As students return to college campuses across the United States, administrators are bracing for a resurgence in activism against the war in Gaza.
As students return to college campuses across the United States, administrators are bracing for a resurgence in activism against the war in Gaza.
At the same time, any legitimate authority has a vested interest in minimizing disruption.
It’s one of those things where I think neither side is inherently in the wrong, at least insofar as the question of “Protest vs. Disruption” is concerned. One must protest for what one believes is right, even if that protest must be disruptive to achieve its goals, and one must be prepared for a response from the authorities if that protest is sufficiently disruptive. You have to break rules, and you have to accept that the authorities are not necessarily wrong in trying to enforce the rules.
Short of saying “Only people I like are allowed to protest” or “Republicans can shut down the interstate highway indefinitely because they hate gay marriage”, neither of which are particularly appealing, I don’t really think that there’s another option.
That this is all done by universities in the defense of a genocidal apartheid state, though? Not very morally ambiguous. This isn’t a minor policy disagreement, or even a major one. This is support of corruption in US politics, the blatant sabotage of US interests abroad, and apartheid and genocide in Israel. Fuck these places trying to run interference for Israel.
The dynamic still holds as valid. It’s just that the universities are shitty fucking authorities for taking the side that many of them have.
I would be very interested in seeing any example of a case where minorly disruptive protest was successful at accomplishing its goal. Large scale disruption that paralyzes the flow of goods or services is one thing, like a strike for instance. But I think back to Occupy Wall St, and it was just absurd how poorly it all worked. Then on top of that, the expectations were so high that the failure set our movement for economic reform back instead of forward, by demoralizing the whole movement for years. It didn’t really recover until Bernie started running for President.
That was about as big and disruptive as you can go, too, and fresh off of a major economic fuck up that actually hurt many Americans.
It’s literally just a waste of energy, when people should be composing compelling arguments, compiling their evidence, and actually spreading it to new people via newsletters, flyers, pamphlets, conversations, speeches etc etc etc. Grassroots outreach.
Frankly I think that’s all too difficult though, and it’s easier for people to just pitch a tent somewhere and chant, even if it accomplishes nothing or even harm for your cause. It lets people feel like they’re helping, even if no strong evidence for the success of the method can be presented. Just theory.
Then on the flip side, you have BLM, which was able to actually create some change by getting some people elected through mass civic engagement. Some few places actually got some police reform, since the BLM protestors were mostly all peaceful and lawful, and you could sympathize with their cause. And there was a metric shitload of them, that always helps.
iirc, ows was infiltrated by business interests?
Let’s assume it absolutely was. Could it have gone better if we had done something differently?
At the end of the day, there was no mechanism for results. If the plan was:
Then the ??? part wound up being “no solutions through this point”. That’s the problem. There is literally no step there, it’s a dead end that prevents you from ever advancing.
I can’t say for sure, but I thought the purpose was that the public would then take up the flight and begin boycotting and suing?
An idea, for sure. It never materialized, though. People didn’t seem eager to just jump up and drop their day-to-day stuff to join a movement, even after it had recently directly fucked them all over.
That’s not really ows fault. They did their part. That the people failed to step up is on them. And I get the reasons. I have been there and I know them. I had a job, new marriage, elderly dying and teenager to care for. Three of those could have been permanently relinquished, the other not so much. I wasn’t willing to sacrifice the new marriage and the unexpected care responsibility thrust upon me. Since then, they’re both gone, teen is grown. I wasn’t willing to sacrifice anything personal for that, then. That’s my fault.
That’s the thing though, we somewhat were at fault for choosing a method that was unlikely to work within the realities of people’s real lives. We didn’t know it at the time, and it was certainly something worth trying, but now that we have that experience we should learn from it and adapt our tactics accordingly instead of repeating the mistakes of the past.
Disruption alone simply doesn’t do enough. It’s predicated on this idea that people need to be “woken up” without acknowledging that they’re choosing to live the way they do for their own reasons.
So what we need to do instead, imo at least, is pivot to more groundwork, grassroots outreach. Building the base up with communication, which I think will have a much likelier chance of long-term success than seemingly bolder, short-term actions that risk not only being ineffective, but even potentially counterproductive.
I love this attitude. If we learn from our mistakes, they’re a stepping-stone, not losses. I’m ready and willing. Is something in the works?