Group Raising Funds to Repair Windows of Small Businesses in East Bay

This is seriously disgusting. You are just as bad as the peace police.

Damn, think of how many hungry mouths all that repair money could feed.

It would be much, much better giving it to homeless people. Or using it as a bail fund for your comrades in jail.

Frankly, giving money to businesses is fucking lame.

Every things calm now. Save your energy. You're going to need it for the next riot. Nothing to lose sleep over. Windows can be replaced. Worry about lives. Forget injured police and damaged property and worry about lives. Window smashers are not too bad. They steal the headlines and bring attention to a movement that would have otherwise been a blip like the rest. If anything window smashers are job creators, not money wasters. Any they're the only teeth of your movement. Show some respect and solidarity.

I don't lose sleep if a B of A or Citibank branch is boarded up for a couple of days . I don't think it accomplishs a damn thing but whatever .
But a Bike Co-op ? Please explain to me how smashing their windows advances the struggle against Institutional racism not to mention Capitalism ?
You know when any Small businesses are attacked many people are very suspicious of the actual motives of those who did it . For example in Fergurson a Black Family owned Barbecue place was burned to the ground .
NO ONE in the Black Community supports that . According to several progressive journalists on the ground opinions are divided over who did it . Many think it was Police provocteurs . others think it was KKK , maybe the same group that attacked the church that Michael Brown's family attends .
While i won't be contributing to the rebuilding fund for those small businesses I feel that this shit has to stop .
Regardless of the motives of whomever did it it's music to the ears of the Corporate media and the Police.

Relax says that people breaking windows is incidental and actually helps keep attention on the issue of the protest?

No, it doesn't. Case in point, Yahoo's coverage today:

"The crowds that came out to protest are not college students or residents so much as full-time demonstrators who protest anything — war, prison conditions and economic inequality — and sometimes use demonstrations as a pretext for violence and vandalism, just as they did during the Occupy Wall Street movement."

People are going to take to the streets in their own way when chaos breaks out. Some people love small business while with others it's more of a love/hate kind of thing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petite_bourgeoisie

Do I sympathize? Sure. But at the same time I understand how they help facilitate the capitalist hierarchy which I'm going to assume almost everyone here is out to destroy. There is a part of me that says protect the mom and pop and the other side that says fuck'em. What is stopping a small business from becoming a better capitalist should they get the opportunity to become big one day like all the other corporations many of us want to see fall down. Isn't it the small time that gave rise to the big time and so where does all this sympathy get us but more of the same old same old? I want to like these businesses but it's hard. They don't seem to care or give anything to a community. They just take as the system designed the business community to do. And anyone living in a capitalist society is forced to take or be taken from, slave or be enslaved and so looting is like taking back everything that the system took from us under the protection of law. People are still dying by police needlessly everyday and people are worried about property. That sentiment shouldn't even exist within the movement but it still does because many of us are on the fence as to what social class we belong to. It's not like these people had their house window broken and bunch of shit ransacked. Sure it's ugly but also inevitable under the social conditions created by capitalism. Revolution unfortunately is a drawn out, agonizing and messy process. In an ideal world, only the biggest oppressors get hit every time. But that's just not the reality. I really don't know how I feel about it. I'm back n forth which is all the more reason to kill capitalism so we don't have to deal with it anymore. ;)

This discussion is so 1999. If there's one thing to learn from the global unrest occurring within the past 10 years it's that people's actions are becoming uncontrollable and anyone who can't come to terms with this is simply wasting their time in attempting to ideologically oppose the inevitable. You know what would hurt a small business even more? Their Workers going on a wildcat strike. So maybe if that happens, you should support your local businesses and offer to work as a SCAB lol.

Yeah, sometimes when crowds get frisky windows get broken. Most of the time, and especially in the years since the Battle for Seattle, the targets have been chosen with some kind of political consciousness involved. McDonald's, Starbucks, The Gap, Niketown, any bank/ATM. But you know, sometimes people make mistakes, and target a window belonging to a business that isn't particularly or especially despicable (we can leave aside the issue of police infiltration and provocation for now). If these anti-police protests are a part of the larger class war, then the windows of small businesses without a track record of hyper-exploiting their workers can and should be written off as unfortunate tactical errors. For now. Cuz when the rubber meets the road and there is a movement ready to destroy all relations of capital and property, then even these small businesses will be destroyed. Any real anarchist knows this, and being sorry for the small business windows that were broken to the point of raising money or donating time to help repair them is an affront to any kind of radical politics. "Anarchists who Fix Windows" are as hideous as Anarchist who Vote. All you stupid kids are out of the club.