Note that this is MSN who is reporting this.

Seattle - vandalism is rampant, as numerous buildings and vehicles have had their windows smashed out by individual Occupy protestors; tires have also reportedly been slashed. one of the people who had his car vandalized was a Canadian citizen, meaning that Occupy Seattle is now about to incur an International brow-beating

Oakland - protestors have been pounding on bank windows and going face-first with local police officials. This appears to be part of a larger effort to shut the entire city down.

So yeah - at least two chapters of the Occupy movement are now in the process of embarassing the larger organization.

Seattle Times reporters on the scene today say "May Day protests turned violent early Tuesday afternoon as a cluster of about 50 demonstrators dressed in black and carrying poles smashed windows and clashed with police in the downtown Seattle retail core."

seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews...

The Seattle Times reports this morning that there were "spasms of violence" punctuating the "mostly peaceful" protests downtown yesterday. Still, it was a bad show in Seattle yesterday, especially early on.

seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews...

Most of the violence was vandalism of the broken-windows type, directed mostly against financial institutions. Now, there's no question in my mind that NikeTown deserved to have its windows busted and its store trashed, but at the same time doing that is a very bad idea, because it causes the protesters to lose the one battle they have to win -- the battle of the mass media.

If a movement like #OWS is to overcome the tyranny of the corporate bottom line and dictatorship of money, it will have to use force, just as Gandhi's followers did, and just as the civil rights people did 20 and 30 years later in the US. Repressive regimes will only yield ground under the pressure of force, since they can't be persuaded and they have no concscience people can appeal to.

But the force must be applied with great restraint and self-control. If the insurgents resort to violence, then they lose the battle of the media, and then it's checkmate and lights out.

My advice to the 50 or so people who split off from the main demonstration yesterday to break stuff is to control your vessel. It may feel good to resort to violence, and of course Bank of America has it coming.

I'd be in favor of it too, if I thought it would do any good.

and this says it all