“The gesture, historic and symbolic, was very calming and felt right at the moment” Jaye Robinson City councillor

When city councillors turned their backs on Mayor Rob Ford on Nov. 14, the day of his most public disgrace, they were practising a civil protest. This brief moment of shunning turned out to be more powerful than words.

Councillors silently swung their chairs away from him every time the mayor spoke — even in what should have been a bright spot when he presented a charity cheque for the sale of bobble head dolls in his likeness.

“Council meetings have been horrible experiences for months,” says councillor Jaye Robinson of the mood that day. “I keep saying this is nothing new. You feel you need therapy after every meeting.”

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After Ford spoke crudely on live television about oral sex, he went into city council where Councillor Michael Del Grande, once a Ford loyalist, turned his back. Other councillors followed. It unfolded in an “organic” way, says Robinson.

“The gesture, historic and symbolic, was very calming and felt right at the moment.”

Silence can have that effect.

Turning one’s back is a classic way of showing disapproval. It’s number 54 on Gene Sharp’s list — he’s the father of modern nonviolent resistance — of effective methods of protest.

Given Ford’s outrageous, seemingly unhinged behaviour, should the mayor — now stripped of most of his governing authority after admitting he used crack cocaine in one of his “drunken stupors” — be deprived of a speaker’s platform? Should the crowd at last Sunday’s Argos game have turned away from him? Should media mikes be turned off for a while?

Ben Giguère, an applied social psychologist at the University of Guelph, says one way to change inappropriate behaviour is to stop reinforcing it. An effective way to do that with a public figure like the mayor is to ignore him when he acts wrongly. It’s classic reinforcement — ignore bad behaviour, reinforce good.

“When individuals act inappropriately they get no attention. In a case like the mayor’s that would mean no news reporters waiting outside his house, everyone ignores him, including the public.”

Once the mayor starts behaving reasonably, he could return to normal social engagement and a media platform.

“If such a change was possible, I think this is the type of response that could change this whole thing around.”

Giguère, who does research on reducing alcohol consumption, says social exclusion, particularly if it involves teasing and ridicule, is not usually beneficial. It’s painful and can cause psychological distress.

Ignoring someone has to be linked to a specific behaviour that the wrongdoer can recognize, he says.

“It’s not me as a whole person they are rejecting — it’s because of something specific I do. Let me see what I can do to change this.”

University of Toronto anthropologist Dylan Clark interpreted the councillors actions in turning away from Ford this way:

“You’ve stopped being civil Rob Ford; you’ve been selfish, rule-breaking and threatened public safety. You’ve dishonoured all of us and you are out of our community. We won’t afford you the minimum of respect we would our political adversaries. This is a civil way of being uncivil.”

While Clark says council members’ back turning has symbolic weight and is more effective than shouting down a speaker, he doubts that shunning Ford will lead to any real change.

“He’s deliberately creating an us-and-them discourse. It’s me against the Liberals, me against the Star, he wants that black-and-white divide. It’s in his interest to have the discursive war. So shunning won’t work.”

Yet, Clark observes, there has already been a form of shunning. The CFL commissioner asked the mayor not to come to Argos’ playoff game this month. Santa Claus parade organizers also asked him not to march in his official role on that same day.

“Has any mayor in human history been uninvited to a Santa parade? I thought that really was a turning of the back.”

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School tours of City Hall have stopped for the time being; there was a smaller audience than expected when the mayor spoke at Casa Loma Thursday night; Iceberg brand vodka doesn’t want to be associated with the mayor.

“If it became a mass movement, it would be really amazing to see,” says Clark. “A radical form of protest.”

At Conrad Grebel University College in Waterloo, Marlene Epp’s graduate students in her class on non-violent protest had a thoughtful addendum.

Shunning Ford as a public leader was appropriate, she says. Any exclusion should be followed by constructive work to improve the system.

“Students also said that nonviolent resistance, in the Gandhian sense, must include a stance and gesture of love, compassion and recognition of suffering in the opponent.”

Shunning is still used in some religious communities, including Mennonite, Amish and Jehovah’s Witness. A Biblical verse instructs believers: “not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner” and not to share a meal with such a person.

“Shunning, as it has been used amongst some Mennonites, has been very harsh and damaging to the individuals when it has not been accompanied by sincere and human efforts to ‘make things right,’ ” says Epp.

Turning one’s back has been used in a secular context before:

At Margaret Thatcher’s April funeral procession by several hundred demonstrators objecting to “a waste of money” for a state funeral;

At the Durban climate change conference in 2011, when youth delegates turned their back on Peter Kent, then Canada’s federal environment minister. The youths were kicked out of the conference;

At George Bush’s second inaugural parade;

At Costa Rica’s National Stadium this year, when most fans turned their back on FIFA’s flag, protesting a decision about an appeal of an earlier game against the U.S., played in a Colorado blizzard.

Turning one’s back as a political statement has weight, says Claude Latulippe, a retired Air Force logistics officer. On Remembrance Day, he turned his back when a representative of Conservative MP Mark Strahl laid a cenotaph wreath in Chilliwack, B.C.

Latulippe, 65, has been battling the Tory government’s New Veterans Charter, which offers vets a lump-sum payment instead of a life pension, and other grievances that have reduced care and service for recent vets.

“Because it was a sacred day, it made all the more difficult for some veterans to turn their backs,” he says. “For soldiers of my generation, we were taught to obey and fall in line. When it comes down to questioning authority, it’s been a very difficult thing to get people together.”

Back in T.O., is it likely that Ford will benefit from the quiet censure from his peers? Sadly, no.

It was good for council to appear dignified and unified, says councillor Robinson. As for the mayor:

“The remarkable thing is, I feel he didn’t even notice.”