I'm voting "pro" even if I wouldn't actually do it myself because I'm a slacktivandal.

(From behind GuyFawkes Mask:) "Woo-hoo! We SMASHED CAPITALISM!" (pumping fist in the air)

Um, okay, and how, precisely, does this help the rest of us in the 99% achieve more equitable income? By preventing us from conspicuous consumption for a few days?

@2 it doesn't.

Tax cuts for the Rich only increases investment capital outflow from the US. Corporations have record profits and cash reserves, with P/E ratios at very low rates, yet refuse to increase labor pay or hire more workers.

No, but I did have my hopes up there for a minute that the protest was going to pit-stop at the chihuly exhibit, if for no other reason than it would have looked awesome from the new helicopter cameras.

The 8 idiots who voted "pro" should post their addresses so the vandals can go smash their windows and cars.

Regardless of my sympathies with the anti-1-percenters, the only message this shit sends is: More Fascism, Please!

Property damage is a great reminder that property only exists as an agreement between people. E.g., the people who own a store can only install huge glass windows because the people walking by agree not to break them.

In other words, the wealth of the rich entirely depends on the rest of the people not wanting to take that wealth away. (Whether that lack of desire comes from fear of retaliation or agreement that wealth belongs to the rich is of secondary importance.)

The people doing property damage are not part of the same people trying to "help the rest of us in the 99% achieve more equitable income? By preventing us from conspicuous consumption for a few days?". These are the people who have given that up entirely.

Also the people who did this aren't under the illusion that they are preventing anyone from any consumption for any amount of time. They are playing the game the state wants them to play, they are sinking to the state's level, please don't fall into the trap of thinking these are the same people wanting a peaceful revolution, these are the people we are trying to avoid gaining any influence because they are the one's that want the instability. You should really learn who your allies really are.

"There is an enormous moral distinction between smashing a bank window and smashing a person." --

Actually, in some schools of thought, there is not so much of a distinction. John Locke, for example, emphasizes that one's property is achieve through the application of one's labor, an extension of one's life. A thief, therefore, by taking your property, is threatening a part of your life, because if he would violate the product of your life, what's to stop him from violating your life itself?

Also, the use of property damage serves a primal and cultural symbolic function: "I did this to your property, that is a proxy for my doing it to you." It is a threat of bodily harm to the owner, so property stands in as a moral representation of people. In some disciplines, that is very much considered as a type of violence.

I am willing to buy that there is a specific legal term that was misused here, but morally, it is not so clear.

@7 Every time a window is broken, the members of the 1% pop open a bottle of champagne and celebrate. Because with each broken window, the message of financial corruption and inequality is lost. People like you are useful idiots who keep propping up the status quo. You helped quash the message of the WTO protests and you continue your idiotic work ruining the occupy movement,.

The vandalism they did when they converted the I. Magnin store to an Old Navy (now the Forever 21 store) was vandalism enough for me.

.....and don't get me started on the desecration that they call Nordstrom.

Thankfully in about 2 days the windows will be replaced and no one will give a shit about this anymore. Some dumb kids hyped up on their own sense of self importance broke some windows and caused trouble for a few minutes. It was violent and stupid and like most everything Occupy has done simply turns people off and makes them look ridiculous.

It's rather too bad as we could use a grownup movement for say higher taxes on the rich, but instead we have camping in parks, breaking windows, and an endless series of poorly attended marches, strikes, and the like.

Oh well.

You already know what I have to say, so I'm not even going to say it.

I want to know how exactly these businesses are attaching plywood to their stone and metal storefronts and making it look so neat and tidy!

When you resort to name calling and property destruction you've made it clear to the rest of the world you are unable to defend your position and have lost the argument. When you resort to name calling and property destruction when so many people are on your side you are just a fucking idiot.

Retail clothing stores are the epitome of global corporate evil?

And here I'd thought it would be something like Monsanto or Exxon or such.

Descent 101: "A protest is only as good as its worst members."

@10, interesting.

I find it very difficult to shed tears for poor, poor Niketown. Personally, I'm impressed by the restraint of the protestors, and I hope they have the courage to step it up a notch next time. Desperate times require desperate remedies.

Thisbe @8: "Property damage is a great reminder that property only exists as an agreement between people."

So what does that accomplish? Anarchists have made their philosophical point. Meanwhile the (purely hypothetical) fat cat who owns the store is not becoming more sympathetic to the have-nots, he's not thinking "I should be taxed at higher rates because my store window was broken," and he's not thinking "Those poor people." He is instead thinking "I would never do that. These people are savages." It's another brick in the wall between him and those unlike him.

Of course, that fat cat doesn't exist the way the anarchists would like to think (their economic understanding always seems to fall so far behind their political understanding). The owners of those stores are as much in the pensions of blue collar laborers as they are on Wall Street.

I am sad to read about the broken windows, if for no other reason than it gives fans of the 1% exactly what they needed:

1) Anti-Occupy propaganda.

2) Police overreaction.

3) Civil authorities more willing (than they already were) to repress public protest, displace it, deny permits, take photos, keep files on peaceful protesters.

4) Voluntary avoidance of legal, peaceful protests by the bulk of the 99% out of fear the above.

It couldn't have worked out more to script if the protests had been seeded with agents provocateurs.

Hmmm....

The Forever 21 building wasn't damaged though. They put the plywood on that one as a pre-emptive measure.

But hey, if property damage (or fear of it) means that I don't have to look at your shitty clothing...

@5 I hadn't voted yet, but I'm clicking pro just to get your goat.

Were other stores smashed or just the ones that appeal to the 14-22 crowd? Was Gameworks unscathed? Anthropologie?

@24 - And to make yourself look like a giant hypocrite, since you'd be running to the police crying if anyone busted any of your stuff.

@20 Nobody is asking you to shed tears. Everyone who voted "con" is just able to realize that property damage accomplishes nothing but a lot of embarrassment to our city.

Reminds me of being in Florida before a hurricane is about to hit. An eerie sight.

@14 "But we weren't even on your lawn, mister!"

All this accomplishes is higher insurance premiums for everyone.

@23, I was downtown post-Niketown smashing, and these shops were all still intact. I think the plywood was put up preemptively.

@23:

That was my thought as well: the uniform blankness of panel after panel of 4x8 plywood sheeting is a nice alternative to the shrieking "BUYMEBUYMEBUYME!" intensity that normally greets one at street-level.

As for what effect a few panes of shattered non-crystalline silica will or are supposed to have - my guess would be not any one way or the other. The 1%, for whom replacing them is, at most, inconsequential, aren't going to get their gold-plated nickers twisted by the actions of a handful of idealistic youngsters playing at being "amateur revolutionists"; while the hand-wringing liberals are simply falling all over themselves in their retreat from association; and the press, desperately in need of ANYTHING visually stimulating to throw into their allotted 3 minutes on the 6:00 p.m. news, will focus on this for no other reason than it LOOKS better on TV than some 45 year-old middle-class guy from Wallingford droning on about corporate excess and the need for "peaceful protest" - I mean seriously, which of those two would YOU rather watch?

Because, it's all just theatre: each actor plays their assigned role for the amusement or consternation or condemnation of the audience, while the backers watch with bemused smirks from the wings as they count their piles of cash from the till. The script changes when the audience gets bored, and new performers replace those who have grown too old or too jaded to keep up the charade, but the show goes on. And so long as we keep coming back and plunking down our coin, despite our grumblings and criticisms, the producers will continue to throw the doors open, because that's what it's really all about.

26: Oh, you're a mindreader? That's rich!

@30: That was my thought too, when I saw them preparing the boards. They had a great idea that I bet other businesses wish they had thought of too. I mean, they all *knew* that something was going to be going down on May Day. They've probably even had their windows smashed up in years previous.

It just makes me feel less bad for people who know that they can take precautions and choose not to.

They had to pay people to put up the OSB. Who are the Job Creators now, huh?

@14 - If only you always showed such restraint...

Re yesterday's Street Theatre/Black Bloc Play Date - I was glad to see that the assinine window-smashing was not followed up by any assinine looting. That's one thing that I will say.

And that's all I have to say about the 2012 Black Bloc Play Date.