*Sigh*

My, how i do get bored with this discussion. First point: who said anyone here was an advocate of non-violent civil disobedience? This especially includes Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau was, in fact, an ardent and vocal supporter of John Brown and his armed revolt against slave-holders at Harpers' Ferry. He may have advocated civil disobedience, at a time when the US government still cared about maintaining credibility, but he certainly held few qualms with violent struggle.

This action was not—and did not pretend to be—an act of civil disobedience. You've totally missed the point. Gandhi's strategies of non-violence could only be effective in the context of a movement which included both violent and non-violent resistance to Imperial Britain, none of which seemed to prevent Gandhi from forging alliances with Hitler, with Britain as their common enemy. Likewise with King (the necessity of a context of violent and non-violent resistance, not, obviously, fascist alliances).

The point of the article—which was, by the way, in no way a spoof—was that as policing and surveillance powers expand daily, we can no longer afford to gleefully send ourselves to jail and hope that this will be an effective strategy in the long run. Cassandra Brown had the sense to come to this realization, unlike a number of the rest of the anti-war movement, unfortunately. In case you haven't noticed, the present administration has no shame, and will surely not be brought down by moralistic platitudes or full jails (all the more reason to build more).

I am particularly annoyed with this "violence vs. non-violence" debate. What no one seems to recognize is that those who excercize the most extreme and systematic violence are generally those who maintain the power and authority to dictate the terms of what constitutes violence. Anything which threatens their power will necessarily be considered violent. Anti-sabotage laws written into state codes in the 10's and 20's—and reccently regaining currency—are cases in point. People who engage in property destruction (or "repurposing") are often put on the defensive by people calling them violent. They point out, as those who issued communiqués on this action did, that they do not physically injure any human beings in the process. It is not, therefor, to the people who do this, violent to engage in property destruction and vandalism.

Personally, i think this is a cop-out. Property destruction IS violent. It violates governments' and property owners' sense of safety and security in conducting their business. That's the point of doing it, in addition to the symbolic attack against, as the Seattle N30 Black Bloc Communiqué put it, "the thin veneer of legitimacy that surrounds pirvate property rights." But, property destruction lies somewhere on a continuum of violence, certainly quite a far cry from the persistent and systemic violence of those institutions targeted by the Black Bloc. Calling attacks against the inert buildings of the INS, the Chronicle, Citicorp, the British Consulate, Starbucks and Victoria's Secret violent (at least in so far as violence is construed as "bad") only reinforces the power of those institutions by reinforcing their authority to dictate the terms of struggle.

Finally, these people are not "merry pranksters". Each one of them is risking a felony. They know it, and they take it very seriously. Apparently a lot more seriously than you do, Jack. Get over the blind adherence to an ill-thought-out pacifist moralism and take on the struggle against war as if you might succeed. If you still prefer pacifism and non-violence, that's fine, but think it through and don't cower behind the language and the terms set by capital and state. We will never win on their terms.