Partisanship, Protests and Tactics

Protests have become pretty common place over the past few months. There's no shortage of causes, issues or injustices. Plus, protesting has a long and important history throughout civilization and in our country. There are those who try to present protest as their own concept of democracy and their constitution, but truth be told, the concept of protest goes as far back as humanity and its earliest development. Tactics have evolved and changed along with all of us and all of the things we do.

In the many movements that I'm aware of, there have always been tactical discussions, sometimes arguments and even splits among participants. Protests start as a reaction to something and evolve into discussions about how to best react to the identified issue. Some affected individuals feel more strongly then others and inevitably some, who may not even be affected, join in to manipulate the activity and ultimately the outcome. It's an old story and will continue to be repeated as time churns on.

All of this is worth a discussion as we face issues today around the environment, economic fairness, the US Presidential election, guns and violence to name just a few issues.

I come from a tradition of nonviolent protest and civil disobedience. The kind of protest practiced by and encouraged by Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, Cesar Chavez and many more. These leaders of the nonviolent movement understood both the moral and tactical aspects of their acts of civil disobedience and non cooperation with civil authorities. They understood that their actions in many cases would lead to their arrest and jail sentences, some significant and others minimal.

Although there are still some leaders and believers in non violent civil disobedience, there seem to be many more who view protest and the protest movement as confrontational in nature, stoking violence and participating themselves in violent responses. We can usually predict the outcome. Violence begets violence and the cycle continues.

Too much shouting, too much name calling, too much closed mindedness for me. I tend to believe that a non violent response to violence has a major impact on the perpetrator of violence as well as on the audience viewing the violence. That's its power. Public opinion and authorities in power can and have been swayed by non violent actions.

But in todays environment of confrontational protests, audiences, authorities and even participants become confused over positions and support. It is easy to find fault with everyone and as a result the status quo continues. The status quo of yelling past each other, not taking any time to listen, raising fists, etc. We'd all be better off taking a little more time to step back and talk to each other.