{"article":{"id":103,"heading":"Why Protest the Conventions?","author":"Michael Albert","created":"2000-06-26 20:27:45","modified":"2000-07-23 10:40:03","last_modified":"Sun, 23 Jul 2000 17:40:03","article":"

The usual answer to \"why protest the conventions?\" is to

list various violations of humanity that the two

branches of our one corporate party ,the republicans and

democrats,persist in maintaining, and to note that we

are demanding change in all these areas: bombing other

countries like Iraq and Yugoslavia; starving countries

to death as in sanctioning Cuba and Iraq; aiding and

abetting massacres in Timor and Turkey, and with

increasing danger, Colombia; propelling IMF and World

Bank income inequality and ecological devastation;

advancing domestic police and prison violence that turns

communities into occupied battle zones; imposing welfare

havoc that further impoverishes the already poor;

facilitating generalized corporate rapaciousness that

materially and socially diminishes workers' lives;

legislating health care collapse that drops people dead

who ought to have been cared for and restored;

entrenching citizen and worker disempowerment from all

sides of economic and political decision-making;

abetting media madness that robs culture of content;

enabling dis-education of our young that they might fit

awaiting social slots needing them to obey authority and

endure boredom; partaking of the alienation of most

sides of life by elevating profits over people;

procuring weapons without limit; and battering and

bashing the poor, the homeless, the gay, the female, the

black or latino, with minimal outcry and reply.

But while these lists explain why the Republican and

Democratic Conventions are justifiable targets if we

protest, they don't explain why anyone should protest in

the first place. What's the efficacy of it? Why will it

help? Nor do the lists explain why the conventions or

any other sites are especially good (or bad) targets

supposing that we ought to be protesting at all? Nor why

one method and focus is wise and not some other? So

assuming our \"one party with two branches\" polity is

part and parcel of maintaining the many injustices

noted, I want to address \"why protest at all, why not

just resign and make the best of it?\" and \"what form and

focus should we choose for our protest, if we undertake

it?\"



Raise the Social Cost!

The reason to demonstrate in this and other cases is to

forcefully impact policy. It isn't that our

demonstrations educate policy-makers so they then

willingly change their choices. It isn't that our

demonstrations awaken a moral sensibility in

policy-makers, so they then willingly change their

choices. A policy-maker could be educated or

enlightened sufficiently to truly change priorities,

conceivably, but the most likely outcome for a

policy-maker whose comprehension or values changed so

dramatically would be dismissal, not increased

influence. When the (very) occasional and (very) unusual

Daniel Ellsberg or Ramsey Clark are impacted by dissent

to renovate their thinking and renounce their prior role

in elite decision-making, they aren't thereafter

welcomed to still higher plateaus of power, they are

expunged.

So how do demonstrations affect policies if not by

enlightening or morally uplifting policy-makers to have

different attitudes? Demonstrations coerce elites. At

any given moment, elite policy-makers have a whole array

of priorities. Change in policy occurs when

policy-makers decide that not changing is not in their

interest. Change occurs, that is, when movements raise

social costs that policy-makers are no longer willing to

endure and which they can only escape by relenting to

movement demands. So what constitutes a social cost for

elite policy-makers? What actions of ours bother them?

What actions of ours have high impact, forcing them to

comply with our agendas rather than persisting in their

own?

Tactical calculation about movement tactics runs like

this: If receiving lots of critical letters and email

messages doesn't bother elites, and if this doesn't lead

to other actions that will bother elites, then writing

letters is not useful. If, on the other hand, lots of

mail does bother elites by making them nervous about

their base of support, or for any other reasons, or if

it leads to other actions with these effects, then

letter writing is one good choice for dissent. And the

same holds for holding a rally, a march, a sit-in, a

riot, or whatever else. If these choices either in

themselves or by what they promise in the future raise

lasting and escalating social costs for elites who are

in position to impact policy, or if they organize and

empower constituencies to do additional things that in

turn will raise lasting and escalating social costs for

these elites, then they are good tactics for dissidents

to choose. Reciprocally, regardless of how militant or

insightful or morally warranted, if a protest or rally

or whatever else would diminish social costs over time,

say by reducing the number of dissidents or by causing

dissidents to fracture and in-fight, it is not a good

tactical choice. And of course, \"social cost\" doesn't

mean \"dollar cost.\" Elites have deep pockets, it is

their power they worry about and their power we must

call into question.

Trying to win a new stoplight in a small community at a

dangerous corner takes one level of social costs, not

too large, aimed at the town powers that be. But when

talking about matters as important to elites as world

trade, the structure of the nation's polity, the breadth

of police violence to preserve elite rule, sexual

injustice, racial profiling and inequity, pursuing

education and healthcare that make profit but don't

serve non-elite human needs, or poverty more generally

and other class differences, the offsetting social costs

we need to raise to cause them to change their agenda

have to be very high to be effective. That means our

dissent has to threaten to disturb relationships that

elites care about even more than they care about the

IMF, the expanding prison system, or other policies or

projects we want cancelled,and the only thing the

qualifies for that is their own elite status via the

institutional and ideological underpinnings of their

material and social advantages.

The specter of more and more people not only being upset

about the IMF and World Bank and WTO, or Mumia, or

affirmative action, but also upset about unjust economic

or race or gender relations per se, and not only upset

about these, but being willing to voice their anger and

to act on it, very much disturbs elites. But if dissent

has no expanding trajectory then it is weak and can be

ignored or placated. For example, if continuing to

protest current global economic policies will result in

a large subgroup of critics who, however, do not become

steadily angrier, do not steadily grow in number, do not

steadily expand their concerns from global to domestic

economics and from symptoms to underlying causes, then

the price to elites of permitting this activism is

relatively easy to bear. So what if there is a periodic

mass demo in Washington, stable in size and focus. As

long as dissent is going nowhere that threatens

basic interests, it is no big deal for elites.

This tells us that to have serious effects on policy we

need to demonstrate a trajectory of dissent in which

there are not only steadily growing numbers who reject a

policy we want changed, but also steadily more people

willing to demonstrate more militantly, as well as

steadily more people who are making broader connections

and becoming not just world trade dissidents, or prison

policy dissidents, or poverty dissidents, but

permanently pissed off opponents of elite rule and

wealth per se. A steadily enlarging trajectory of

dissent, growing in size and broadening in focus -- that

is most certainly a big deal for elites, a social cost

they must address.

We therefore need movements congenial to new

participation and welcoming as many new people as

possible into dissent, and which propel folks to become

ever more conscious and aware, ever more militant, and

ever more diverse in their priorities. This communicates

what elites don'twant to hear ,danger to their status.

If our dissent about the IMF, or Mumia's continued

incarceration, or worsening distributions of income, or

burgeoning defense spending and collapsing

infrastructure and education, has a component that goes

beyond the immediate target to talk about corporate

power and other defining oppressive social structures

and hierarchies per se, that is good. If it has a

component that goes beyond taking a visible but

relatively calm stand to also being civilly disobedient,

that too is good. If it can link-up concerns of gender,

race, ecology, economic poverty and disempowerment here

in the U.S. with global economic concerns, that too is

good. If it can stretch its members' focus to encompass

the diverse priorities of many movements, that is

excellent.

The policy-related logic of dissent is therefore simple:

Growing numbers plus broadening consciousness and

deepening commitment each of which are carried through

in constructive empowering ways says to elites, look at

this trajectory. If you keep on with this global

economics or police or welfare or other oppressive

agenda you favor, not only will there be steadily more

opponents of that, but there will also be steadily more

folks questioning your elite position in society and the

conditions that give you your power and wealth. If we

hold demonstrations that convey that threat, you can bet

they will hear us.

What Form and Focus for Protest?

What form and focus for protest? Whatever galvanizes

constituencies to display a trajectory of dissent that

can win change is good. But that shouldn'tbe the whole

story. One part of a good approach to a problem such as

a heinous war, the IMF, growing police repression, or

battering, is certainly to target an associated policy

for termination (like the IMF) or for implementation

(like a full employment act or affirmative action), and

then mount campaigns to win the aim. Such gains better

the lives of deserving beneficiaries, which is our

immediate priority. But struggles for justice should

have another dimension as well, a more far-seeing

dimension.

We should seek immediate reduction of injustices or

implementation of desirable programs, of course, but we

should also seek to change the basic defining relations

of society that breed injustices and impede liberation

in the first place. And these short- and long-term

agendas should be mutually supporting. The short-term

effort to force elites to alter some major program or

policy benefits when elite's worry that the growing

short-term opposition will ultimately challenge their

overall power and position. Likewise, the struggle to

permanently alter defining power, wealth, gender, and

cultural relations benefits when immediate victories we

win increase prospects for further activism and empower

new structures of struggle.

The point is, when we demonstrate at a town hall, a

corporate headquarters, a party convention, the capital

mall, or the IMF's international meetings, we should not

only try to win some immediate aims ,remove the toxic

dump, raise our pay, restore affirmative action, free

Mumia and Leonard, end the IMF, make reparations, end

the bombing, raise the minimum wage ,we should also try

to build a movement that fights to remove the causes of

all injustice, overcoming the totality of oppressions

and unleashing a world of liberation.

But this means we need to choose our focuses, methods,

and organizational approaches so as to both strengthen

the immediate prospects of victory around short-run aims

and to also propel the longer term on-going effort of

movement building. Both agendas are important, and they

should be mutually supporting. In this light, here are

five things I think Convention demonstrators and

organizers and indeed all demonstrators and organizers

ought address as problems we currently need to solve in

our work.

Solidarity and Autonomy: The Umbrella Problem

Movements elevate different priorities because people

endure different conditions depending on race, gender,

class, and diverse other factors. This diversity of

orientation is good, but that our movements often don't

aid one another, or even compete with one another, is

bad. In LA and Philly there will be feeder marches,

rallies, teach-ins, and all kinds of occurrences with

varying primary demands and agendas. This is perfectly

reasonable because different agendas need space to

develop, gain confidence, and retain focus, whether at

big gatherings or in the country more generally.

But to win, beyond space of their own, different agendas

also need breadth of allegiance, which means each has to

benefit from the strength and character of the rest.

We thus need to solve the problem of respecting

diversity and even autonomy while simultaneously

building overarching solidarity. Even as we have our own

agendas, everyone must ultimately also be mutually

supportively fighting the totality of oppressions. One

big step in this direction will be for larger movements

to support smaller ones and for richer movements to help

pay the way of poorer ones, unreservedly, with people's

bodies and with resources too. That's something worth

working on in our convention organizing, and beyond.

Keeping Folks Involved: The Stickiness Problem

Millions of people come into proximity of the left,

participating in various events and projects, but later

leave. There are many reasons why people often don't

\"stick with it.\" Not least, however, a movement that can

persevere over the long haul with continuity and

commitment needs to uplift rather than harass its

membership, to enrich its members' lives rather than

diminish them, to meet its members' needs rather than

neglect them.

To join a movement and become lonelier is not the way

forward. To join a movement and become less humorous is

not the way forward. We need to prioritize making our

projects places that folks from all kinds of backgrounds

would want to spend their time even if it weren't the

moral and socially responsible thing to do. I don't mean

that changing the world can become all play and no work.

Movement building of course involves lots of tedium,

lots of hard work, and we can't always be doing

precisely what we prefer, much less precisely what we

would have preferred in a just world. But there is no

reason to make movement building as deadening as

possible, rather than as rich, varied, and rewarding as

possible.

Movement participation should provide people full,

diverse lives that real people can partake of, not

merely long meetings or obscure lifestyles so divorced

from social involvement that they preclude all but a

very few from partaking.

Our Values, Our Movement: Our Own Structural Adjustment

Problem

We seek to end racism and sexism in society. We know

that to be credible at that we must also persevere to

reduce and finally end racial and sexual hierarchies

inside our movements, because otherwise we are

hypocritical, we aren't inspiring, we suffer the ills of

these oppressions ourselves, our movements will not

attract or retain much less empower women and people of

color, and we also won't be able to retain our

anti-racist and anti-sexist priorities outwardly. There

is more work to be done on this score, but the insight

is good.

However, we also seek to end economic injustice and

class hierarchy in society. And we have to realize that

to be credible at that, it also has implications for how

we behave in our own movements. We must patiently,

calmly, and constructively restructure our movements so

that they no longer replicate corporate divisions of

labor and of decision-making power and market norms of

remuneration. This must become a priority to avoid

class-centered hypocrisy, to become inspiring, to not

suffer (or perpetrate) class alienations ourselves, to

attract, retain, and empower working people in our

efforts, and to retain our economic justice focuses

outwardly. Class, needs to be brought back into priority

alongside race and gender,not in place of them,and in

ways that address not only the ills of capital, but

those of high-level, decision-monopolizing, managerial

and \"coordinative\" workers, too, and, in particular, the

positive needs of labor.

Reaching Out: The Megaphone Problem

It is a constant refrain, \"how come you leftists are

always talking to the choir?\" Yes, there are probably

some activists who do this because it is easier than

reaching out to people we don't know who may disagree

with what we have to say, and who may even be hostile at

times. Leftists with this insular attitude ought to

rethink it, of course. But the main explanation for why

people on the left are most often talking to people who

are also on the left or who already wish to be on the

left, is that the left doesn't have a megaphone that we

can shout into that is loud enough to be heard by folks

who aren't already all ears to our messages.

Our media is still very small and therefore reaches

overwhelmingly only folks who are already looking for

it. We reach the choir because only the choir is in

position to hear or see our shows, plays, print

communications. So we need to strengthen our existing

alternative media, supporting and enlarging it, and we

need to pressure mainstream media as well, but we also

need to take seriously the problem of how the left gains

media mechanisms that place left views, analyses,

agendas, and visions in the face of the whole population

rather than appearing only in hard-to-find nooks and

crannies that people have to search for to even know we

exist.

Where To, and Why? The Vision Problem

\"What are you for\" is another constant refrain from

those we try to organize, or from bystanders, and even

from many people in the movement, especially as they

sometimes feel doubts. It is a very fair question. And

the absence of good, accessible, shared answers ought

not be defended as somehow enlightened, nor justified as

accurately reflecting the difficulty of the issues. Pure

and simple, our absence of vision ought to embarrass us.

We need vision that is held openly and publicly, subject

to continual refinement and not shrouded in obscurity.

We need it about economics, political institutions and

law, families and kinship, culture, the ecology, and

international relations. We need it to inspire, provide

hope, inform criticism of what is, orient long-term

strategy and short-term program, and change us from

being mostly negative to being mostly positive. The

bottom line is, people in this country and around the

world long since know that the basics of society are

broken, or, more accurately, that they never worked

humanely in the first place, and that countless lives

are lost and endless souls sundered as a result. What

people doubt is that anything better is possible. If we

don't talk vision and strategy accessibly, compellingly,

and with breadth and depth, we aren't talking to the

real obstacles that prevent most people from seeking

change.

Pick Up the Tab: The Money Problem

Finally, there is a very odd condition in our movements.

We know that money matters in society, but we don't seem

to realize that money matters on the left too. Where

does it come from? How is it handled? Is it empowering a

few to the detriment of the many? Is there enough? Most

leftists don't know the answers because this topic is

basically taboo. Try to find essays and ruminations much

less proposals about how events, projects, and demos

should be funded; much less how the funds that do come

in should be redistributed among efforts. Mostly, you

can't. There is a gigantic silence.

Here's but one current example: There is endless talk on

the left about using the internet constructively, which

is good, but there is almost no talk about how to have

left internet operations generate revenues. Maybe this

sixth focus should have been called the Ostrich Problem.

At any rate, ignoring how we get and handle money is a

dead-end approach beneficial only to those who

monopolize control of what marginal monies the left now

enjoys. This too needs to be addressed.

So what's the bottom line? Why go to Philly? Why go to

LA? How should we go, with what priorities, slogans,

tactics? Even more important, why organize others to go

there, or to protest at home, and to keep involved in

the future? And why organize where you live, work, or go

to school, not just about these events, but more broadly

about social change generally? The answer is that we

protest and organize to raise the social cost to elites

of maintaining the policies we want changed and to

thereby force immediate gains benefiting those now

suffering most. And the answer is that we organize to

empower and enlighten diverse constituencies and to

create lasting beachheads of organization and commitment

in an on-going process of movement building aiming at

fundamental ,and yes, revolutionary -- change.<\/p>\n","contact":"sysop@zmag.org","link":"www.zmag.org","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/plain","summary":"Why Protest the Conventions?","numcomment":0,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/why_puv8cja.txt","filesize":"21.2 kibibytes","article_url":"\/news\/2000\/06\/103.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[]}