Check out the response from
http://gspotmagazine.blogspot.com/2007/05/is-anarchist-movement-dying.html"; target="_blank">G-Spot Magazine:
A recent article in the LA Times suggests that anarchy is a "so last season." In his coverage of the May Day demonstrations, reporter Paul Pringle suggests that the anarchist movement is dying:
"We haven't seen them in large numbers in L.A.," said the officer, who requested anonymity because he works in the Los Angeles Police Department's counter-terrorism bureau. Fallen-away anarchists agreed, saying the movement has withered in the area since 2000, when its homegrown ranks were swelled by out-of-town sympathizers drawn to the convention. Austin Delgadillo, who was part of the L.A. anarchist contingent back then, said he and others have since moved on to more-structured forms of advocacy. And many of the remaining L.A. anarchists have settled into laid-back tactics, Delgadillo said. "A lot of them are pacifist anarchists," he added.
And, of course, Pringle tries to blame anarchists for inciting police violence:
Police Chief William J. Bratton initially said that as many as 100 anarchists touched off Tuesday's clash by throwing rocks and bottles at officers. He later described them more generally as "the agitators or the anarchists as they are more commonly called."
Public support for anarchy may have decreased because the Long Beach Police Department has done a fairly good job of making people distrust one another. Similar to the FBI's infiltration of revolutionary groups during the days of COINTELPRO, activists have a hard time knowing who to trust when anyone could be an informant, especially newcomers.
I'll finish this post with a final quote from the Times' piece:
Dana Ward, a political psychology professor at Pitzer College and an anarchist, said Tuesday's turmoil does not sound like the work of those active in the Southern California movement. "There would be no advantage to starting trouble at a march dealing with immigration," said Ward, who maintains an archive on the history and theory of anarchism. "It would just bring bad publicity." He also said the police often use the anarchist label as a "propaganda tool." Ward placed the L.A. anarchist census at a few hundred to a couple of thousand, the vast majority of them devoted to nonviolence. Some belong to organizations such as Food Not Bombs and the Catholic Worker. L.A. anarchists of lore include writer Ricardo Flores Magon, an instigator of the 1910 Mexican Revolution. A Pitzer conference held last year for anarchist academics and activists attracted 150, Ward said.
There are lots of revolutionaries in the LA area, and we're not going anywhere. If anything, the LAPD has pushed more people towards anarchy because of their vicious tactics last week. I guess for that, we should say thank you.