A-Infos (en) US, Pittsburgh anarchists Steel City Revolt! #3 - All Power to the … Stillers? By N.K.

On February 1, the Steelers won the Superbowl. You probably heard about. It was kind of a 
big deal. In long-standing Pittsburgh tradition, people all over city –particularly in 
Bloomfield, Oakland and the South Side - took to the streets. All types came out - 
yinzers, yuppies, college kids, little kids, and the majority of the SCR’s editorial 
staff. It was a lot of fun.

The comment I hear the most after events like this is: “Wow, if that was political, we 
could never have gotten away with any of that - the cops just stood there and watched!” To 
be fair, 34 people were arrested on charges ranging from failure to disperse, to attempted 
arson and assault on a police officer, but there did seem to be a distinct difference 
between the attitude of the police here and at, say, an anti-globalization demo. On 
Liberty Ave., people were drinking and smoking pot on the street, or having their pictures 
taken sitting on cop cars. Some laws no longer seemed to be in effect. Ambiguous 
boundaries had been set: burning things in the street was in, until back-up arrived, and 
dancing in the street was okay for awhile, but when one person started pounding on the 
side of a police van with all their might, a line had clearly been crossed.

My question: is a situation like the Steelers riot a liberated space, in which people can 
come together and collectively get away with things they never could (or would?) do 
otherwise, while generally getting down, or is it a tacitly sanctioned pressure-release 
valve for social frustration, where people are allowed a space by the authorities to wild 
out in, one night every few years, so that on every other night they won't? Is it an 
experience that leads to more action, a taste of freedom, or just an outlet that leads 
only to complacency? It is exciting to find out that the law applies only to the extent 
that circumstances allow, but what circumstances are we willing to create?

Moreover, what, if any, is its political utility? If it’s a sports riot, without any 
political messaging, does it make people see political riots as equally random and 
“pointless,” or give them sympathy for something they themselves may have participated in? 
If a chain store gets smashed up with no messaging, is one dead chain as good as another, 
or will other actions have their messages ignored because they seem like meaningless 
destruction as well?

It seems that every crowd has certain thresholds. At the beginning of the evening in 
Bloomfield, when there was a large group of rowdy people milling around and only three 
cops, no one did anything, because no one was doing anything. As soon as someone pushed 
some dumpsters into the street and lit a couch on fire, there was an immediate, 
discontinuous change. All of a sudden, people were ready and willing to get down to 
breaking some laws and having a dance party. But this situation, equally, had its own 
limitations. It did not continue on to bigger and better things; that next moment was 
never reached. No bricks were thrown, no windows smashed. For the most part, it seemed, 
the crowd stayed within the space the police were willing to give them. They took to the 
streets - they created this space - and at the beginning, no one could tell where it would 
end up. But the police managed to build boundaries around it, both spatially and 
strategically. Those limits were tested but never broken. Had they been, it seems like 
events could have gone far beyond officially approved social ventilation.

I suppose how you answer these questions depends on who you think the audience of a riot 
is. Is it for radicals to enjoy or experience, on a level of personal liberation? Or will 
anyone involved be set free by the experience of direct conflict with the systems which 
restrict their freedom? Is it for other people in the crowd, who are just there for 
sports, to try to politicize them or at least their actions? For the corporations whose 
property might be destroyed? For the people who will read about it in the paper or watch 
it on TV? Some of these positions seem more symbolic, some more direct; I think it is not 
so easy to draw strict distinctions between the two. Without having some kind of target in 
mind, I think it is impossible. Much of the disagreement about this kind of event stems 
from differing conceptions of who it is “for.” We can argue about who it should be for, 
but how useful it seems will largely depend on who its’ aimed at.
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://ainfos.ca/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/a-infos-en
Archive: http://ainfos.ca/en