For what it's worth: This menacing post on Anarchist News does not change my attitude towards anything I've written about anarchists in Seattle, vandalism vs. violence, or Black Bloc tactics, even though it doesn't stop at threatening store windows, but threatens reporters.*

This is why the media must be assaulted, there is a very real chance that people will end up in jail because of the footage taken. However, many in Seattle did do a great job at scaring away some of the more timid reporters (props to all those who used their flag-bats for the right purpose). Several of the reporters were assaulted by those in the bloc, and a few of them even had to run away because they felt too unsafe. Reporters were paint bombed, struck with flag-bats, punched, kicked, and slapped. Over all I would say the this particular march was not very a peaceful atmosphere for reporters, despite what that guy over at the stranger said. We cannot shame them away. Yelling can be good and invigorating, but it will not do enough, we must treat them like the lap-dogs they are and physically remove from the area. Although this could be done without violence, it would probably take a lot longer, and let’s be honest they definitely deserve it.

I didn't see any reporters getting slapped or kicked or punched on May Day, though a cameraman for KING 5 was hit in the face with a wooden dowel. Again, I don't condone any of this stuff—even though some of you insist that I do merely by being curious about it. And I obviously don't condone using "flag-bats" to smash me or anybody else because they're covering a public march in a public place.

But the rhetorical shift from threat to property to threat to reporters doesn't change anything I've said so far: Vandalism is vandalism, violence is violence, and smashing a window is not the moral equivalent of smashing a person.

If you don't see the difference... well, I'm not sure how to explain it, whether you're a window smasher or an anti-window smasher. Except to say that people aren't property.

*And part of me reads this post suspiciously. As one of the commenters of the thread put it: "Wow this post sure sounds like it was written by cointelpro. I have never seen such outright calls for violence against media from anarchists." (Though I think s/he means "never since 1910.")

And it has been definitely shown that undercover police officers—and especially those targeting anarchists, environmental radicals, and other "domestic terrorists"—often try to ramp people up and get them to commit extreme crimes they normally wouldn't in order to get an arrest. But who knows?