To the many brave voices calling out Peter Coyote’s advice regarding peaceful demonstration tactics as representative of an entitled, race- and class-based, and performative nod to respectability politics:
I hear you, and I recognize this perspective.
I would challenge that perspective as confusing symbology with strategy.
I see it as being based on a false premise: that in calling for a certain degree of decorum and unified expression, the advocate for peaceful protest is somehow denying or vilifying people’s real human feelings and expressions of rage (as a response to real injustice) for purposes of appearance or respectability.
On the contrary – I am hearing in Coyote’s advice an acknowledgment of those real and valid responses, while asking for a consideration of the best strategic outlets for such impulses, especially given that this type of demonstration is leaderless and represents a great number of different underlying motivations.
From the vantage point of home, seeing a demonstration through the singular lens of the media, it may appear that the great tide is unified and is speaking truth to power in one voice. If you have ever been in this type of heavily charged environment, involving deadly force and righteous rage, this is rarely the case. Friends witness friends acting in ways that do not align with their values, and alliances can become fragmented very quickly. What begins as a unified demonstration of resistance to abuse of power can quickly devolve into groups of caretakers trying to protect the wounded, while surrounded by the contrasting forces of earnest perseverance and scorched earth immediacy.
And, though some of the victims of these scenarios, (the ones who are lionized as fallen soldiers in the cause, and remembered), are indeed victimized by the representatives of the power structure being protested, often the majority of victims are simply bystanders, or families that happen to live in the area. Often they end up being the very people that the protest was organized to defend. No one remembers their names, but the trauma continues to be passed on.
The myth of the righteous martyr, whose rage is a spear that flies directly into the heart of the oppressor, resulting in shockwaves that reverberate through the body of the beast, resulting in it’s inevitable demise, is just that: a myth. Yet if we really examine our own minds, who will honestly say that a part of themselves is not silently anticipating the moment when they can be a part of that myth’s realization?
What I am hearing from Coyote’s entreaty to practice discipline is this:
Your rage is real, and it is justified. I encourage you to explore and express it in creative ways that heal and nourish you and your community.
Having done that, we face today a real enemy, who is heavily armed and looking for a justification to unleash its weapons, and who thinks nothing of grinding your bones into the pavement for spectacle.
Some of us will die today. Though your spirit longs to exact justice for your cause with the immediate response of your justifiable rage, the blind force behind the weapons we face will lash out at anything that moves. Let them be the ones to move. In this square, on this day, in our action, we are many, but in our stillness, we are one.
If we present the face of chaos, it is easy for them to spin the situation in their favor – they become the force of order. But if we present a face of unity, calm, and dignity, it will not only be difficult for them to present a justification for their actions, but they are also likely to act against their own, as they leap to attack anything that moves.
Some of us will die today. We can either die in our personal expression of rage, or we can die in our unified expression of solidarity and embodiment of peace. Consider the reach of our combined forces. Though we all experience this rage, in this moment, are enough of us ready to hurl ourselves into the barrels of their guns simultaneously? And will that combined force be enough to vanquish our foe? And if not, will that action be a sure step on the path to defeating them, finally and assuredly?
If yes, let us remember these faces we witness now as we jump into the abyss, together, sanctifying our cause and ensuring freedom for our people, knowing that whoever is in power will write a version of history that judges us kindly, if they remember us at all.
If there is doubt, let us consider minimizing the casualties, as there is no shame in protecting our neighbors, and endless merit in safeguarding one life.
And, as it is June, let us embody, together, the great stone wall that represents our power in diversity in the face of adversity.
Let’s do this, people!
But being a Zen teacher, Peter Coyote has been trained to use an economy of words. Where I have gone on and on, boring my potential allies, he puts it much more succinctly:
Wake up.
Vent at home.
In public, practice discipline and self control.
It takes much more courage.
