Comments

1
Proles is more a hat tip to 1984....
2
Is that Umpqua on ALberta?! They just can't get a break!!
3
THOSE ANARCHISTS REALLY SHOWED THE HUGE-MEGA-BANK WHO WAS BOSS! I'M SURE WALL STREET WILL SIT UP AND TAKE NOTICE NOW!
4
Wall Street doesn't know what an Umpqua Bank is.

Probably once a week, some story makes me glad I moved away from Alberta.
5
what neighborhood are you terrorizing now?
6
KGW has a much better account of why this happened: "The vandals e-mailed KGW blaming the bank for financing what they viewed as destructive logging practices despite casting itself as supporting green causes, and for being a part of the white gentrification of Alberta in recent years.

African-Americans have been pushed out of their historic neighborhoods and replaced with coffee shops, boutiques and condominiums, the anarchists said.

"We don't care that Umpqua Bank is small or local - we don't want a smaller, more local capitalism, we want a total destruction of the system that keeps us miserable," their statement read.

"We smashed out the windows in solidarity with everyone on the receiving end of the daily violence of the Portland Police, and with comrades who have been (dismissed) by the liberals/wannabe cops at Occupy Portland"

http://www.kgw.com/news/local/Anarchists-take-credit-for-Portland-bank-vandalism-133803078.html
7
Kari, thanks for the added info, I hadn't seen KGW's coverage.
8
'Cause white anarchists had no part whatsoever to play in the gentrification of Alberta.
9
"Prole" is a pretentious, freshman seminar thing to call yourself. It also suggests that you've never been anywhere near the actual proletariat.
10
When you forcibly suppress peoples' free speech rights in the name of "safety", then you can expect a backlash.
11
Prole is what the underclass is called in the George Orwell book, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Not being aware of this suggests you've never been anywhere near a freshman-level English class.
12
@#8: So according to what you're saying, anarchists could never move anywhere they could afford. If they move into low rents, that's helping in some way to gentrify a poor or devalued area. So are they supposed to move places with higher rents? People who adhere to anarchism tent not to have high-paying jobs. And we're hardly in a unique position as being among those who contribute to gentrification (Cue now some cliche about trustafarian anarchists or some such rubbish. Comments like that tend to come from people who don't really know many actual anarchists.)
No comment on the vandalism except that it seems like a weak and futile gesture.
13
They're back !

Dear Occupy Portland could you please set up camp somewhere again. I liked 40 days of no graffiti, beggars, tweekers, tourettes, and hippies in my neighborhood.
14
geyser, it is hypocritical to be raising the banner of 'gentrification' while being a white kid living in the area supposedly affected. But I think even this 'gentrification' argument is bullshit, as all these areas are always in a state of change.
I see posers more than anarchists anyway.
I like the line:
"I'm for the anarchy of the imagination".
15
frankieb, OK, and you know where these people live... how exactly?
16
As a black person who happens to live not far from that Umpqua branch, I have to laugh at the anarchists' reasoning of, "African-Americans have been pushed out of their historic neighborhoods and replaced with coffee shops, boutiques and condominiums..."

I love the use of "their neighborhoods." How quaint. Perhaps the "anarchists" should look into the reason blacks were living in the NE area in the first place. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King,_Portlan…



17
Anarchism: Ruining any Meaningful Advance of the Left Since 1867.

That's not even some lack luster liberal opinion. Communists and socialists that have actually accomplished something have long done their best to keep this kind of ineffective garbage from happening as it just ruins any sort of actual organization.

"This latest Fenian exploit [an act of terrorism] in Clerkenwell is a great folly. The London masses, who have shown much sympathy for Ireland, will be enraged by it and driven into the arms of the government party. One cannot expect the London proletarians to let themselves be blown up for the benefit of Fenian emissaries. Secret, melodramatic conspiracies of this kind are, in general, more or less doomed to failure."
-Marx, 1867 letter to Engels

"Here, then, is the immense difference between the Socialist Republicans and our friends the physical force men. The latter, by stifling all discussions of principles, earn the passive and fleeting commendation of the unthinking multitude; the former, by insisting upon a thorough understanding of their basic principles, do not so readily attract the multitude, but do attract and hold the more thoughtful amongst them. It is the difference betwixt a mob in revolt and an army in preparation. The mob who cheer a speaker referring to the hopes of a physical force movement would, in the very hour of apparent success, be utterly disorganised and divided...The army of class-conscious workers organising under the banner of the Socialist Republican Party, strong in their knowledge of economic truth and firmly grounded in their revolutionary principles, would remain entirely unaffected by any such manoeuvre and, knowing it would not change their position as a subject class, would still press forward, resolute and undivided, with their faces set towards their only hope of emancipation – the complete control by the working-class democracy of all the powers of National Government."
-James Connolly, 1899

"But the disarray introduced into the ranks of the working masses themselves by a terrorist attempt is much deeper. If it is enough to arm oneself with a pistol in order to achieve one’s goal, why the efforts of the class struggle? If a thimbleful of gunpowder and a little chunk of lead is enough to shoot the enemy through the neck, what need is there for a class organisation? If it makes sense to terrify highly placed personages with the roar of explosions, where is the need for the party? Why meetings, mass agitation and elections if one can so easily take aim at the ministerial bench from the gallery of parliament?

In our eyes, individual terror is inadmissible precisely because it belittles the role of the masses in their own consciousness, reconciles them to their powerlessness, and turns their eyes and hopes towards a great avenger and liberator who some day will come and accomplish his mission. The anarchist prophets of the ‘propaganda of the deed’ can argue all they want about the elevating and stimulating influence of terrorist acts on the masses. Theoretical considerations and political experience prove otherwise. The more ‘effective’ the terrorist acts, the greater their impact, the more they reduce the interest of the masses in self-organisation and self-education. But the smoke from the confusion clears away, the panic disappears, the successor of the murdered minister makes his appearance, life again settles into the old rut, the wheel of capitalist exploitation turns as before; only the police repression grows more savage and brazen. And as a result, in place of the kindled hopes and artificially aroused excitement comes disillusionment and apathy."
-Trotsky, 1911

"First, that party, which rejected Marxism, stubbornly refused (or, it might be more correct to say: was unable) to understand the need for a strictly objective appraisal of the class forces and their alignment, before taking any political action. Second, this party considered itself particularly "revolutionary", or "Left", because of its recognition of individual terrorism, assassination—something that we Marxists emphatically rejected."
-Lenin, 1920

18
@11 - George Orwell didn't invent the word "proletariat." Just because that book is the first time you ran across it doesn't mean that every use of it is a reference to 1984. Jesus.
19
@11 was referring to "prole," not proletariat. Even if he didn't coin this word, its use is almost entirely associated with the uneducated underclass in 1984. Jerk.
20
@12 - What do you think "prole" is short for? And no, its NOT "almost entirely associated with 1984." Try reading a few more books before you accuse anyone of failing Freshman English.
21
why does everyone here assume these "anarchists" are white?

also, many anarchists prescribe to the values of nonviolence and compassion. people who do dumb things like this proclaiming, 'smash the state' don't understand what anarchy is all about.

these vandals are not associated with occupy portland, so please don't assume that all protests, actions, etc. are one thing. maybe the ppd shouldn't all concentrate themselves downtown beating up peaceful protesters and they would be around when real crimes are taking place.

Please wait...

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