Civil Disobedience: A two- (or three-) pronged approach

Posted by admin on Saturday, September 24, 2011 · 3 Comments

By Diego DuBois

Diego DuBois is a white anarchist with distant ties to the DREAM movement.

Prongs One and Two: “Our Version of Guerrilla Warfare”

A comrade now agitating on the East Coast texted me this morning: “I’m feeling really hopeful by the amount of CD that’s happening across all sectors. The environmental groups, anti-bank, tax the rich groups, the dreamers. It’s our version of guerrilla warfare.”

I had just given her the heads up that “the dream is coming” to her area, and her observation provides a welcome relief from the already-stale polemic over civil disobedience within the DREAM movement.

Rather than getting into one “side” of the debate–which has tended to limit itself to “should we/shouldn’t we,” her outsider perspective has transcended the dialectic and made an organic connection to the larger movement for social justice and human rights.

Every day for the past ten days, an average of 70 people have been arrested in front of the White House in protest of the new oil pipeline from the Alberta tarsands to the fragile and still-recovering Gulf Coast.

At shareholders meetings, parishioners from organized churches have been arrested for sitting in for more merciful mortgage modifications to save the homes of struggling families.

And of course, DREAMers all over the country have been sitting in, stopping traffic, and otherwise putting their bodies on the line to force the immigration issue.

“Our version of guerrilla warfare” indeed. CD is about as militant as Americans get before they start falling out of the mainstream–not that we don’t have a rich tradition of the use of militant tactics in this country, but rather, particularly in the past 30 years, the use

of those tactics has largely fallen into the hands of the radical right.

After the state-inflicted demise of the Panthers, the incarceration and disbanding of the Weather Underground, and the absorption of the daringest of the Chicano movement activist into the mainstream labor and Democratic folds, only the Minutemen of the 1980s, the anti-choice fanatics, the McVeighs and the nazis of this country have been willing

to use violence for political purposes.

An unstated embracing of non-violence is the reason for the marginalization of violence and militancy–a hypocritical stance, of course, in light of the public’s apathy toward the wars, police brutality (unless the victim is white), and the economic violence of

the waged-work system.

In leftoid training and strategy sessions, there is discussion of using the “inside/outside” strategy: in a nutshell, having people or organizations that work closely with or even in “the system” (elected representatives and appointed officials, boards, etc.) work in tandem

with people and organizations who work “outside” the system (holding marches and protests, doing civil disobedience, building alternative institutions, etc.), using the corresponding group for either “insider” or “outsider” tactics when strategically useful.

Few, however, remember the true origins of the “inside/outside” tactic: The strategic use of dual-winged movements ultimately sharing the same end. In this strategy, one wing uses arms while the other espouses non-violence, either severing all (or almost all) ties

between the two wings or taking great pains to hide them.

The best-known examples of the use of this tactic are probably in the Irish anticolonial struggle (Sinn Fein’s nonviolence balancing out the IRA’s armed struggle), the Indian anticolonial struggle (Gandhi’s satyagraha being complemented by Subhas Chandra Bose’s armed movement), and in the US-based Black power movement, where the nonviolence most famously expressed by Dr. King was enhanced by the militancy of brother Malcolm, the early Panthers, and the Black Liberation Army.

In these movements, the strategic use of tactics such as bombings, kidnappings, and bank expropriations forced the oppressors to opt for negotiation for concessions to the least-threatening–in both tactics and ideology–side of the movement rather than risk losing everything in a bloody revolution.

The missing element in the CD strategy of the DREAM movement, then, is a bigger and more dangerous threat to the system than a traffic jam or some staffer not being able to get into her office. A force fightening enough to make the pro-American, pro-capitalist dreamers look waaaay better by comparison.

But how to go about it without making the DREAMers look bad and have the average TV-watcher turn against them entirely? Who could possibly do such things and yet still be able to convincingly disassociate themselves from the DREAMers?

My suggestion: white anarchists. It’s not something anybody undocumented should sully their hands with, of course. On the other hand, if white activists truly want to renounce (or make use of) their white privilege, what better way is there than by risking severe

prison time for their brown sans-papiers brothers and sisters?

Not only do they have the privilege to do some crazy shit and face less punishment for it than anyone brown would, but they are also far enough away from the DREAM movement so as not to besmirch it with their use of proletarian rage.

While present in the larger immigrant rights movement (more because of a vision of human liberty that transcends capricious political borders than out of the desire to see their brothers and sisters get “papers” and so they can comply with the state by paying taxes and joining the Elks Club and some capitalist political party), white anarchists have

remained on its periphery–and have definitely been distanced from the DREAM movement.

The highest profile incident exemplifying this distancing was the Phoenix anti-Arpaio march of January 16, 2010, when the forces of state repression isolated the members of the anarchist bloc from the rest of the processioners and attacked the shit out of them without

any provocation. (Predictably, the reformist majority of the manifestation repudiated, rather than defended their radical sisters and brothers.)

Race and messaging made the distiction clear enough so that even the cops could make it. Because despite the great progress APOC has made toward coloring the anarchist movement, anti-authoritarianism remains a predominantly-white ideology in this country.

Furthermore, it almost goes without saying that anarchism is one of the few ideologies whose adherents continue to be willing to use direct action in the class struggle despite the pervasiveness of the surveillance state. The anarchists are one of the few groups that

might actually have the courage to go beyond sitting in.

Only real guerrilla warfare, in addition to “our version of guerrilla warfare” can create enough of a threat to force the state into making such reforms as passing the DREAM Act, the mildness of DREAM notwithstanding.

Prong Three: “The Peaceful Alternative”

I think it’s fantastic that people believe in something so much that they are willing to take huge risks and make large sacrifices for it. You don’t see that kind of determination often. I also think it’s fantastic that the youth are taking the initiative to lead without waiting to be told how to do so by the older generation, and that they are pushing the boundaries of what is “acceptable”–or even “possible.”

But civil disobedience isn’t enough to get CIR or even just DREAM passed. A lot more solidarity work needs to be done. DREAMers have now become comfortable telling their stories, coming out of the shadows, getting unafraid and getting free.

But where is the corresponding response from civil society? The DREAMers are finally speaking. But who is listening?

Where is the employer who is willing to publicly flaunt employment laws and, in an act of civil disobedience, employ an undocumented student?

Where is the DMV worker who is willing to overlook the SSN requirement on a driver’s license application, and grant the first DREAMer a license as an act of civil disobedience?

The students from the DREAM movement are valiant, but at this point, with no hope of a future without legalization, they have nothing to lose. What about the responsibility of the comfortable? When will they step up and risk something for a cause larger than any single

individual, stick their necks out just ’cause it’s the right thing to do? That’s the day I’m waiting for and I’m pushing for. That truly would be a DREAM come true.