How do I say this without sounding sanctimonious? The Minnesota thing? That’s the result of the same narrative that drove somebody’s kid to carry out that health insurance CEO thing. You can’t make a folk hero out of one and not expect the other to follow.
Please, please, please examine your narratives. Please don’t spread ‘burn it down’ narratives unless you are prepared with a detailed plan for building something new in its place, and a whole bunch of folks signed on to that plan. Or until you’re ready to send your kid in to be the next folk hero.
Sanctimonious? Sorry, not sorry.
Oh, and read Faulkner for more good plot development tips.
The recent post by Peter Coyote about comportment at charged demonstrations, and the backlash that followed from various quarters about respectability politics and race- and class-based values in activism got me thinking:
Who is really creating blueprints for demonstrators, based on lived experience and study of what has worked to create effective resistance movements in the past?
Who is providing examples of how to build consensus among demonstrators in the field, so that we are aligned and have each other’s backs when things get heated?
Once again, TeenVogue is doing the heavy lifting to share a variety of perspectives on urgent issues. No joke, you would do well to like and subscribe for a wholly relevant cross-section of what’s happening in the culture.
This recent article finds several activists from various communities reflecting on the demonstrations of 2020, and offering helpful insights into preparation, long-term planning, and on-the-ground support strategies for activists involved in the events unfolding now.
If you’re looking for a specifically non-white, non-Boomer, gender-diverse set of perspectives on how to navigate the resistance demonstration landscape, this is a good place to start. It’s one article, but you might find that the voices represented inspire you to dig deeper.
I’m not amplifying these voices because I am 100% on board with all of their takes, but because I believe we make better decisions when we consider multiple strategies and consequences.
Study! Examine your narratives! Reflect on what has worked in the past! Avoid dead ends that sidelined our forebears!
Be safe out there!
“For this story, we want to recall the lessons of that time — lessons that seemed so unprecedented — and to practice what Olurin called for: Remember our history, that we’ve been here before, so we can learn from the past and keep building toward a different future.”
Friends don’t let friends enter highly-charged and heavily armed oppositional demonstration spaces without a clearly articulated plan and a high level of coordination with well-defined allies.
Trusting our instincts only works when we are very familiar with our environment and aware of the ways that a situation can change.
Keyboard warriors pushing the “rage is justified, property damage is not violence” narrative don’t realize it, but they are practicing a very effective and time-tested technique, that one can see being implemented around the world. It’s the same technique that is used to prepare child soldiers to die.
Children are recruited or abducted to fight in extremist and ideological movements because they are easily manipulated, have little impulse control (especially considering the trauma-infused environments they are in), and, in most of the areas where these movements operate, places with high birth rates and low life expectancy, they are plentiful–and expendable.
They are fed sugar, stimulants, and narrative. Narrative is a very effective tool for preparing the child’s nervous system for the theatre of guerrilla warfare. Narrative works with a child’s emerging ideation, their sense of who they are and their purpose. They are fed narrative that emphasizes a sense of ‘other.’ and nurtures resentments against that other. The other, for these purposes, doesn’t need to be well-defined–in fact, these resentment narratives are often employed within in-groups to promote competition and inspire brutality.
Notice that I haven’t said anything about training. The lack of training is by design. What’s being cultivated in these scenarios is not a skill set, but a disposition–a nervous system that is finely tuned for violence, with adrenaline and cortisol overriding any fear or instinct for self-preservation, and a child’s undeveloped impulse-control mechanism ensuring that their anger will arise quickly and they will lash out at anything that moves. Couple this with an AK-47 and you have the perfect front line killing machine in a forested or dense-infill urban environment. They fit into small spaces, are unperturbed by uncomfortable sensory input, and are small targets.
The strength of the child soldier–its ability to act without thinking–is also its weakness. Lacking the instinct for self-preservation, they haven’t had the time to think through battle scenarios or consider consequences. Not having had training in any skill or craft, they don’t have the framework for complex thinking or strategy. They are the first line of defense, but they are also the first to fall in a hand-to-hand conflict against a trained enemy.
And in open environments, once their magazine is empty, they are easily captured or eliminated. But they are valued more for their expendability than for their skill. By the time they are taken out in a battle scenario, the adults have already retreated to their safe position. Recruit more kids, rinse, repeat, and you have an endless resistance campaign. They operate around the clock around the globe.
Let’s apply this same program to the modern resistance scenario today, in Los Angeles. With a sense of other cultivated over a lifetime, the modern rage warrior has been mentally nurturing resentment narratives for years, with no plan or physical training in any type of combat skill, and no strategic or long-term vision. The rage warrior resembles the child soldier in many ways, but also lacks many of the qualities that make the child soldier so effective in its ideal environment.
The rage warrior has a much higher instinct for self-preservation, and a much lower sense of personal loyalty in a high-stress situation. The adult rage warrior is much more susceptible to being deterred by difficult sensory environments such as temperature, dampness, pungent smells or chemical agents, loud sounds, etc. They also lack the AK-47. But they share the child soldier’s urgency of purpose, their quick tendency to anger, and their low impulse-control.
The areas where demonstrations are happening in Los Angeles would not really be thought of as dense-infill environments. Street are wide, and helicopters and sniper posts are able to target anyone outdoors with high accuracy. One of the strengths of the child soldier is their ability to hide and fire from small spaces; the modern rage warrior has a brick (short range and low lethality) and would be uncomfortable in a closet, let alone the crawlspace beneath a building.
The other thing lacking in this modern scenario is the adult. The modern rage warrior believes themselves to be part of a large, unified force. Driven by ideology rather than operating instructions from a trusted leader, this cultivated self-deception means that they are both without marching orders and without peers once things start to get heated.
So, effectively we have a person ideated for guerrilla warfare with a high-lethality weapon from a securable covered position against an individual or isolated opponent, but with virtually no weapon, no trusted leader, no plan and no assurance of backup, and no ability to adapt to changing conditions or see the full field of battle, who is operating in the open against a highly-armed and highly trained enemy who is able to create formations and enclosures with their numbers, and who can develop and change strategies through communication with leaders as conditions change.
This is not sounding like a highly effective strategy.
In fact, given this understanding, one has to wonder whose side these keyboard warriors are on, as they spread narratives that stoke rage and justify violence by an imagined cooperative movement against a very real foe. It sounds more like they’re trying to get protesters eliminated than show them operation plans for an effective movement.
People!
Organize! Examine your narratives! Identify and amplify your trusted leaders! Do your homework. Have a plan and know that it is shared and understood by the people around you.
Here’s what I imagine the keyboard warriors pushing the “rage is justified” and “property damage is not violence” narrative believe about the LA riots in ’92:
They believe that the 63 people who died and the nearly 2500 people injured were all batoned by police in riot gear or the National Guard.
They believe that the $1 billion of property damage done was a result of the combined, unified, and justified rage of Black people.
They believe that the 12,000 people who were arrested were arrested unjustly for directing their rage at property, (which is only owned by rich people or the government, which is made of rich people, and both are exclusively white) and for looting, which was just Black people taking what was owed to them by the rich people and the government (and since all of the looted goods were taken from property, all of those goods belonged to rich people or the government, and so were fair game).
They believe that it was rich people and the government who paid to rebuild the property. They believe that the government and rich people had it coming to them. They believe that the government has money and deserves to have to pay for things. They believe that the government has money because it prints it.
They believe that, since it is tax dollars that pay for education, health care, and services, but rich people and the government who pay for property, that those services were not affected.
They believe that there was a fire that burned for a little while, but then the property evaporated. They believe that the new buildings appeared the day after the fires were extinguished. They believe that everything that was rebuilt made the lives of people better because they could finally move into better places, that cost less than the old places. They believe that everyone who lived and worked in those properties stayed at friend’s houses for a night and then returned to the new buildings the next day.
They believe that before the riots, the cops were bad. They believe that the cops were still bad after the riot, but not as bad as before. They believe that, after the riots, life got better for immigrants, people of color, and other marginalized communities. They believe that all of the tensions between different cultural communities evaporated in the cathartic and healing fire.
They believe that the LA riots were a big, glorious, cathartic party, where everyone who was not a cop, a member of the military, or the government, or rich people, were unified in directing their rage directly at the buildings owned by rich people and the government. They believe that were it not for the rage directed at property, more people would have died.
They believe that things got better in the days after the riots, but then they got worse, and now we need another cultural reset.
Why do I say that the keyboard warriors pushing the “rage is justified,” “property damage is not violence” narrative believe these things? Because this is what one would have to believe to amplify that narrative.
People!
Violence and property damage impact people of color and marginalized communities first.
The people who die as a result of violent protests are disproportionately people of color and people from marginalized communities.
Property crimes exact higher sentences than disturbing the peace, loitering, trespassing, and other indictments associated with public protest. Those convicted of property crimes are then processed through the prison-industrial complex, which is a for-profit industry funded by outsourcing dollars provided by the government–your tax dollars.
Properties damaged in violent events like the LA riots are disproportionately housing and small businesses owned by people of color and people from marginalized communities.
Often, unable to rebuild, these families and small business owners sell their properties to corporate landowners at reduced rates.
The money to rebuild comes from tax dollars, which are often diverted from education, health care, and other social services. And since corporations and the wealthy benefit from tax loopholes and government entitlements, that means that the burden of rebuilding rests disproportionately on lower-income people.
And that money goes disproportionately to rich corporate contractors, who have sweetheart deals with the government.
It’s starting to sound like those pushing the “rage is justified,” “property damage is not violence” narrative are actually working in service of the people who benefit from that narrative – corporate property owners, large building contractors and the government agencies who fund them, and the prison-industrial complex. They are actually the ones pushing for a cultural reset.
Don’t fall for it. Practice discipline. Work out your rage at the gym, or in a free anger management group funded by your tax dollars.
Practice discipline, and show up for people of color, people from marginalized communities, and small business owners when you protest.
Let’s do this, people! Learn from history! Practice civil disobedience responsibly! But do practice it!
When you read a piece of advice about attending a protest from a seasoned peace advocate that rubs you the wrong way or doesn’t reflect your perspective, it’s because they’re expressing their lived experience. It’s not about you. They will probably be thankful when you share your advice, based on your lived experience.
They didn’t craft their careful admonitions in response to something you wrote. They didn’t even send it to your inbox. They didn’t call themselves the go-to protest advice hotline. They didn’t say that your plans were wrong because, well, you didn’t publish your plans, as far as I can tell. They voiced a perspective. Let’s hear yours.
And it wasn’t written for you in the first place. It was written for the couple that just graduated from high school and are on their first road trip, first time in LA, and find themselves at their first demonstration, and 1992 was 15 years before they were born, and they didn’t grow up in a place where demonstrations were part of the landscape.
It was written for the cynical, disaffected white Gen X dude who thinks protests are the opportunity to tip things over the edge, and plans to torch a couple of Teslas, and, if he’s lucky, a Federal building.
It was written for the woman in her 40’s who has so much anxiety about the fact that things might get out of hand, but her whole heart is in the movement, and she believes that it’s her civic duty to show up, even though she knows that if things get out of hand, it could trigger severe emotional distress related to events that happened in her childhood.
It was written for the immigrant family who want to participate but don’t feel safe being anywhere on the perimeter where they are more vulnerable to being recognized or even photographed, as that could result in their being deported for being subversive, and they’d like to be surrounded by supportive people whose motives and methods they trust.
Even though you are a seasoned advocate for justice and have attended many demonstrations, many people will be attending this one for the first time. Some of those people might find value in hearing different perspectives because that’s how they learn.
That seasoned peace advocate wasn’t writing to you, because maybe they know you’re good, and you don’t need to hear it. Maybe they know you’re doing the right things, and they don’t need to comment on those things. Maybe they know that everybody doesn’t know how to talk to everybody, but that you know how to talk to the people you know how to talk to, and you’re doing it.
They voiced a perspective, based on lived experience, about how to not die at a protest. I look forward to hearing yours, and if it’s good, I’ll amplify it too.
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’s not that kindness is a moral imperative because it’s convenient. Kindness is a moral imperative because unkindness done to one turns that one’s grandchildren into monsters who will return that unkindness a thousandfold.
Even if the unkindness being done to Palestinians were to stop today, with all of the trauma that has been inflicted upon those children, what does the world have to look forward to in 80 years?
When will we begin to think about the effects of our actions on other people’s grandchildren first, rather than condemning our own to suffer the consequences?
