Has Anyone Here Been Clubbed By The Police?

Spent an hour this afternoon wandering London, looking for a riot.  Which, yes, is somewhat sad - especially when you don't actually find a riot. Or much of a riot.  We watched as the protesters outside the Bank of England broke through the police line, but missed the excitement soon thereafter, when they ransacked a Royal Bank of Scotland branch.

Don't get me wrong - ransacking a bank sounds like fun, if not necessarily a concrete step towards the overthrow of global capitalism.

That said, my sympathies lie more with the police, partially because I find it difficult to generate much fellow-feeling for the protesters. Mostly because it seems too easy.  It seems like a bit of a vacation from everyday life.  Granted, a vacation which might involve getting arrested, but a vacation nonetheless.

I've been thinking, recently, about the entire Darfur debate with Michelle and others. And my mistake - one of my mistakes - was to make the incredibly arrogant assumption that only those affiliated with humanitarian agencies thought deeply about both the issues and the trade-offs involved.

I don't always agree with the Darfur activist movement, but I no longer question the time and effort that major organizations - like Save Darfur, the Genocide Intervention Network others - take to understand and analyze the situation, and then craft their messages and tactics accordingly.

And that's exactly what seemed missing in the London protests, or the little I saw; not a movement proposing alternatives, much less solutions, and not even inchoate anger - instead, something far less attractive, thousands and thousands of people taking the easy way out.

[Photo from the Guardian]