Thousands of Brazilian teachers and students continue to act as the vanguard against austerity measures by President Dilma Rousseff’s government. In reaction to the hollowing out of public services and rampant corruption, protesters have rallied, marched, confronted the police, shut down highways, and camped in city squares to put pressure on the government.
A common factor at some of these events, as Vancouver Sun’s Bradley Brooks pointed out, has been the presence of an apparent group called “black bloc.” People participating in a black bloc wear all black, including masks, and are often shown clashing with the police.
Black bloc is not an organized faction. Rather, its members are people using a particular tactic of protest — they are regular people, who probably spend most of their time in the calmer settings of activism and work. Black bloc, then, is not an underground organization, but a tool used to ensure anonymity when protesters know there will be conflict with the police.
Often, in light of media images of black bloc activists smashing windows and burning banks, the concept of anarchy is aroused. Unfortunately, anarchism as mere destruction reduces a proper analysis of what it, as a type of political thought, represents. More than being about destruction, anarchism is about establishing ideas and solutions that meet the needs of everyone involved, all with the equality that comes from a lack of central leadership.
Anarchism is about establishing ideas and solutions that meet the needs of everyone.
Anarchism’s anonymity was central to the Occupy movement, which the media found so difficult to cover precisely because its protesters did not have a unified voice conveyed through leaders. This type of organizing is called “direct democracy,” the cornerstone of anarchist politics. Direct democracy does not entail a complete lack of authority, but authority upon which everyone can agree.
Justifying anarchy’s ideals should not be that foreign, at least to western Canadian residents. Central to anarchist’s ideals is a strong distrust of party politics; this is something we need only to look to the provincial leaders of BC and Alberta to justify. BC’s Christy Clark and Alberta’s Alison Redford just agreed about building the Northern Gateway oil pipeline across the provinces, without the approval of the public — polls show that a majority of BC residents do not approve the project.
Rather than hope to elect a candidate that will better serve the public next time, anarchists simply acknowledge that, for decades now, politicians have failed to serve the interests of the public. Rather than wait for politicians to better people’s lives, let alone stop catastrophes like climate change, anarchists prefer to try to do it themselves. They organize to make collective decisions about actions to take — actions which sometimes lead to conflict with the police and governments.
Whether anarchists can organize to offer tangible alternatives to the current state of affairs remains to be seen. However, it is worth remembering that these efforts are driven by a sense of despair. Many people who have tried to do everything right, worked hard, gone to college, etc., are finding themselves evermore burdened with debt and poor job prospects. The current system is incredibly good at wasting human resources. In Canada, for example, most students expect to graduate with over $26,000 in debt, while the youth unemployment rate is almost double the national average.
Rather than condemning anarchists, we should take a moment to step back from the media images which portray them as inherently violent, and realize that behind the scenes is a complex network of people working in whatever way they can — as activists, volunteers, or teachers — to change the world for the better. These are people, like you and I, who struggle to be successful in a world where the odds are against them.
