“In America, the student movement has been seriously radicalized wherever police and police brutality intervened in essentially nonviolent demonstrations: occupations of administration buildings, sit-ins, et cetera.” – Hannah Arendt, observing Columbia University protests in 1968.
When you’ve been in the midst of a demonstration that devolves into chaos and violence, you find out in a hurry if you’re able to put aside your own terror to still uphold the needs of the many and to maintain the discipline of your values. This has happened to me more than once. That tension has always been a reminder to me that democracy is a choice and that citizenship is a full-contact sport.
The Gaza-driven protests by college students, and the response to them by university presidents and law enforcement have dominated the media and roiled American politics at the start of this consequential electoral season. Scenes of tent encampments, chanting activists, occupied facilities, have conjured comparisons to the ungovernable activism of previous generations that left an indelible influence on the culture.
Politicians, whose policies are ultimately the targets of these demonstrations, have denounced trespassing and disorderliness, and have conflated the hate speech of marginal figures with the purpose of an entire movement, that is aimed at heightening awareness of a bloody conflict that has taken the lives of tens of thousands of innocents and has caused a spiraling humanitarian crisis for over a million.
Democracy is a choice. Our university leaders and public figures must pull back and reflect on what might be won or inalterably lost in this moment at the brink. Young activists must widen their own apertures to consider their obligation to make their movements durable and communities expansive, without averting their gaze from the plight of true victims – both the Israelis who suffered a heinous act of terror and the Palestinians who continue to endure unconscionable and inhumane collective punishment.
The right to protest and the right to safety are both weight-bearing pillars of any democracy. While lawlessness and actual violence must be confronted – and antisemitism and Islamophobia cannot be tolerated – there is a very real danger that the characterization of these protests and the harsh sanctions that have followed acts of peaceful resistance can have the effect of stifling a critical platform of dissent necessary for the promotion of democratic institutions that are responsive and capable of correction.
I have trespassed in peaceful protest. I have shut down government offices in civil disobedience. I have made the powerful uncomfortable in their routines as I’ve dissented in peaceful but committed disorder. In each instance, disruption and disorder were precisely the point.
I have done all this in the finest American tradition of the “good trouble” exhorted by the late John Lewis, which is oft quoted but it seems little subscribed to by our political leaders, who are pleased to consign his legacy to a postage stamp. The March across Edmund Pettus Bridge was the height of trespassing, and disorder. Even Dr King was reluctant to support it. After the violence of Bloody Sunday, policies changed.
Every year now, our elected officials safely re-enact the theater of it. I was blessed to accompany Congressman Lewis on his final visit through South Africa and can never forget his urgency in reminding me and young Africans that “freedom is a continuous action”. He did not mean for us to take this as a mere reminder to dutifully vote for officeholders.
Some of our fellow citizens enjoy elite access to policymakers because of their ability to leverage political donations as a means of advocacy. Others have extraordinary ability to shape public narrative through the media, or to reach into the arena of ideas with endowments to universities. For the vast majority committed to social change, the right to protest isn’t merely a virtuous talking point for politicians. It is as essential as the vote if we are to make good on the promise of truly participatory democracy.
As an immigrant from an authoritarian society, and proud American activist all too aware of the relationship between unchecked state power and violence, I’ve been perturbed by unexamined claims against all these students that links them to “terrorism”, foreign agents and outside agitators. I’ve also been alarmed by calls from leading Democrats and Republicans for surveillance and investigations of students by the FBI. Dozens of state legislatures are advancing bills to designate street-blocking protests as “acts of terror” with federal-level punishments. This is shocking but in keeping with the darkest chapters of a history that haunts in its proximity to current affairs.
The organizer in me also recoils from modes of activism that simply favor resistance over understanding. Like John Lewis, a true organizer is always doing the hard work to shift points of view and invite in those who might have previously been seen as adversaries. There is always an obligation to extend grace and empathy in order to move past the recitation of martyrdoms.
It can take a dose of courage and a dollop of radical naivety to confront government policies and to “put your bodies upon the gears” of the machine of state.
I remember, with some wonder, fiercely joining friends from Act Up in blocking buildings because our government was ignoring the cries of dying gay Americans. I recall the pulse-pounding sensation of stepping in front of traffic on bridges to make visible the demands of hard-working people forced into poverty. And I can still feel the terror of dodging the violent billy club swings of a panicked police officer unprepared for the emotions of a crowd demonstrating against police violence that we could no longer endure.
I’ve had to run from the flying rocks and bottles of agitators who infiltrated demonstrations I’ve helped organize as I fought back tears of despair and absolute fear. And I can still feel the swell of pride over three decades removed from the triumph of collective action when the US Congress finally stepped into the right side of history with the passage of sanctions against apartheid South Africa after our protests, arrests and, yes, encampments at our universities.
I knew, unapologetically, that movements succeed only when they have disruptive power. I knew those movements should not be in the business of awaiting the approval of the powerful and comfortable. I was confident that I was moving with humility in the American agitation slipstream of Thomas Paine, David Thoreau, Rosa Parks. The story of American progress is a story of contestation and civil disorder at every single turn. But I’ve always had the clarity that disruption must walk alongside dialogue.
Dialogue like the one courageously taken up by Arab and Jewish students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with Representative Ro Khanna. They interrogated discomfiting assumptions about one another and challenging questions of history. They moved through protest to participation, understanding that solutions were distant but worth the work.
As part of his moving acknowledgment of the meaning of the protests following the death of George Floyd, President Biden invoked Thurgood Marshall, who said, “We must dissent from the indifference … We must dissent because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.”
Protest is never convenient, never comfortable and frequently unpopular. But dissent from indifference – and through the discomfort of disorder – is the work of choosing democracy.
Patrick Hubert Gaspard is an American former diplomat who serves as president of Center for American Progress
American politicians forget: disruption and disorder are the point of protests
22
0
06.05.2024
“In America, the student movement has been seriously radicalized wherever police and police brutality intervened in essentially nonviolent demonstrations: occupations of administration buildings, sit-ins, et cetera.” – Hannah Arendt, observing Columbia University protests in 1968.
When you’ve been in the midst of a demonstration that devolves into chaos and violence, you find out in a hurry if you’re able to put aside your own terror to still uphold the needs of the many and to maintain the discipline of your values. This has happened to me more than once. That tension has always been a reminder to me that democracy is a choice and that citizenship is a full-contact sport.
The Gaza-driven protests by college students, and the response to them by university presidents and law enforcement have dominated the media and roiled American politics at the start of this consequential electoral season. Scenes of tent encampments, chanting activists, occupied facilities, have conjured comparisons to the ungovernable activism of previous generations that left an indelible influence on the culture.
Politicians, whose policies are ultimately the targets of these demonstrations, have denounced trespassing and disorderliness, and have conflated the hate speech of marginal figures with the purpose of an entire movement, that is aimed at heightening awareness of a bloody conflict that has taken the lives of tens of thousands of innocents and has caused a spiraling humanitarian crisis for over a million.
Democracy is a choice. Our university leaders and public figures must pull back and reflect on what might be won or inalterably lost in this moment at the brink. Young activists must widen their own apertures to consider their obligation to make their movements durable and communities expansive, without averting their gaze from the plight of true victims – both the Israelis who suffered a heinous act of terror and the........
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