who were accused of even small acts of vandalism while engaged in antiwar activity, and because of the support that was shown (and David’s socioeconomic privileges) he recieved 10-16 months. When we’re told to take a side, we can never side with the authorities. And whatever you do, whatever they tell you, DON’T TALK TO THE COPS WITHOUT TALKING TO A LAWYER FIRST. Don’t open the door, don’t respond to threats, and if they call you, hang up!