May Day: A Day to Remember Working People, Not Blow Up Public Spaces

If you are an avid news-reader such as myself, you will have seen or heard about 5 men charged with plotting to blow up a bridge near Cleveland, OH, and a few of these men were self-described anarchists. While the circumstances surrounding this incident are murky, it is clear that these men put themselves in a situation where they conspired to blow up a public space. Now it is worth noting that while we may rush to condemn these men let us not forget that law enforcement and federal security agencies regularly use entrapment to get activists to commit crimes, a tactic that smells of COINTELPRO. This aside, if these men indeed plan to blow up a bridge they need to realize that not only is the act dangerous but it is also counterproductive. Usually when a direct action like this is executed it is done so because of symbolism, the act itself may not be very effective in disrupting the system or oppression but the act is symbolic of defiance of some sort. In this case, there seems to be little in the way of symbolism behind this planned attack: the bridge is not a corporate office of some oppressive company, and while the bombing may be symbolic of defiance of government why not blow up a government building? A bridge is a public utility that all people, rich and poor, utilize on a daily basis, and to disrupt this public utility is to make the lives of working people as well as rich people more difficult. Further, taxpayer funds from working people would pay to rebuild such a bridge, so the idea of this act somehow advancing "anarchism", a legitimate ideology that seeks to liberate humanity from the shackles of the state and capitalism, is ridiculous as anarchists (at least social, communist, or syndicalist anarchists) seek to ally themselves with working people and to blow up a public utility like this would alienate working people from our ideology.
I am not opposed to direct action per-se, on the contrary I find actions such as Black Bloc tactics and other forms of property destruction/disruption of capitalist entities to be legitimate within a certain context, but simply blowing up a bridge to show off the ability to destroy is not productive. Anarchism is more than just destroying the old order of capitalism, it is the creation of a new society and being sensitive to those who are oppressed by the current system, and blowing up public utilities shows neither sensitivity nor the capacity to create.