During Copenhagen dichotomies of violence and non violence appeared, particularly for the reclaim power march although on other demos as well. The issues with this are as follows;

What do you define violence as?

Taking a definition of violence from an online dictionary[i] – Physical force exerted for the purpose of violating, damaging, or abusing. If we take this in the context of the reclaim power demo there were intentions to get into the building and in doing so it would have been necessary to damage fences, Does that make the protest violent or cause the protest to have violent intentions?

The Collins English dictionary definition of violence is as follows; 1. the exercise or an instance of physical force, usually effecting or intended to effect injuries, destruction, etc. While most people take this in its direct meaning for example for someone who calls themselves a pacifist i.e. one who does not physically attack any members of authority or damage property may eat meat or dairy products. The production of meat and dairy could be argued is pretty violent as it causes a lot of suffering to animals throughout the world and ultimately is for their destruction it also contributes to the destruction of the environment in numerous different ways.

How is this relevant to the demo being non violent?

* Were there people eating meat or dairy products on the demonstration or who in their everyday lives ate meat and dairy products?
* Was there anyone wearing leather?
* Did anyone on the demo drive to Copenhagen or drive in their everyday lives- after all the extraction of oil causes the deaths of millions and will cause the deaths of even more

Logically if the demo organisers had wanted to make a point and make the reclaim power march non violent they could have advertised in advance that they wanted only people who were vegan and only took public transport/rode a bike when they were at home to attend the demo. This was clearly not the case and the list of things that could be considered violent but weren’t prohibited on the reclaim power march is not meant to be an exhaustive list by any means. The narrow definition of violence and the desire to avoid it both in Copenhagen and in large parts of the activist community is concerning and perhaps is due to a desire to seem like “good activists” to the state and avoid being called “bad activists” and thus the state not listening to their pleading. While I do not wish to discuss this topic in depth if we look at Derrick Jensen’s writing this mentality is somewhat similar to that of victims of domestic violence[ii]. If we are going to stop our bodies minds and environment being abused by capitalism and the state we need a shift in mentality and fight back.

Having a look at the definition of violence employed on the march it would appear that it is attacking police officers and nothing else which I have heard when a few people did this they were strongly criticised and told to leave the demonstration as they were adopting black bloc tactics. The fact that this happened when protestors were trying to get into the Bella centre and disrupt proceedings almost feels like a form of keeping the state happy to try and get into the Bella centre so that when people did face police lines the police would be sympathetic and let them through. Obviously if you are known as the organiser of a violent demo and you encourage violence then you run the risk of facing state repression and nor am I saying that anyone should feel pressured into taking actions that may be considered violent. Instead of overruling consensus and an elite group of organisers making the decision beforehand as happened on reclaim power it should be left to the people who go on a demo to choose for themselves what to do. If we are to be able to successfully gain entrance to things like the Bella centre etc on our demos then we need to at the very least protect ourselves against batons tear gas etc. The police are doing a job the job which is to protect the state and capitalism, they are well trained to ignore pleading with demonstrators to their humanity- I have tried it and it doesn’t work. While it is true that some disruptions took place within the Bella centre they were relatively contained people talk about this being the movement from Seattle growing up but instead it was a failure. The police were able to contain most of the demonstrations and the summit continued with few problems.

The example given of the reclaim power march was not to criticise the organisers of the demo specifically but what it was is an example of the pointless dichotomies of violence and non violence in the climate movement. If we are to stop the problem of climate change then we cannot hope that pressurising the state and hoping for reform can deliver. Capitalism relies on constant growth which is not ecological- the only other thing that does this in nature is cancer. In the recession when the state prioritized the needs of capitalism over that of the people this is not an isolated example but rather a blatant example of that. Due to its very nature green capitalism is a misnomer and instead we need to get either an anarchist society or something very close to that. Obviously capitalism will not fall by itself but will try every means possible to survive including exploiting our weaknesses and splitting the movement. If we are to have a liveable planet in 500 or so years that our descendents can enjoy then we need to ditch the pointless dichotomies of violence and non violence which and accept what is called by some as violence as a diversity of tactics.
[i]  http://www.thefreedictionary.com/violence

[ii] Derrick Jensen Endgame part 1