Recipes for Disaster: an anarchist cookbook

"Nether participate in a bloc with patches, pins, or other identiffing marks on clothing; never leave hair, piercing, or tattoos exposed. This can defeat the entire purpose of masking up. Remember, you're not only obscuring your identity to protect against possible future prosecution, but also to make it impossible for police to target specif c individuals in your bloc during the action.

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Instructions

What is a bloc? Are there other kinds besides the black bloc?

You may have heard of the notorious black bloc, a venerable, if not doddering, anarchist tradition in which a mass of direct action enthusiasts gather, all wearing black clothing and masks, and engage in some form of illegal activity. This tactic has won some famous victories in the past two decades, and failed utterly more times than anyone can count, too. The specific cultural characteristics that are associated with the black bloc tactic today can make it easy to overlook the long history of the bloc tactic and the wide variety of applications for which it can be used. The Boston Tea Party, for example, was a perfect example of a bloc in action: the participants organized secretiy, wore matching disguises (though their choice to costume themselves as "Indians" wasn't exactly politically correct), and engaged in a mass act of provocative property destruction; presumably their strategies for communication and mutual defense weren't much different from those used by the famous black blocs that, a couple hundred years later, attacked similarly noxious coffee corporations in Seattle. Those who practice direct action would do well to keep in mind the wide range of scenarios in which a version of the bloc approach can be useful.

What is a bloc good for?

Blocs, Black and Otherwise 128

Acting in a bloc is especially useful when some of the participants in the action expect they may break laws. When everyone in a group looks the same, it is difficult for the police or others to tell who did what. Most criminal activities are better carried off in a less obvious manner, of course, but there are situations in which it is necessary to step outside the limits in public. The bloc tactic as it's known these days is best for conditions in which the action called for occupies the gray area between overt and covert, and as such it must be applied carefully: if you participate with a bloc in an entirely legal action, you may make a police target of yourself unnecessarily, or needlessly frighten bystanders; on the other hand, if you intend to engage in serious organized criminal activity, you might be better off doing so outside the traditional bloc format, in a totally closed group, with

the element of surprise and so on. It's not an accident that people don't liberate animals from fur farms in black blocs.

One of the positive sides of public bloc activity is that, unlike entirely underground activity, it can create open-ended situations, in which the actions of a few can open the floodgates for others to join in. One of the many objectionable qualities of clandestine terrorism is that, at best, it is still a spectator sport; a bloc, on the other hand, can be a participatory and contagious radicalizing experience. The most obvious way to facilitate this is to organize an open or semi-open bloc.

In an open bloc, a general call goes out to all interested to gather and act in a bloc; open meetings are held to discuss goals, strategies, and so on. The benefits of such an approach are that more people can be involved; the obvious drawback is that security is so compromised that the possibilities for action are severely limited. In a semi-open bloc, the organizing takes place in secret, between people who know and trust each other, but when the bloc itself comes together, others in bloc attire are welcomed to it; in the past few years of black bloc activities, this has been the most frequent format. In such blocs, it is still necessary that the participants be prepared to deal vidth infiltration, but they at least have the benefit of secure planning and internal structures.

In an entirely closed bloc, the participants prepare in secret and do not welcome the participation or company of any outsiders during the action. Even when such a bloc is called for, it can still be valuable to act openly, as a bloc, rather than covertly: the public nature of the action may send an important message, others outside the bloc may be inspired to engage in similar actions of their own, and the crowd cover itself might enable an escape that would actually be more difficult for those opting for a clandestine approach.