The effect was that newcomers were socially encouraged to imitate rather than to innovate or be critical. No one was talking about strategy or the achievement of concrete political goals. Two years later I began recognizing this same dynamic endemic in the anarchist circles that I had joined following my time at the Catholic Worker. Taking the streets was good—as long as you didn’t have a permit! “Direct action” was better. And “fucking shit up”—an ambiguous phrase that implied property destruction, usually directed at a large corporation—was the pinnacle of resistance. People often seemed
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