To what extent are certain strategies used in protest violent?
The question of the line between violence and nonviolence is an ongoing debate within peace movements. My own research on the Catholic Left-inspired Plowshares movement is an example of a group that really pushes the boundaries by destroying and damaging military equipment. The debate over property destruction has not been settled within the peace movement.
But what I respect about the Catholic Left is that in the 1960s they were ones who began to say that sometimes protest is not enough. There had been hundreds of protests against the Vietnam War but the government didn’t change its policy or position. So the Catholic Left started to call on people to interfere with the government’s capacity to wage war. These activists asked: “Would it be violent if people dismantled the gas chambers in Auschwitz?” Some activists were still opposed to property destruction as a resistance tactic, but the Catholic Left activists argued that they were saving lives by destroying draft cards or by attempting to disarm weapons of mass destruction.
Even traditional Gandhian tactics can be violent if they are used in a coercive manner. The Gandhian concept of satyagraha emphasizes that we ought to search for the good in our opponents; we ought to persuade them as we implement nonviolent acts of noncooperation. But if a nonviolent tactic is carried out in a coercive way, or if it is done with the view that the opponent should be humiliated or degraded, then it becomes a violent form of resistance. It is something that I think activists have to be constantly reflecting upon. The division between violent and nonviolent tactics isn’t always as clear-cut as we think. In my opinion, it has a lot to do with the spirit in which a campaign is conducted.
It’s definitely worth reading more at Religion Dispatches. And don’t miss a review of the book at Times Higher Education.
In Syracuse, more than 150 picketers protested Sunday afternoon at the New York Air National Guard base against the use of unmanned drones in Iraq and Afghanistan, which will be flown from the base starting next fall. (Mike Greenlar / The Post Standard)
In Finland, 750 Finnair pilots went on strike on Monday after weekend negotiations over a labor contract between the airline and the pilots’ union failed. The industrial action on first day grounded at least 215 international and domestic flights, which would have carried about 15,000 people to destinations.
The prominent Western Saharan human rights activist Aminatou Haidar, dubbed the “Saharan Gandhi,” has launched a hunger strike at a Spanish airport, accusing Morocco and Spain of preventing her from entering Western Sahara.
Eighty-seven Tamil political prisoners in Sri Lanka began a hunger strike protest from Saturday morning demanding that their lives be better protected following an attack on fellow Tamil prisoners Friday by Sinhalese prisoners in the presence of prison officials.
Salon has an interesting historical piece about Johnny Cash and his battle with the music industry over a song called “The Ballad of Ira Hayes.” It seems radio DJ’s didn’t want to play (nor did Columbia records want to promote) a song that detailed the historical abuse of Native Americans like Hayes, who was used and abused by his government as one of the Iwo-Jima flag raisers. Anyone who’s seen Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers knows what happened to Hayes: the unwanted fame helped fuel a depression that led to alcoholism and his eventual death.
Although the song was originally written by Peter La Farge, a folkie who frequented the same Greenwich Village scene as Bob Dylan and others, Cash was the first to popularize it with the release of his 1964 album Bitter Tears, an album entirely dedicated to the plight of Native Americans. While Salon writer Antonio D’Ambrosio brings further deserved attention to a man who devoted much of his life–oftentimes at the expense of his career–to defending the rights of the marginalized, the real fascinating part of this article is its brief history of Native American activism. Although concurrent with the Civil Rights Movement, it was something entirely different… Read the rest of this article »
Mother Jones just posted an interview I did with Tim DeChristopher, the University of Utah student who last year interrupted a federal auction of oil and gas leases by pretending to be a bidder. Some interesting developments have occurred in his life over the last year, not the least of which was being indicted by a federal grand jury. With his trial nearing, I spoke to him about his plans to put global warming on trial, being influenced by The Yes Men, and his thoughts on climate activism. Click here to read that interview.
A few questions from our very long conversation, however, had to be cut. Since they mainly dealt with his passion for nonviolence and his new organization Peaceful Uprising, which aims to train people in nonviolent direct action, I thought they’d be perfect for posting on this blog. What follows, then, are the deleted scenes, so to speak, of my interview with Tim: Read the rest of this article »
The International Day of Climate Action on October 24th was so eventful that new and interesting photos from the more than 5,200 actions that took place around the world keep popping up. This one is from the flood-plagued shores of Borth, Mid Wales. According to Britain’s conservative tabloid The Daily Express, activists staged a photo of “domestic bliss” that gets “shattered by an uninvited guest – the Irish Sea.”
Hundreds of locals – who claim half their village could vanish by the end of this century – helped stage the event in which a living room, complete with walls and furniture, slowly disappeared as the tide came in.
Event organiser John Howarth said: “Much of Borth is very close to sea level and already suffers flood damage in high tides and stormy conditions.
“Unchecked climate change could be disastrous in our lifetimes.”
“America’s Toughest Sheriff” Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona, whose cruelty we profiled in July, will be making fewer arrests on behalf of America.
Last month, the US Department of Homeland Security restricted Arpaio’s 287(g) contract. Named for section 287(g) of the 1996 Immigration and Nationality Act, the 287(g) program authorizes police officers of participating agencies to act as immigration enforcement agents. Under the new contract, Arpaio’s deputies may no longer make immigration arrests in the field, only among inmates in his jails.
Nevertheless, Arpaio appears poised to continue harassing communities of color with his notorious, racially profiling “sweeps.” That’s not surprising given previous investigations showing Arpaio would rather use limited public safety funds to round up taxpaying people instead of promptly replying to 911 calls.
In restricting Arpaio’s ability to make immigration arrests, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) apparently responded to numerous complaints, including a high-profile letter to President Obama criticizing the entire 287(g) program. In a feat of organizational prowess, the letter was signed by over 500 advocacy groups organized by the National Immigration Law Center.
But stripping Arpaio of his full contract does not go far enough. Rampant abuses of police power across the U.S. (such as in Cobb County, Georgia, as the ACLU documented) indicate that Arpaio was not just a bad apple, but that 287(g) is a racist and counterproductive program that should be terminated altogether.
School bus drivers in Mt. Clemens, Michigan, 25 miles northeast of Detroit, carried out a one-and-a-half day strike Monday and Tuesday to secure promised wage increases from the private transportation company which services the district.
In case you aren’t convinced that the Tea Party Movement gets disproportionately more media coverage than protests waged by those on the Left, I submit the following as evidence:
Hundreds of African Americans marched on the White House Saturday to protest the policies of President Obama in what the AFP called, “the first public demonstration by African Americans against the Obama administration since his historic inauguration in January.”
It seems the French news agency was the first to cover it. But, as best I can tell, no mainstream American newspaper or news show has followed their lead. Most telling, perhaps, is that Iran’s PressTV and Tehran Times seem to be two of the more prominent news links.
Why is this protest being ignored by American media? I would wager it has something to do with their message. Protest organizer Omali Yeshitela, a civil rights leader with the Black Is Back coalition, summed it up best by saying, “We recognize that Barack Hussein Obama is white power in black face.”
According to the AFP, the protesters also “slammed the president for continuing what they described as Washington’s ‘imperialist’ agenda around the world” and demanded that he “bring US troops home.”
So, I guess the lesson here is: if you ever want to do something that’s highly visible and involves large numbers of people without drawing media attention to yourself, make sure to mention these issues.
The New York Review of Books has been much concerned with prison issues lately, thank goodness, and their most recent piece is David Cole’s “Can Our Shameful Prisons Be Reformed?” I commend to you the whole of it, but for the purpose of this short post, I’d just like to point out one section. Cole is thinking through the proposals for reform made by Paul Butler in Let’s Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice (published by the good folks at The New Press). Most of them he finds sensible: decriminalizing possession of small amounts of drugs, stay-in-school incentives, lead paint removal, and sentence reduction for nonviolent offenders. But there is one proposal that Cole finds troublesome:
Butler calls on juries, for example, to engage in “nullification” of the criminal law to protest mass imprisonment. Because juries need not give reasons for their decisions, they have the discretion to acquit even where the state has proved criminal behavior beyond a reasonable doubt. Butler proposes that jurors consciously adopt the tactic, as a kind of civil disobedience, to resist mass incarceration—but only in cases involving victimless crimes.
This proposal has many problems. First, jurors act episodically and in secret. Thus, unlike civil disobedience, acts of nullification are unlikely to have a galvanizing effect. Second, to engage in a conscious strategy of nullification will often require dissembling, itself criminal behavior. If a potential juror admits that she will not vote to convict no matter how strong the evidence is, a judge will not let her sit on the jury. Thus, to engage in this practice may require citizens to lie. It is not wise to build a movement for social change on deceit. Third, it is often difficult to know whether a crime is in fact “victimless.” Prosecutors often pursue relatively low-level offenders in the hope that they can “encourage” them to identify wrongdoers further up the chain of command. Even if the foot soldier is not engaged in activity that harms victims, an organized crime ring may have many victims. How is a juror to assess whether a given prosecution is a legitimate part of such a broader investigation?
Here we venture into the endless gray area that troubles acts of nonviolent resistance. Is one really not doing violence? Is disruption of an unjust system always a good thing? And how can one be sure one is right about a given offender?
I wonder if any of you out there have faced a situation like this, and if you have any insight about the wisdom of Butler’s proposal.
Tens of thousands of South Korean workers rallied Saturday to protest the government's plan to begin implementing contentious labor laws. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
More than 30,000 workers of bakery shops across the Kashmir Valley went on indefinite strike on Saturday morning, protesting against the authorities’ cruel polices against them.
Hundreds of teachers from private high schools in this western China city called a strike this week to protest low salaries and deplorable working conditions.
In Philadelphia, the strike by SEPTA workers that had paralyzed much of the region since last week ended yesterday morning with a signing of an agreement by SEPTA officials and leaders of Transport Workers Union Local 234.
At Religion Dispatches today, there’s an interview with Sharon Nepstad, a sociologist of religion with a worthwhile-looking new book: Religion and War Resistance in the Plowshares Movement. There’s lots of interest in it, but an especially useful part of the discussion takes on questions of protest method in a nonviolent paradigm:
Mother Jones just posted an interview I did with Tim DeChristopher, the University of Utah student who last year interrupted a federal auction of oil and gas leases by pretending to be a bidder. Some interesting developments have occurred in his life over the last year, not the least of which was being indicted by a federal grand jury. With his trial nearing, I spoke to him about his plans to put global warming on trial, being influenced by The Yes Men, and his thoughts on climate activism. 
The New York Review of Books has been much concerned with prison issues lately, thank goodness, and their most recent piece is David Cole’s “