Black Bloc Groups

The Black Bloc's group is an anarchist group that demonstrates in pretty destructive ways.

"As anarchists, we contend that property destruction is not a violent activity unless it destroys lives or causes pain in the process. By this definition, private property-- especially corporate private property-- is itself infinitely more violent than any action taken against it.

Quote found here

The group has been known (from what I hear) to get paid to cause trouble during democratic and/or republican functions like walking around breaking windows of buildings. They take money and are hired to do this by whoever will pay not really belonging to democratic or republican parties, but rather support a movement toward a world without authority. They wear black clothes and black masks. I was wondering if anyone has heard of these groups and what are your thoughts on their ideas of anarchism.

Here is my opinion (everyone is entitled to one). With all of the trouble that is going on in the world right now, the destructive measures they take are only drawing man power away from issues that are very pressing right now such as mainland security, drug trafficing, etc... It is anoying to me to see these things occuring when they could try to work with the system we have right now and try to rectify the issues they have in peaceful non-destructive ways within the established system.

[edit on 15-6-2004 by Kata]

Since searching google for "black bloc" would answer your question, I'm guessing you want discussion more than information. Here's some info:

www.infoshop.org...
www.ainfos.ca...

I used to be a self-declared anarchist before I realized that it wasn't going anywhere, and got arrested at one demonstration and beaten over the head with a truncheon at another. That summarizes the black bloc. They are (or were originally) spontaneous protesters who do property destruction, civil disobedience, and "fight" cops. I'm not sure how far back they go, but in Novermber 30, 1999 at the Seattle WTO Ministerial, they emerged (or seemed to) as a spontaneous reaction to supposedly heavy-handed policing, and did things like:

• Broke windows at Nike, Starbucks, and other corporations that they perceived as being anti-poor, anti-Third world.
  
• Flooded the streets to block WTO delegates from having meetings
  
• Chained themselves together, to buses, and to whatever to obstruct movement in the city
  
• Hit police with their placards, threw tear-gas cannisters back at police, edjournalists (who they accused of being lackeys for the mainstream media),...
  
• Got arrested to get media attention or to brag to their friends
  

They aren't even a group, in the sense that there was no membership, though there would be arguments over who could consider themselves to be part of the black bloc.
They have also violently attacked KKK meetings in the US and neo-nazi groups in Europe.
After September 11 I haven't heard very much about the Black Bloc.
I suspect that some of the anti-NWO types that frequent this board might sympathize with them, or might have been them.