Dr. Cynthia Boaz is assistant professor of political science at Sonoma State University, where her areas of expertise include quality of democracy, political development, nonviolent struggle, civil resistance, and political communication and media. She is also an analyst and consultant on nonviolent action, with special emphasis on the Iran and Burma cases. Dr. Boaz is also a contributing writer and adviser to Truthout.org and associate editor of Peace and Change Journal.
Articles by Cynthia Boaz
The violence of Andrew Breitbart
Andrew Breitbart at the Americans for Prosperity Defending the American Dream Conference. Photo by Mark Taylor, via Flickr.
Much of my work in nonviolence and nonviolent action revolves around the assumption that the ends never justify the means, and that the way you fight a battle has everything to do with the ultimate result. “Victories” won through violence—whether literal or verbal—are dubious at best, and disastrous at worst. This is because they do nothing to eliminate the underlying cause of the grievance being addressed, and only pile on new hatreds. They expand the divisions between people, rather than close them. This is why Gandhi said that “a victory won through violence is tantamount to defeat—for it is momentary.”
What does this have to do with the recent sudden death of BigGovernment.com’s scorch-and-burn blogger Andrew Breitbart? Everything.
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The obligations of independence
“Please use your liberty to promote ours.” –Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of Burma’s National League for Democracy
As I get ready to celebrate this Independence Day by barbecuing and watching fireworks with my family this evening, I can’t help but think about what this holiday must look like from the outside. We are celebrating the day that Americans threw off the bonds of tyranny and claimed self-determination for ourselves. Although the verse declaring that “We hold these truths to be self-evident” is more well-known, the opening salvo of the Declaration of Independence is especially worthy of reflection today:
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them…
These eloquent words have inspired people through the years and across the world. Integral to their beauty is their universality: the notion that “one people” have the implicit right to declare their independence from another and to undertake the endeavor of self-governance. But this begs the question. Once this implicit right is claimed by one people—Americans—how can it be justifiably denied to others? I can’t help but wonder whether my Palestinian, Tibetan, East Timorese, West Papuan, Kurdish, and Kosovar colleagues are asking themselves this very question today.
To the extent that Americans know about the nonviolent anti-occupation movements in Gaza and Tibet, for example, these struggles are hardly embraced with the same enthusiasm as we have for our own (largely violent, I should add) history of resistance to British rule. It’s one thing to not take an interest in someone else’s struggle for freedom. It’s quite another to gleefully celebrate your own liberty—which came at the hands of a determined resistance campaign (can anyone imagine the British celebrating the American Fourth of July?)—while simultaneously using that liberty to help deprive others of theirs.
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Arizonans: Get a Job and Fight Illegal Immigration at the Same Time
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Arturo Rodriguez from the United Farm Workers | ||||
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Gotta love this. Illegal immigration and unemployment are both above-the-fold policy issues currently being bantered about in American politics. Bringing them together in a clever campaign, United Farm Workers has created a program called Take Our Jobs, where undocumented immigrant farm workers will train “legal” American citizens to take their jobs in the farms and fields. This is a fitting solution, since these are the jobs that illegal workers “stole” from taxpaying Americans. See Ronald W. Mortensen, founder of the conservative, nativist organization Center for Immigration Studies (which the Southern Poverty Law Center has expressed serious concerns about) urging Tea Partiers to get more vocal on illegal immigration.
Evidently, however, the campaign is under-promoted because thus far, only a handful of people have filled out a form. It’s odd because surely there are more than a few unemployed Tea Partiers in Arizona alone. So please help us encourage unemployed Americans to walk their walk. Tea Partiers, do the patriotic thing and go work in the farms and fields for minimum pay and maximum labor, just like the founders intended. To apply to take an undocumented farmworker’s job in the fields, go to TakeOurJobs.org. But make sure to invest in a hat and some sunscreen. It can get hot out there.
