Letters to the Editor.

Ehrenreich Misses the Mark

Barbara Ehrenreich is way off the mark in her condemnation of the recent protests in Seattle and Washington, D.C. ("Anarkids and Hypocrites," June issue).

First, Ehrenreich calls promises of a nonviolent protest a case of "false advertising" because the protests were anything but.

Come on now! When people call for a nonviolent protest, they are calling for the protesters to be nonviolent. That the police may react with violence is clear, something Ehrenreich admits a few paragraphs later.

She then lambastes the "hypocrites" of the Direct Action Network (DAN) for trying to stop self-proclaimed "anarchist youth" from precipitating more violence by breaking storefronts in Seattle. To my knowledge, it was union folks and a few people from Global Exchange who tried to stop the "anarkids," not members of the DAN, most of whom were too busy shutting down the city.

Even so, what is hypocritical about trying to maintain peace at a protest in the face of the same "highly militarized" police Ehrenreich later condemns? Here's what happened: A few dozen people skipped out on democratic planning meetings and then showed up at a protest where 50,000 people insisted on no violence against persons or property and proceeded to smash windows. That was woefully undemocratic and hypocritical. And it put courageous nonviolent demonstrators in grave danger, while the noble "anarkids" fled.

Ehrenreich claims the rock-throwing did not "demonstrably `ruin' the Seattle protests in the eyes of the public. In fact, it probably doubled the media attention, with most press accounts carefully distinguishing between the 50,000 rock-less protesters and the twenty or so window-smashers."

How she deduces that from headlines of "Riot!" "Chaos!" and "Anarchy!" emblazoned over pictures of bonfires and overturned dumpsters is unclear. In any case, I'd rather get less media coverage that shows me being peaceful than have every paper in the U.S. claiming I'm a violent thug.

Ehrenreich closes her misguided essay with an attack on the DAN's protest tactics. Are you kidding? Far from "numbingly ritual," those creative, democratic, powerful, truly anarchist protest tactics empowered thousands of unarmed human beings to literally shut down a meeting of one of the world's most powerful financial institutions, despite a violent police response and the lack of any centralized leadership.

Let's celebrate and continue this wonderful new movement, rather than...