Based on their hatred of bank windows, I guessed this was some kind of Black Bloc group staging yet another horrifically dumb bank-window-smashing, passerby-scaring demonstration. But I wasn't there, so I can't say. Luckily, reader Austin Hackett works on Hawthorne and wrote in his account of the event wherein dozens of people marched down the street "leaving a wake of cigarette butts and litter."
When I heard the honking of blocked traffic and saw their hand painted 'A' signs I got a spark of excitement, which lasted about one second before they threw our sandwich board into the street, and then a rock through a window of the bank across. I saw later that the banks up on 39th fared worse.
It made me really upset; how many people were turned off leftist action tonight? How many will be in days to come, as news of this circulates? Remember all the whiny counter revolutionary shit-talking directed at 'occupy' last year? I was furious that I heard more of that than real information. I'm even more furious now, because I guess they were right: it really is just a bunch of dumb kids and drunk people who want to break things.
They've lost my sympathy, and I am so ashamed to call myself an anarchist that I think I'm going to just stop.
