Molotov Cocktails at Demonstrations

Posted on March 23, 2003 in Appeals and Goodwill Citizenship Crosstalk War

Mighty Reason Man writes:

People who bring explosive devices to peace protests are not “Leftists.” Nor are they “Right-wingers.” They are “criminals.”

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Jeremy mentions that this has been happening in some places. Two kinds of “demonstrators” do this kind of thing: idiots who think that large congregations of angry people are a license for vandalism and worse, agent provocateurs.

Warpster93, a currently missing-in-action friend from #politics, told me that when peace activists saw such people during the Vietnam era demonstrations, they’d surround them with a mass of people and walk them over to the police to be arrested. Strangely, she says, they were rarely prosecuted.

While Jeremy tells our fellow activists “those who choose to act like grandstanding crazies during these protests are damaging the antiwar cause”, I think we shouldn’t automatically assume that the people who are doing these things are on our side. Cooperation with police when they are willing to cooperate with us, as he points out, isn’t such a bad thing. It makes a powerful point, in the case when the police are being dirtbags and beating demonstrators over the head, to do nothing in retaliation. Nonviolent civil disobedience isn’t for cowards. (Which is why I warned some months ago not to treat demonstrations like a party.)

As for the violent who appear among peace activists, the best thing for organizers to do is to instruct people to crowd around them and walk them over to the nearest police officer for arrest. Take photographs of the act if you can. Then press the District Attorney to prosecute. If this does not happen, then it is likely that you have exposed an agent provacateur. Get all the information you can and take it to the media and put it on the web. Name names.