It’s exhilarating to have power. Exhilarating, really. It makes sense, then, why women and men sign up to do repressive jobs, like policing—with a badge comes power, a tacit “okay” from the state and fawning public for any acts of violence you may commit. The police aren’t all bad: Many a burglary victim, for example, will be eternally grateful for police help. At the same time, however, for every heroic deed this power begets, there is a rape, a murder, and a coerced confession.

Power, or the perception thereof, is not limited to the badge. Participating in a “black bloc” likewise grants a sense of invincibility. The uniform is different—more black than blue—but some elements of the same code are present. Leave no one behind. Protect your people. Have no fear. Take no shit.

The 10 days I spent with #noNATO protesters in Chicago, more often than not as a participant, caused me to consider the nature of the interactions in the streets, and the thinking (or lack thereof) behind police and black bloc actions. This is my assessment.

By the end, though, conflict was a given. Sunday afternoon, after much ballyhooed kvetching about the bloc’s placement in the permitted march, the dreaded “clash between protesters and police” took place. At Cermak and Michigan, hundreds drew close to the tension, clad in many different colors, in blocs and not. Was the eventual charge East advisable? Was it led by agent provocateurs? I can’t and I won’t say. What I will say, though, is that watching CNN anchors ask on air about the beatings, “does anyone deserve that?”, I was reminded who my enemy is. The NATO cowards protected by Rahm’s Army, the ones shelling and murdering from afar—they are the problem, not 150 kids who are fed up with being fed shit and decide to defy authority to show it. No way in hell.

I know a kid that got the shit beat out of him just for calling police “Nazi stormtroopers.” I watched from five feet away as a CPD van purposefully ran down Jack Amico, then had its tires slashed. And I have seen my friends, my brothers and sisters, shell-shocked by the week, traumatized and shaken by the violence that should never have come to them.

We are a country founded on dissent, but many people on the left seem to forget that Thomas Paine did not have a monopoly on direct action. Far from it, in fact—I’m sure the Brits would have been just fine with proto-Americans reading Common Sense endlessly, so long as those people didn’t physically defy the colonial authority. The same goes for the current oppressors and The Socialist Worker.

I hate black blocs because they lack foresight, and that because of this they end up being used to discredit the movement I bleed for. I love them because they refuse to be repressed, they refuse to accept the status quo, and because they care deeply about their comrades, in the bloc or not. My relationship with the black bloc is one of highs and lows, fun and frustration. I believe we would be foolish to write it off. Dance for that Anarchy.