Anonymous calls out Black Bloc 'agent provocateurs'

KQED News

Anonymous, you may recall, is an extremely loose-knit group of computer hackers and activists that gained a good measure of local fame last summer when individuals, more or less self-affiliating with the movement, took several high-profile actions against BART. Those measures included hacking into the BART police union's web site and releasing the personal information of officers, and posting racy personal photos of then BART-spokesman Linton Johnson. The actions were taken in retaliation for BART's shutting off cellphone service as a means of disrupting a planned protest over the shooting death of Charles Hill, a homeless man, by BART police.

Below is the text of the message delivered in the Anonymous video -- in an electronically altered voice, naturally. Take it for whatever you think it's worth; anyone can post any video at any time, of course, so extrapolating a deeper meaning or trend can be dicey. Thus, the message here may or may not be interesting as another indication that various activist communities are split over the issue of the use of violence. (On Tuesday, Anonymous released the personal info of Oakland officials in an Occupy-related protest.)

Those tensions do seem to have come to the surface. Oakland Local's Susan Mernit, a longtime observer of Oakland's activist community, put it this way last week in an interview with KQED's Tara Siler:

(M)any people, because of the violence and because of the transient nature of some of the people who have gotten involved in Occupy Oakland, have taken steps to distance themselves from the movement.

And with [the latest incident, in which hundreds of protesters were arrested], especially the vandalism of city hall, a number of people who were involved through Saturday have published things on their Facebook page and published essays saying, 'that's it, I’m done.'