Environmentalists, anti-poverty activists, First Nations advocates, anarchists and assorted radicals marched through the city to the stadium where the ceremonies were about to begin. There they were held off by police on horseback for several hours.

The next day, hundreds more activists gathered in the downtown area to continue the protests. In the ensuing melee, the showcase windows at the local Hudson Bay Company’s department store were smashed in by several flying newspaper boxes.

Tourists and spectators looked on as anarchists stood mute in their “black bloc,” a defensive tactic meant to confuse police and mask (literally) the identities of those who engage in what they call “autonomous direct action” against the representations of “corporations, authorities and politicians” — usually, that means smashing windows.

We communists see this kind of “autonomous direct action” as meaningless.

While we understand the motivations for such actions, and will not join the chorus of condemnation coming from the capitalist media and its contrived “public opinion,” in no way does any of it actually bring us one step closer to ending the violence and terrorism that is used against poor and working people on a daily basis.

If anything, it actually allows those committing that violence to garner an undeserved level of sympathy from working people — especially those workers who will have to clean up the messes made by the anarchists during their “direct action.”

There is direct action and “direct action.” A more effective method of direct action during the Olympics would be to organize and mobilize some of the more than 2 million people, mostly poor and working class, displaced in the construction of the Olympic facilities, and very publicly move them into their “new” residences.

And the sight of several hundred or several thousand of these brothers and sisters with signs reading, “This used to be my home,” or, “Evicted for your entertainment,” might provide a more interesting headline for newspapers and television networks.

But this would also imply a more serious approach by those who seem to be more concerned about their street festivals, radical art collectives and community gardens than about the actual health and well-being of Vancouver’s poor and working people.

Broken glass, even in large quantities, is no substitute for serious organizing.