{"id":52203,"date":"2022-10-24T18:34:39","date_gmt":"2022-10-24T18:34:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wagingnonviolence.org\/forusa\/?p=52203"},"modified":"2022-11-15T18:50:10","modified_gmt":"2022-11-15T18:50:10","slug":"how-incarcerated-activists-use-their-privilege-for-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wagingnonviolence.org\/forusa\/2022\/10\/how-incarcerated-activists-use-their-privilege-for-good\/","title":{"rendered":"How incarcerated peace activists use their privilege for good"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This essay is adapted from Anya Stanger’s new book “Incarcerated Resistance: How Identity, Gender, and Privilege Shape the Experiences of America’s Nonviolent Activists<\/a>” <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who would go to jail on purpose? This was the question that motivated my doctoral research, as I studied a group of activists I call justice action prisoners \u2014<\/em> U.S. peace activists who employ an uncommon nonviolent tactic called \u201cprison witness.\u201d Drawn mainly from the Plowshares and School of the Americas Watch movements, those who \u201cgo to jail for justice\u201d do so to put particular issues such as war, nuclear weapons, and U.S. foreign policy \u201con trial.\u201d Prison witness is a high-risk tactic that entails intentionally breaking the law, most often through crimes of trespass or the destruction of federal property, followed by criminal trial and significant jail time (6 months or more, in the case of my research).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Almost all justice action prisoners in the U.S. today are white, elderly, well-educated and professional, financially stable and religious (usually Roman Catholic). They are people of immense privilege, and most often, they know it. Indeed, being \u201caccountable\u201d to one\u2019s privilege is the most common explanation for why participants engaged in resistance in the first place.  They resist because they can.<\/ins><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This constellation of identity, awareness, and resultant action makes the study of justice action prisoners relevant and unique as a group to learn from; they are socially privileged U.S. activists, working \u201con behalf of\u201d others, who strategically \u201cuse\u201d who they are to best protest state violence \u2014 using a nonviolent technique that is extraordinarily high-risk and personalized. As such, looking more closely at justice action prisoners\u2019 notions of privileged identity and solidarity action is a productive undertaking, not only for activists who may be thinking about more extreme forms of resistance themselves, but also for people interested in engaging in coalitions of any kind.<\/del><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Privilege power<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the most remarkable things about nonviolence is that anybody can participate: you do not have to be a young man (as you do in most forms of military service) \u2014 a citizen, or even an adult to make a meaningful impact. In this understanding of how nonviolence works, transformative change occurs through what nonviolent scholars call \u201cpeople power\u201d \u2014 the power of \u201cregular people\u201d doing something <\/em>in the face of oppression and violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While it is true that anybody<\/em> can participate in nonviolence, in a context of inequality \u2014 and especially for a technique as individualized as prison witness \u2014 it is misleading to think that \u201cwho we are\u201d does not matter in what we can do, or that all bodies can work in the same ways. Instead, identity matters. In the case of prison witness, which relies upon individual action and a notion of \u201cgoodness\u201d (for if we do not believe someone to be \u201cgood,\u201d their incarceration will not strike us as troublesome), \u201cpeople power\u201d cannot explain what happens through nonviolent action. Instead, we must include an evaluation of identity and, specifically, what I call \u201cprivilege power.\u201d Privilege power is a potent mix of white skin, middle\/upper class position, high levels of education, Christian\/Catholic faith, heterosexuality\/chaste status, and professional achievement that combine to make a person largely un-objectionable within the contemporary mainstream United States. It is an important engine powering prison witness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In her interview, retired health professional: white, married mother; and convicted felon Rae Kramer explained how privilege works in nonviolent resistance. She said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The power of the prison witness more publicly was \u2026 the more that you are connected to mainstream life, the more effective and powerful is the witness \u2026 I am a soccer coach. How do I tell these families that this woman who they have entrusted their children to \u2026 is going to jail? Wait a minute, bad people go to prison! The cognitive dissonance right there \u2014 that was the magic moment.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rae explained that it was her status <\/em>that made her line-crossing at Fort Benning<\/a> effective. It was her \u201cconnection to mainstream life\u201d that enabled wide-scale critical thinking about the SOA<\/a> in her community. In other words, prison witness partly works because the people going to jail are not those who usually <\/em>go to jail. Quite simply, when high-status individuals (such as a nun or college professor) are incarcerated, the circle of people who are concerned about their action grows larger. In addition, the privileged activist more readily maintains an identity as \u201cmoral\u201d and \u201cgood\u201d despite their illegal act \u2014 and may be more easily perceived as wrongfully<\/em> going to jail (while the issue of concern might be considered more problematic). This is a source of power for the privileged activist, but \u201cusing it\u201d is not straightforward: the increased scrutiny that prison witness activates can rely upon engrained assumptions about whiteness\/wealth\/high-status corresponding with virtue and worthiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At best then, using <\/em>privilege is a double-edged sword. On the one side, the mechanism Rae describes is politically and culturally powerful, and she is correct to acknowledge it so clearly. On the other side, the underlying structural violence that activists like Rae are so keen to uproot may be reinforced through such actions. Most basically, \u201cusing\u201d privilege may transform into instances of reinforcing whiteness and social class, especially, as stand-ins for integrity, accountability, goodness or seriousness of intent. Despite these dangers, justice action prisoners are among those who have determined that, on balance, the potential benefits of using privilege are worth the risks they entail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than half of those I spoke with explained that their white skin provided not just motivation to act, but also relative safety in doing so. (Which, for them, entailed an obligation to act.) Their activism was also supported by their U.S. citizenship, having an identity (priest, mother, professional) that makes others \u201cthink twice\u201d about their action and subsequent imprisonment, the \u201cinner strength\u201d to bear lengthy incarceration, the financial security to \u201cstep away\u201d from day-to-day life, as well as assuring the \u201cprivilege to explain my legal record\u201d after release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Justice action prisoners often used their privileged identities as resources from which to draw, in order to further movement aims (something, it should be noted, that is not just a tool for the most privileged \u2014 \u201cusing\u201d who we are is a resource available to all). Participant Nancy Gwin, a retired teacher, explained how one may \u201cuse\u201d who one is as a resource when she told me that she always \u201cdresses up\u201d when she goes to a protest. \u201cThere\u2019s Nancy, in her flats!\u201d other activists say \u2014 but she wants onlookers to see that there are people \u201clike them\u201d (white, middle class and professional) who are interested in issues of disarmament and human rights. \u201cDressing up\u201d as a middle-class white lady is of course reliant on Nancy\u2019s privilege, but it is also a strategy of connection that productively \u201cworks\u201d towards movement goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Participants also described using their privileged identities as catalysts that could \u201cmake space\u201d for others. Sr. Dorothy Pagosa explained this when she told me that \u201cprivilege gives us entr\u00e9e\u201d during actions, an opening that can be used to \u201clet the people who really know what they\u2019re taking about talk.\u201d  Similarly, Sr. Ardeth Platte explained that when she was the mayor of Saginaw, Michigan, she would tell \u201ceverything that was going on\u201d in local politics to the \u201cdisadvantaged community\u201d so that they <\/em>could be \u201cthe ones who came to city hall and put the pressure on us<\/em>.\u201d As their representative, Ardeth was not speaking \u201cfor\u201d this community, but empowering them with information needed to be able to speak for themselves. In these cases, the intent is to use the privileges provided by race and status to create a space for others to fill, but not to fill the space oneself. Both Dorothy and Ardeth assured me that \u201cmaking space\u201d does not challenge traditional hierarchies, but it can create opportunities for those most closely affected to galvanize deeper change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solidarity<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another way that these understandings of privilege showed up in my research was through how justice action prisoners discussed solidarity \u2014 acts of making the struggle of another your own. In general, justice action prisoners engage in solidarity actions as \u201cadvantaged group allies,\u201d in social movement parlance, people who participate not to further their own individual or group needs, but to contribute as an ally \u2014 a helper or a friend. Most commonly, advantaged group allies are privileged in ways that movement beneficiaries are not, and are drawn to the work because of personal conviction rather than direct experience. In other words, they are there because they want to be, because they believe that the work is important \u2014 but not because they will directly benefit from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For these reasons, solidarity actions are plagued by the same issues that \u201cusing privilege\u201d brings up in resistance: instances in which more powerful actors may rely upon their social positions in order to contest or illuminate something that more negatively affects another. Solidarity actions are appropriate in a world structured by inequalities (we need ways to work across lines of power) and they are, of course, complicated. Complicated because by using privilege (such as whiteness) to protest violence (such as imperialism), activists may actually reinforce unequal hierarchies rather than upset them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In researching my book, I met many justice action prisoners who understood the risks involved in engaging, as privileged people, in solidarity activism across borders of geography and power \u2014 and had decided to act anyways. They knew that they would invariably mess up. They also understood that only through their continual efforts, reflections, and actions <\/em>could they help create change, and they were committed to figuring out better ways of doing things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I interviewed Brian DeRouen during the 2011 conference at Fort Benning. Of his experience protesting the SOA, Brian said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How many actions in this country today can you take that will put you in solidarity with felons and their families, would engage your family \u2026 any classroom you walk into \u2026 with prisoners and guards \u2026 And by crossing the line, folks are interested. They ask you, \u201cwhat was prison like?\u201d And 45 minutes later, they\u2019re still listening, but now you\u2019re talking about Gandhi in South Africa, and they are still engaged. Whereas if you just walked up and said \u201cyou want to talk about nonviolence?\u201d they\u2019d be like \u201chell no.\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brian\u2019s words expand common thinking about solidarity activism \u2014 and show it to be about the campesino in Nicaragua, but also what happens here. <\/em>For Brian, solidarity is about creating relationships with students in U.S. classrooms, prison guards and members of your own community. It forges connection and keeps unlikely conversations going \u2014 and so it must include an understanding of oneself, one\u2019s position in the social context, and an awareness of what this position may enable or provide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hence, for Brian, those he hopes to reach not just those affected by the school whose existence he protests, but everyone he meets \u2014 and about every issue of injustice that he learns about along the way. In this sense, he is a translator, and in this project of solidarity, going to jail is a tactic, and being a justice action prisoner is a way to be \u201csexy\u201d enough to be published in the newspaper or listened to in a classroom. He uses the tools available to him to bond with people, translate new stories, and challenge what they know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n