Captain Future's Log

What Good Is Protest?

There are really two questions here: what good is protesting the war, and how can protest be effective? My answer to the second question is likely to upset some people. So I’ll start with the first.

My first protest march was in Washington in 1963, the famous Civil Rights march. I’ve participated in many civil rights and peace marches since, along with vigils, sit-ins and a building occupation during Vietnam. Saturday I marched again, as I have since before the Iraq war began.

This year’s march seemed to be about the same size as the others, and not very well organized. People were kept waiting in the cold wind for an hour past the announced march time, for an unannounced program of speakers; there would be another one after the march as well. From where I stood, the crowd showed a lot of gray hair, and there were mothers with small children. People were clearly giving up a few hours of precious time on a weekend for a symbolic act, and were kept from doing it for an unnecessarily long time.

There didn’t seem to be much spirit in the march after that, but I could be projecting my own foul mood. We saw one great sign: THE RAPTURE DOESN’T COUNT AS AN EXIT STRATEGY. The best moment for me was before the march started when a group of musicians were rehearsing. The core knew each other but other players joined, mostly brass and drums but with some reeds. They were really good players. Most were pretty old, and their instruments looked even older. Gray hair and gray brass. They did one number with the clarinets taking the melody and it sounded really great. They also did a jazz version of "Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die Rag--which took the tune back to its roots. I forget what it was originally called, but I have a Louis Armstrong version of it somewhere. Strangely, I never heard them during the march itself.


Still, there is no question: protesting does good. An email I got on march day quoted George Orwell: In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." That’s what we were all doing—telling the world that we aren’t taken in by the Bush deceit. We were symbolically linking hands and hearts with people around the world, and that’s not nothing.

I’ve also never understood the cliched dismissal, “preaching to the converted.” Exactly how many preachers preach to anyone else? There are multiple functions in strengthening emotional, communication and community ties, sharing information and learning.

But how effective is protest? In direct terms, protesting the Iraq war and other actions of the Bush administration have not been effective at all. The war goes on. One large protest a year in scattered cities has probably not done much to focus attention. Perhaps the most effective protest was Cindy Sheehan’s when her encampment outside Bush’s ranch caught the Republicans flatfooted, with no good options. Protest is theatre to some extent, and this show got attention.

Protest tends to polarize at first, but eventually people take a look at what the protest was about. Those who had private doubts about the war now had a means of expressing those doubts. They saw a soldier’s mother as well as a protestor.

Anti-Iraq protest has been non-violent which is a prerequisite for being effective. Only nonviolent protest is effective. But nonviolence is a necessary condition, not a sufficient one. Protest hasn’t been effective and will not be, in my view, because it hasn’t exacted a cost. And to exact a cost usually means it costs the protestors something as well.

Today’s marches are modeled after the early to mid 1970s marches—large gatherings with some festive spirit as well as earnest opposition to the war. But earlier anti-Vietnam protests as well as Civil Rights protests were different. Except for rogue incidents, they were also nonviolent, but they often involved civil disobedience. People faced down police and tear gas, they sometimes tried to block access to some important place, or they did the equivalent of sit-down strikes, and often they expected to be arrested.

Rogue elements use mass protests to commit politically pointed vandalism. The vandalism gets attention. The issues usually don’t. Destruction is not protest. It crosses that line into something else.

Another form of protest in the Vietnam era unrelated to marches was refusing to pay taxes, usually proportionate to the military budget (for instance, people would pay half of their federal income tax but not the half that went to the Pentagon.) This was potentially the most potent form of protest, and it was the most dangerous to both protestors and the government. Protestors faced prison and the collapse of their economic lives. The government faced a number of real problems, including real challenges to its legitimacy, and therefore usually cracks down hard on this form of protest.

Were these protests really effective? They were effective in getting attention, in focusing the nation on the conflict over the war. They also made people angry, and that anger has lasted far longer than the war did. These antiwar protests began in 1965, and the war went on well into the 1970s.

It could be argued that the polls show that Americans are just as angry about Iraq, and just as against continuing war there, as they were concerning Vietnam in the mid-1970s, after eight or ten years of protests.

So maybe today’s symbolic protests are working just as well by not alienating people. But lots of people were talking last week about the speech James Spader delivered on “Boston Legal.” His character, lawyer Alan Shore, said that when Americans learned the rationale for invading Iraq was specious, he thought they would rise up but they didn’t. And then when they learned of torture in their name, and then of illegal wiretapping, he expected them to finally rise up, but they didn’t.

But why would he expect that? Americans never “rise up.” It just doesn’t happen. In terms of protest, the only kind that has demonstrated “rising up” has been by a very active minority, costing themselves something—jail time, injury, maybe screwing up their college year or their career. Who exact some kind of price by their actions. Then, eventually, there are large symbolic protests that show solidarity with those who paid the price.

So I don’t think anyone should expect protest to be effective unless it involves massive, serious non-violent civil disobedience, and massive tax protest.

Even then it would take a long time. Corporate media won’t cover it, not even as badly as they did in the 1960s.

People were also talking last week about the E.J. Dionne column that said the Democratic party doesn’t know how to work with its activist wing. But there is very little in the way of an activist wing, in terms of protest: of organizing for active opposition expressed in real civil disobedience and tax protest.

Instead we get urged to show our “rage.” There’s nothing more empty than rage.

There is activism in the electoral realm certainly. But those who live by electoral politics die by it as well. Everything has to get solved in elections, or in acts within the government, like bills passed or defeated, filibusters and censure motions. Of course, all of that is essential, but it is limited to that field of action. Electoral defeat is defeat. The next field of action is the next election.

Electoral activism, which is the chief activity of the blogs, properly has little if anything to do with protest. I don’t believe in protest candidates. I believe in trying to elect the best people, and in general elections, the better person for the office.

The blogs play one definite role for protestors: as media of information. The Dkos post of photos of police presence in my old haunts of Pittsburgh points the way to citizen journalism in covering protest.

But if people are not satisfied with electoral activism, and they wonder why people aren’t “rising up,” I believe one reason is because protest has become mostly symbolic. And even the symbolism isn’t what it used to be. Alan Shore spoke pointedly about silence on the campuses. Campus protest always was a minority activity. But for all the crap we Baby Boomers get from younger generations, and all the accusations that we only protested the war because we were being drafted (which certainly was a clear and present motivation), I see we’re still out there. I saw more gray hair than college age in the march where I was. (To be fair, the local university was on spring break, though they’re officially back Monday.)

The role of protest may be to stir people up, to assert an issue’s importance, to force its priority. When it costs people something to protest on an issue, the public knows that at least some people think it’s pretty damn important. And maybe they pay a little more attention. All of that is independent of electoral politics, and no one can blame elected officials/ politicians for doing their jobs. But once civil rights civil disobedience and protest reached a critical mass, JFK used it for political leverage to introduce civil rights legislation. Eugene McCarthy and RFK used Vietnam protest as leverage in trying to end the Vietnam war as president.

One reason that Cindy Sheehan remains an antiwar protest leader (though the blogs haven’t paid her as much attention) is that she uses civil disobedience as part of the mix. But we face other very clear and present dangers: the threats to constitutional government represented by illegal wiretapping and other acts; the need to deal with the Climate Crisis before it overwhelms us, and at the moment, the crucial necessity of making sure this president cannot attack Iran and plunge this country and the world into a sudden and devastating darkness.

Can electoral activism handle it? I wonder.

UPDATE: I posted a version of this on dkos, with a poll. Only about 50 responses so far, but the vast majority believe that protest is an important component along with electoral activism. One comment made the additional point that protest marches in the U.S. are also important to maintain the connection to Europe and other places where larger protests occur.