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A black bloc (sometimes black block) is a tactic used by protesters who wear black clothing, ski masks, scarves, sunglasses, motorcycle helmets with padding, or other face-concealing and face-protecting items. Autonomia and the Origin of the Black Bloc. Retrieved 7 November 2008. The clothing is used to conceal wearers' identities from both the police and politically opposing organizations by making it difficult to distinguish between participants. It is also used to protect their faces and eyes from pepper spray, which is used by police during protests or civil unrest. The tactic also allows the group to appear as one large unified mass. Black bloc participants are often associated with anarchism, anarcho-communism, communism, libertarian socialism and proletarian internationalism. A variant of this type of protest is the Padded bloc, where following the Tute Bianche movement protesters wear padded clothing to protect against the police.
The tactic was developed in the 1980s in the European Autonomism's protests against squatter evictions, nuclear power, and restrictions on abortion, as well as other influences. Black blocs gained broader media attention outside Europe during the 1999 Seattle WTO protests, when a black bloc property damage of Gap, Starbucks, Old Navy, and other multinational retail locations in downtown Seattle.
On 1 May 1987, demonstrators in Berlin-Kreuzberg were confronted by West Berlin police. After this, thousands of violent rioters attacked the police with rocks, bottles and Molotov cocktails. The riots at the May Day in Kreuzberg became famous after the police had to completely pull out of the "SO 36" neighborhood in Kreuzberg for several hours, and rioters looted shops together with local criminals.
When Ronald Reagan came to Berlin in June 1987, he was met by around 50,000 demonstrators protesting against his Cold War policies. This included a black bloc of 3,000 people. In November 1987, Hafenstraße residents and thousands of other protesters fortified their squat, built barricades in the streets and defended themselves against the police for nearly 24 hours. After this the city authorities legalised the squatters residence.Katsiaficas, George. The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Social Movements And The Decolonization of Everyday Life. New Jersey: Humanities Press International, 1997, pp. 124–131.
Since the late 1980s, Berlin's Kreuzberg district has hosted May Day clashes between anarchists and police. When the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund met in Berlin in 1988, autonomous groups hosted an international gathering of anti-capitalist activists. Numbering around 80,000, the protesters greatly outnumbered the police. Officials tried to maintain control by banning all demonstrations and attacking public assemblies. Nevertheless, there were riots and upmarket shopping areas were destroyed.
In the years after the end of the Vietnam War, protest in the US came to assume more legalistic, orderly forms, and was increasingly dominated by the middle-class.Doug McAdam, et al. "There Will Be Fighting in the Streets: The Distorting Lens of Social Movement Theory", Mobilization: An International Journal 10(1): 1-18. This corresponded with the rise of a highly effective police strategy of crowd control called "negotiated management".McPhail, Clark, David Schweingruber and John McCarthy. 1998. "Policing Protest in the United States: 1960-1995" , pp. 49-69, in della Porta, Donatella and Herbert Reiter (eds), Policing Protest: The Control of Mass Demonstrations in Western Democracies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Many social scientists have noted the "institutionalization of movements" in this period.Doug McAdam, et al. "There Will Be Fighting in the Streets: The Distorting Lens of Social Movement Theory", Mobilization: An International Journal 10(1): 1-18. These currents largely constrained disruptive protest until 1999. In an unprecedented success for post-Vietnam era civil disobedience, the WTO Ministerial Conference opening ceremonies were shut down completely, host city Seattle declared a state of emergency for nearly a week, multilateral trade negotiations between the wealthy and developing nations collapsed, and all of this was done without fatalities. This occurred in the midst of mass rioting which had been set off by militant anarchists, some of them in a black bloc formation. "Day 2- November 30, 1999", WTO History Project, University of Washington. "Seattle Declares Civil Emergency", BBC News, 1 December 1999.John Vidal, "The real battle of Seattle", The Guardian, 5 December 1999.
The call for the Seattle protest had originally come from Peoples' Global Action (a network co-founded by the EZLN) which supported diversity of tactics and a highly flexible definition of nonviolence.Geov Parrish, "Beyond Gandhi", The Seattle Weekly, 17 November 1999. In the aftermath of the shutdown, however, various NGO spokespeople associated with Seattle DAN claimed that the riotous aspect of the WTO protests was counterproductive and undemocratic. They also asserted that it was only an insignificantly small group from Eugene, Oregon that engaged in property destruction. Medea Benjamin told The New York Times that "These anarchists should have been arrested",Alexander Cockburn and our readers, "WTO: Workers of the World United?" The Nation, 14 February 2000.Timothy Egan, "Black masks lead to pointed fingers in Seattle", The New York Times, 2 December 1999. while Lori Wallach of Public Citizen stated that she had instructed Teamsters to assault black bloc participants. "Lori's War" , Foreign Policy, Spring 2000, p. 49. Barbara Ehrenreich decried the NGO leaders as "hypocrites", and wrote that nonviolent activists ought to be "treating the young rock-throwers like sisters and brothers in the struggle." She also criticized the dominant nonviolent paradigm as "absurdly ritualized".Barbara Ehrenreich, "Anarkids and Hyprocrites", The Progressive, June 2000. The solution to Ehrenreich's impasse was the growing acceptance of black bloc tactics in the anti-globalization movement. "Hallmarks of People's Global Action (amended at the 3rd PGA conference at Cochamamba, 2001)".Cindy Milstein, "Something Did Start in Quebec City: North America's Revolutionary Anti-Capitalist Movement", Institute for Social Ecology, 13 June 2001.
During protests against the 2010 G20 summit in Toronto, a black bloc riot damaged a number of retail locations including an Urban Outfitters, American Apparel, Adidas Store, Starbucks and many banking establishments.
On the day of President Donald Trump's inauguration in 2017, black bloc groups were present among other protests in Washington, D.C., and other places. The groups engaged in vandalism, rioting, and violence. At least 217 were arrested and six police officers sustained minor injuries, and at least one other person was injured.
In February 2017, an event at the University of California, Berkeley by commentator Milo Yiannopoulos was cancelled by college administrators after protestors of a black bloc broke windows, shot fireworks, and caused a light fixture to catch fire. The cancellation of the event brought mainstream attention to anarchism and black bloc tactics.
In May 2021, Portland protesters in black bloc turned out at multiple rallies and marches that marked the one-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd. At one event the protesters wheeled a dumpster into the street and set its contents on fire, drawing police out. The rally was declared a riot by police.
Despite the denunciations by media, police, and even some activists, the black bloc tactic persisted in the movement. By October 2013, "The mask-wearers were welcomed by the protesters who wanted to wreak havoc during manifestations... Indeed, this sense of solidarity amidst the demonstrations, this shared manning of barricades, inspires a common determination to fight against the fear of repression." According to a report by two Brazilian leftists published in Al Jazeera, this coincided with a revival in the breadth of the street protests that had not been seen since its early days in June. Bruno Cava and Marcelo Castaneda "Black Bloc and Teachers: Education crisis explodes on Rio's streets". Al Jazeera, 23 October 2013 On 10 October, the Rio teachers' union (Sepe) officially declared support for the recent black bloc actions, stating that the bloc were "welcome" at their demonstrations. Postings on teacher Facebook groups praised bloc participants as "fearless". "Sindicato do professores declara oficialmente apoio aos black blocs". O Dios, 10 October 2013
A group of about 400 black bloc demonstrators took part in the 2011 London anti-cuts protest where they targeted various high end retail outlets; according to journalist Paul Mason this may have been the largest ever black bloc assembly in the UK. Mason says some of the participants were anarchists from Europe, others were British students who joined the demonstrations after participating in the 2010 UK student protests. A black bloc protested the opening of the universal exposition Expo 2015 in Milan.
Amongst hundreds of thousands of protesters protesting the G20 Summit in Hamburg Germany were thousands of black clad rioters who clashed with police in a 3-day standoff resulting in millions of euros in property damage. At least 500 protestors were injured and more than 200 were arrested.
There may be several blocs within a particular protest, with different aims and tactics.K, 2001, "being black block" in On Fire: the battle of Genoa and the anti-capitalist movement, p. 31, One Off Press. As an adhocracy group, blocs often share no universally common set of principles or beliefs apart from an adherence to—usually—leftist or autonomist values, although some anarchist groups have called for the Saint Paul Principles to be adapted as a framework in which diverse tactics can be deployed. A few radical right-wing groups, like some of the "autonomous nationalists" of Europe or the Australian so-called "National-Anarchists" have adopted "black bloc" tactics and dress. The political scientist Nicholas Apoifis, in his ethnography of anarchism in Athens, Greece, argues that black bloc action can constitute a form of prefigurative politics, due to its "flat and horizontal organisational structure, alongside its focus on solidarity."
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