Protest Is the Bedrock of Democracy

The world is suffering through interesting times right now—and I use the word “interesting” in the same context as the supposedly (and apocryphally) Chinese malediction “may you live in interesting times.”  In my own country (the United States), we are now undergoing a layering of protest against racial injustice on top of the pandemic concerns.  There are a lot of opinions on this out there, and I wonder if anyone still reading things on the Internet like this post has an opinion unformed enough to be changed.  I suspect not.  I suspect that we all just read and watch the things we already believe, so that we can feel good about how sound our beliefs are, and don’t do much challenging of them.  I don’t exclude myself from any of my criticism, of course, but then that’s why I named this blog what I did.

Nonetheless, I have listened to a few opinions that dissent from my own—probably not as many as I should, but a few.  I have to confess, though, that I’m a little puzzled this time.  That is, on many issues, I can at least understand where people are coming from, even though I don’t agree with them.  If you say that it’s wrong to steal money from the rich via the gunbarrel of taxes, and we should just rely on their generosity to support charitable works, I understand that point of view.  It’s crazy, of course—it didn’t fly for Scrooge, and it doesn’t fly today—but at least I see where you’re coming from.  If you say that your holy text tells you that non-heterosexual non-cisgendered people are an abomination, I of course violently oppose your viewpoint, but at least I know which religious passages you’re wilfully misreading.  This one though ...

I understand racism, at least a little.  I am, after all, related to a lot of racists.  If I were to tot up all of my blood relatives, I would feel pretty confident in coming up with more racists than not, even considering that a lot of the most racist ones have done the nation the great service of dying.  I understand that the majority of it stems from not understanding any culture outside their own, from the systemic dehumanization that was the foundation of slavery in this country, and from being educated in systems that didn’t address any of those issues on the grounds that this was “too delicate” to discuss with children.  At this point in history, it really requires a stubborn insistence on ignorance, but at least I understand the root causes.  But, okay: say you hate black people.  They’re less than human, you’re sure of it.  Now, how do you then take the leap to say it’s okay for police officers to kill innocent people without repercussion?

Because, you understand that the legal systems in place that protect the cops don’t just protect them when they kill black people, right?  It so happens that they tend to kill more black people than anyone else, and that’s why this issue has become centered on race, because figuring out why the police are more likely to kill blacks than whites (or even Hispanics, or Native Americans, or Asian Americans, etc) is a pretty damned important thing to figure out.  But the truth is, the police kill all of those types of people, and probably plenty more besides, and they are protected from prosecution for murder regardless of whether the victim was innocent, whether the officer in question followed procedures or not, or a million other things.  Are all police killings murder?  No, of course not.  But how can we know how many of them are when there is no way for the officers to be held accountable ... hell, not even any way to simply track how many deaths there are.  No matter how racist you are, I can’t see how you can be comfortable knowing that, if a cop decides to shoot you in the street tomorrow, there will not be any consequences.

And I also understand the fact that protests are inconvenient.  I understand that, when Colin Kaepernick takes a knee in the middle of the anthem while you’re just trying to enjoy watching a football game, that’s irksome.  But I don’t believe that anyone on Fox news actually believes it when they try to argue that this is the not the “right” time to protest.  The national anthem is not the right time to protest, right after a mass shooting is not the right time to protest, right now right here in my very own city: that’s not the right time to protest, people say.  But of course, this is a moronic argument.  If the protest didn’t disrupt your life, it wouldn’t be much of a protest, would it?  Of course “this” is not the right time to protest, no matter when “this” is, because the wrong time to protest is the only time to protest.  If there was such a thing as a “right” time to protest, protesting then would be meaningless.  And, again: regardless of how you feel about the protestors, you already know this.

Even more incomprehensible to me are the people trying to say that protesting is itself undemocratic, somehow.  Many of these same people claim to be students of American history, claim to idolize the founding fathers.  So obviously they know that this country was founded on protests.  We were protesting unjust government by the British, not being treated equally with citizens in the motherland, taxation without representation ... remember that great American slogan?  That meant that the government was taking money and not listening to those they took it from.  That was worth protesting.  But now some say that it’s not okay for the government to take lives and not listen to those they take them from?  How can anyone reconcile this position?

Though it’s written in a different time, for a different issue, in a different country, I feel these words from a British student protestor still have relevance today:

Those who take to the streets, or engage in direct action, don’t have lobbyists to fight our corners. This is the only power that people can exercise, beyond box ticking in a ballot once every five years. Protest is vital to our democracy, giving a voice to those with no platform or privilege. So next time you read about troublemaking activists, wait before passing judgment.

And yet this is not just a matter of people talking: the police themselves are more often than not taking the attitude that protestors are the enemy.  Not just through tactics of violence against them, which is already deplorable, but through tactics such as not allowing protestors to leave so that they can then arrest them for being out past some arbitrary curfew.  And localities are encouraging this by instituting more and more ridiculous curfews: I heard Stephen Colbert ridicule some places recently for 6pm curfews, but I’d say his research team needs to step up their game: here in Los Angeles, where I live, many localities are declaring 4pm curfews.  Is anyone even trying to justify this?  What justification could you even give, apart from trying to curtail or even eliminate protests, or to have a legal excuse to arrest people?

I’m even going a step further: to hear conservative pundits rail on about the horrors of looting, and what terrible people these must be ... again, are these not the same people who claim to idolize the founding fathers?  What the fuck do they think the Boston Tea Party was?  It was a massive, coordinated act of looting, which resulted in property damage of over a million dollars by today’s standards.  This is what the major conservative organization in America is named after, for fuck’s sake!  And now they want to turn up their nose when people are looting?  The hypocrisy is so rank you can taste it.

Look, I’m not advocating looting.  It’s terrible if you’re a small business owner, minding your own business and someone breaks your windows and takes your shit.  But we live in a capitalist society and, the sad truth is, if no one’s losing money, no one’s taking action.  I’m sorry, but in our country the bottom line is the bottom line.  Once the rich people start losing money over this issue, then we’ll damn well see some action taken in the government to fix it.  Am I happy that this is the fucked up way our country works?  Of course not.  But I’m not going to try to deny it either.

I guess the biggest thing I can’t understand is how anyone can continue to support Trump.  The man literally had people shot and gassed for a photo op.  Some of the people shot with rubber bullets and gassed with tear gas were journalists; others were clergy and lay members of the church Trump desired to stand in front of.  Sure, you could argue that Trump denies that they ever used tear gas, but but do you expect me to believe that you trust the word of a man who lies so often that he constantly contradicts himself over the word of dozens if not hundreds of eyewitnesses, one of whom is a Catholic rector?  Seriously?  This is the philosophical equivalent of plugging your ears and screaming “la la la I can’t hear you!” at the top of your lungs.  I understand that you can make such a statement.  I just can’t understand that you could do so sincerely.  I don’t buy it.  You know in your heart what is true.  You know what is right.  It’s time for us all to be honest with each other.  It’s time for us all to stand up for what we believe in, rather than just paying lip service to it.  It’s time for us all to stop trying to make our side “win” ... it’s time for us to just be human and strong and do what we know is right.

Links to things I think everyone should watch:

• Trevor Noah talks about the falling dominoes
• Wes Moore points out that the most peaceful protests come from the most peaceful police
• Roy Wood Jr tells us to take the pot off the stove
• Cory Booker says that we need love
• Hasan Minhaj makes a passionate appeal to Asian Americans
• the mayor of Washington DC renames the site of Trump’s atrocity Black Lives Matter Plaza