Conventions are normally hum-drum affairs, with all the charm of a Jerry Lewis telethon. The Democrats hope to extend the Kamala honeymoon by having a festive, well-publicized, and problem-free event. The recent big wave of anti-Israel-genocide protests and possible anti-immigration demonstrations are looming threats. If either happens on any scale, it’s all too easy to make comparisons to Chicago 1968.
That also means the incentives for the dominant Democratic-party friendly media to minimize any effective political action will be strong. That means good odds of under-reporting on any embarrassing scuffles or ambushing of officials or participants. It also means the protests will be held up to artificially high standards for result.
This post is intended to raise some questions as opposed to deliver answers. Activists in our readership and those familiar with theory and practice of protest and social change are encouraged to speak up.
Sadly, the group with the most expertise in using protests and other means of effecting change is the CIA. That would also suggest that they could readily devise the playbook as to how to undermine their usual moves. Have any readers come across scholarly or good journalistic work seeking to reverse engineer the CIA color revolution manual? Or does it involve too many hard to replicate measures, like finding promising young people and getting them indoctrinated educated in the US?
Many readers decry the idea of violent or even merely inconvenience-creating actions. Frederick Douglass disagrees:
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress
How do we think about whether protests “work”? The officialdom and media have done a very good job of persuading the great unwashed public that organized resistance is ineffective. And in many senses that is correct because it takes so long to move the Overton Window and effect change. From a 2010 post:
It’s astonishing to see how Americans have been conditioned to think that political action and engagement is futile. I’m old enough to have witnessed the reverse, how activism in the 1960s produced significant advances in civil rights blacks and women, and eventually led the US to exit the Vietnam War.
I’m reminded of this sense of despair almost daily in the comments section. Whenever possible action steps come up, virtually without fail, quite a few will argue that there is no point in making an effort, that we as individuals are powerless.
I don’t buy that as a stance, particularly because trained passivity is a great, low cost way to hobble people who have been wronged. I mistakenly relegated an article by Johann Hari in the Independent on this topic to Links, and Richard Kline’s commentary on it made me realize it deserved its own post, so I am remedying that error now.
As Kline observed:
The nut of the matter is this: you lose, you lose, you lose, you lose, they give up. As someone who has protested, and studied the process, it’s plain that one spends most of one’s time begin defeated. That’s painful, humiliating, and intimidating. One can’t expect typically, as in a battle, to get a clean shot at a clear win. What you do with protest is just what Hari discusses, you change the context, and that change moves the goalposts on your opponent, grounds out the current in their machine. The nonviolent resistance in Hungary in the 1860s (yes, that’s in the 19th century) is an excellent example. Communist rule in Russia and its dependencies didn’t fail because protestors ‘won’ but because most simply withdrew their cooperation to the point it suffocated.
So let’s return to the headline issue. How do you benchmark particular protests or protest programs? Please do not point out the obvious, that this question seems to contradict the notion right above, that protest does not result in fast, easy, or even much visible wins, but slowly grinds away at the legitimacy and foundations of support for the behavior being targeted.
Yet one of the ways to tamp down demonstrations and other forms of opposition is to subject them to performance tests or expected results that movement members never had. For instance, it’s common to criticize Occupy Wall Street for not achieving anything, even though its members never promised that. The fact that it is still remembered even though the original occupation in New York City lasted all of two months until it was cleared as part of a 17-city paramilitary crackdown shows its very existence in representing the 99% v. the 1% (that was their meme and it has endured) shows it did have an impact, and was perceived as a threat. The press regularly insisted that Occupy serve up leaders and present demands, which it never did. Its cumbersome collective decision-making process was an impediment to action, but was arguably a good vehicle for what in the 1960s was called consciousness-raising.
Or consider Black Lives Matter. It was starting to get traction, witness even some Congresscritters taking up the poorly-formulated and therefore discrediting demand to defund the police. But by that point, it had already been infiltrated by Democrats, with actual or pliable potential leaders bought off with various paid opportunities. Lambert can fill in vastly more detail, but even yours truly noticed that the co-opting process started around when Black Lives Matter started organizing die-ins, which got high levels of white and Hispanic participation.
More recently, I’ve had readers and contacts depict the late spring wave of US campus protests as ineffective because they saved no Palestinian lives. But even though this is the ultimate aim (and sadly looks unlikely to be achieved absent an escalation of Axis of Resistance action, which as we all know risks all sorts of collateral consequences), they had specific demands, such as that school endowments divest holdings in Israel-related ventures (which frankly have to be miniscule) and supporting the BDS movement. Even though the tangible impact on these fronts seems marginal at best, as far as I can tell, an effect of the protests was to greatly increase the media’s willingness to use the word genocide. It also exposed the power of Zionist billionaires in stomping on the schools and threatening to ruin the careers of student protestors.
There is no reason to think these protests won’t continue when the school year resumes, and so the soft costs of backing Israel will continue to increase.
These examples underscore the difference in timescales, that for most reform campaigns, progress is so slow and hard to discern that it’s easy to dismiss them as unproductive. And that’s before getting to subversion or simply trying to crush them out of existence, as we saw with the recent wave of campus anti-Israel genocide uprisings.
So the expected anti-genocide and anti-immigration protests at the Democratic Convention are vanishingly unlikely to produce a strategic win, absent a horrible miscalculation by the police that turns participants into martyrs.
What type of tactical gains could they achieve? This is a partial list:
Increasing morale among their sympathizers, perhaps at the margin increase participation and other support
Get media attention. Donald Trump has shown that there is no such thing as bad press
Show that they have power, by virtue of numbers or cleverness of tactics undermining the Kamala party. This might be more consequential than it appears. The Democrats hope to keep the ‘gasm going through elections. Effective protests, even if way below Chicago ’68 levels of disruption, could undermine the party efforts to project a Kamala win as inevitable
The venues, United Center and McCormick Place, are already being cordoned off, so demonstrations at the site. beyond stragglers somehow getting close enough to make a fuss and being quickly removed, is na ga happen. .
So what about outside? Again this is not my area, but the recent protestor blockage of the 405, a major highway in Los Angeles, suggests that strangling transportation arteries is not hard and has high payoff, at least in terms of getting attention.
Chicago has a major point of vulnerability: the Kennedy Expressway, which goes from downtown Chicago to O’Hare airport. It is also a major commuter road. There is a good public train from the airport to downtown, but it is highly unlikely to have the capacity to replace the expressway if protestors were to stop traffic for any length of time. I’ve had cabs take the streets rather than the expressway at peak traffic times. Few knew how to do that, and the route is a bit convoluted. Of course, with GPS, knowledge is no barrier, but those side streets would presumably get choked pretty quickly too.
McCormick Place is isolated, meaning it is already a logistical hassle for convention participants to get there from their hotels. A convention is like a fashion show; one big point is to show foot soldiers a good time. So the use of McCormick Place undermines that at the margin. McCormick Place is also near a big highway, and former Chicagoans tell me they think it would not be hard to block that and chock traffic around that convention center.
Having said all that, ironically the test here is likely not old-school effective action, which depended on scale to show the protestors had mass or at least considerable numbers, but the ability to generate video vignettes that could and do go viral and succeed in amplifying protestor positions. But we’ll see soon enough if Team Dem has successfully pre-positioned its anti-agitator measures, or whether the demonstrators manage to dent the plan to have a glossy, friction-free event.
I’m vaguely recalling the TPP protest at the 2016 convention, where delegates coordinated to hold up placards and chant. Clinton had already been “softening her position” on TPP but the protest took place anyway and whatever her preference, Clinton dropped it from her platform. Pundits later argued the protest was ineffective embarrassing etc.
See pics in article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/26/how-the-tpp-became-the-most-divisive-policy-in-the-democratic-party/
A similar tactic might be resuscitated and adapted for a convention floor protest in support of Palestine and calling for restraint on Israel.
“On the call [by two college professors in the Los Angeles Times] not to protest in Chicago”:
https://consortiumnews.com/2024/08/08/on-the-call-not-to-protest-in-chicago/
Protests at the 1964 Atlantic City convention included Democrats NOT seating Fannie Lou Hamer’s Black MS delegates (BUT, Goldwater!) Anybody, at Debbie’s 2016 DNC who’s still a Democrat…
NEVER mind!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gC_9lULJnCg
I remember the protests at the 1972 conventions on Miami Beach. One of the big coordinating venues was south of the convention centre at Flamingo Park. That was where many of the ‘out of town’ “hippies” congregated; and lived for the week. Name musical acts gave free concerts, free food was scrabbled up, the weather cooperated, and the dedicated protesters got together to strategize and prepare. Chicago needs such a central gathering spot.
Secondly, expect dirty tricks on the part of the Organs of State Security. One of the conventions in Miami had a riot on the last day, conveniently televised as an example of the barbaric nature of the political left in America. (News droids said just that with straight faces at the time.) However, the riot was started by the Organs of State Security. I know because I was there. So, be prepared for some real street battles.
The level of anxiety among the elites is high today. The elites will overreact to any perceived threats to their power. Having reached near peak social demands for conformism, any dissent is now classed as treason.
Have some combat medics in the crowd of demonstrators. they will have lots of work during the present-day convention.
In true “create parallel institutions” fashion, the demonstrators would do well to pre position support services. Have a clinic available. Have showers and toilets ready. Have a public address system ready to go, and have a back up for this. The Organs of State Security will almost certainly try to shut any independent news sources down. Have flying squads ready to “intervene” to support and protect independent media. Blood will flow, but as long as the truth gets out, it will be a worthy sacrifice.
The Democrat Party today is looking a lot like an institution falling apart. The resort to strong arm politicking to perpetuate an ideology is a sign of weakness.
Finally, the protestors must at no time accept any restrictions on venues for demonstration. The idea of “free speech zones,” fenced off and out of sight of the main venue is the polar opposite of real free speech. It is managed speech. Prepare for street battles outside of the “approved speech zones.” The Organs of State Security will attack at the first sign of ‘non-compliance.’
Dissent has never really been a safe activity.
Stay safe. Be brave.
As Richard Kline observed:
The nut of the matter is this: you lose, you lose, you lose, you lose, they give up. As someone who has protested, and studied the process, it’s plain that one spends most of one’s time begin defeated.
Beckett, Waiting for Godot
ESTRAGON:
I can’t go on like this.
VLADIMIR:
That’s what you think.
And to paraphrase Gramsci: Pessimist because intelligence perceives facts, optimist because of one’s will.
I note ambrit’s list of good tactical suggestions directly above. I will also note that the organizations sponsoring marches in Chicago almost always have logistics under control. (I recall two exceptions, and they both also involved many, too many speakers up on the platform allowed to babble about any grievance in their heads.) By and large, Chicagoans are pretty good at demonstrating, as failed former mayors Emanuel and Lightfoot will be loath to admit.
Other pinch points worth noting are Lake Shore Drive, Cermak Road at Chinatown, and Grant Park.
The point of the Chicago protests is to indicate that there are large numbers of Democrats as well as many more non-party members who expect change on the issue of Palestine. (Now to get them to extend their ideas to Russia/Ukraine, Syria, and Venezuela.) The demonstration is a demand, not just an event.
What will the response from the Democrats inside McCormick Place be? Most likely a combination of studiously ignoring the protests (“studiously ignoring” is a major part of the U.S. ethos), scorn, and panic. Panic, as ever, but below the surface. Yes, the usual caterwauling about “being inconvenienced,” as if democratic forms are meant to be convenient. Hillary Clinton will be trotted out to provide the self-righteous boss-lady scorn.
The result, as the demonstrators should know in advance, is that the Democrats will not change in foreign policy. This is guaranteed, foreordained, the yoozh. Never ask a question that you don’t know the answer to in fraught situations such as this.
I hesitate to mention domestic policy and the urgency of getting single-payer health care in place as well as repealing Taft-Hartley and “right-to-work” laws to re-balance the workplace. The Democrats will finger-wag about the great economy and “so you want Trump.”
The defeat for the demonstrators should be clarifying for anyone outside in the streets with any dim hope that the Democrats will change.
Then the Joyful Campaign of Corndogs, Harris, and Walz is going to face a new reality. As I saw this spring with my near-Ivy, oh-so-glorious university, beating up a bunch of kids and college students doesn’t sit well with their peers and with many adults.
It’s hard to campaign on vague theological virtues like Hope, Heal, Compassion, and Belief when the party is conducting genocides-for-profit in Palestine and on the Ukrainian population.
Demonstrations? Sometimes, one just shows up and shuffles along. Failing, failing, failing. I’m a leftist. It is what we do.
“Won’t you please come to Chicago…. or else join the other side!”
Crosby Still Nash and Young.
Listen to the whole song.
I’ll add in this small song from Phil Ochs’s excellent response to the events at the Chicago demonstration that kicks off the track ‘William Butler Yeats Visits Lincoln Park and Escapes Unscathed,’ from his, “Live in Vancouver, 1969”:
Oh, where were you in Chicago?
You know I didn’t see you there
I didn’t see them crack your head
Or breathe the tear gas air
Oh, where were you in Chicago
When the fight was being fought?
Oh, where were you in Chicago?
‘Cause I was in Detroit
A scholar who participated in and wrote and spoke about protest many times was David Graeber. It’s years since I read Debt but I recall it talked about what’s known as the “anti-globalization movement”. Some of the specific goals of debt relief for poor nations were accomplished and people learned how WTO works for extract wealth from the poor nations to the rich.
Thanks, Yves, for this call to bring awareness and experience to the public scene.
I can only guess at the average age among the commentariat, but some of us have heard Ray McGovern urge those with silver hair to get in the streets. He has commented on the large number of supportive messages – he’s now in his 80s – that he’s gotten after getting roughed up by establishment agents. “The public don’t like seeing old people mistreated. The young, ‘they probably had it coming.’ ”
Seems to me there are a lot of alums who, like me, got positive education from fellow students during civil rights and antiwar struggles, who now have reason to help with today’s tough struggles.
I’m not sure if the protesters can be viewed as protesting. Among the few Harris campaign rallies I’ve seen, she asserted loudly and clearly that what is needed in Gaza is a ceasefire and peace. The response from the crowd is rousing cheers and applause. Harris seems totally aware that there is overwhelming support for that policy and it’s a guaranteed applause line. Thus, she’s basically on the side of the Gaza protesters.
I don’t expect Harris to denounce Biden and Netanyahu as war criminals or call for the end of apartheid in Israel: she needs to focus on Trump. Besides, she is a former prosecutor and would likely say, that’s for the courts to decide. And it would, of course, be better if she explicitly called for a permanent ceasefire.
Yet, the demonstrators could hold her feet to the fire and demand that she say, in the words of Joe Biden, she will do whatever it takes to establish peace and bring US foreign policy inline with international law.
If the DP turns Chicago into Tiananmen Square they’ll be in trouble. They can easily find common ground among the protesters and the people inside the convention. She could also send a message that support for Israel does not mean she has to support Netanyahu.
No she is not even remotely on the side of the protestors. She took Bibi aside in his visit to DC and said she’d support Israel.
Until we are willing to cut the weapons supply, there will be no peace, just more genocide.
And that clip you saw is a distortion. The protestors were not the ones behind her cheering.
There another segment which got a lot of approving circulation where she effectively told the protestors STFU, you are supporting Trump by making demands of me.
I love how you acerbically dismiss an entire class of protestor’s effectiveness metric. That’s why I love NC! You go, girl!
its so strange to me — there’s an unprecedented level of destruction happening for almost a year, in a location that’s been subject to some of the most draconian occupation policies for decades. The people and the country are quite literally being erased before the eyes of the world (I’m referring here to the systematic flattening of entire population sectors, the most likely goal of which seems to be some sort of grotesque social ‘reboot’), and the most common liberal response to those calling attention to it is that we should effectively be patient, waiting for an administrative turn-over that is months away (Harris would not start governing the day after the election), so that a Harris administration can effect change that they have yet to even hint they will enact. With more Palestinians lost to the world each hour and day.
How is this a platform point to be weighed and debated?
Victor, I read your call for protestors to trust Harris to eventually do the right thing if they stand down–in a timeline that will most likely see the full erasure of Gaza–and all I hear is echos of Nina Simone singing her brilliant “Mississippi Goddam” released in 1963:
Don’t tell me
I tell you
Me and my people just about due
I’ve been there so I know
They keep on saying “Go slow!”
But that’s just the trouble
“do it slow”
Washing the windows
“do it slow”
Picking the cotton
“do it slow”
You’re just plain rotten
“do it slow”
You’re too damn lazy
“do it slow”
The thinking’s crazy
“do it slow”
Where am I going
What am I doing
I don’t know
I don’t know
A few thoughts:
You ask if there is a manual for CIA color revolutions, and there is. OTPOR (Serbian movement) wrote it, patting themselves on the back about the effectiveness of their organizational form and the moral power of non-violence, only briefly mentioning the months of NATO bombs raining down on Milosevic. They used muti-level-marketing tactics for movement building, and, like many other NED-supported efforts, tons and tons of cash funnelled through NGOs, which is why it would be difficult to meaningfully apply their lessons here. This playback does not always work, it has to be pointed out.
With respect to the convention, and analogies to 68, IIRC 1 in 6 demonstrators in Chicago that year were undercover agents of one or the other agency. My late father was in a Marxist-Leninist party at the time, and had told me that many serious people skipped the convention because of the danger from agents-provocateurs.
Your thoughts on recent movements are helpful, especially regarding BLM having been infiltrated by Dems. I can tell you that, anecdotally, bog-standard Dems and MSNBC-types are not welcome in the Palestinian solidarity movement. I will bring up the issue with organizers I know, in case it hadn’t been conscious or intentional, which I suspect to be the case. There exists, I think, just a reflexive disgust for mainstream thinking, given the horrors it allows and dismisses. Exploring this could lead to a healthier, more long-lived movement. You are very much appreciated for this post, Yves.
“With respect to the convention, and analogies to 68, IIRC 1 in 6 demonstrators in Chicago that year were undercover agents of one or the other agency”
Yes!
(May be you could indeed expand on this.)
Actually the rather uninformed Aaron Sorkin used the undercover element to his advantage in the screenplay for his “Trial of the Chicago Seven” Biopic/court drama:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1070874/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_in_0_q_chicago%2520seven
May be NC staff wanna watch that?
It´s , er, on Netflix.
p.s. Sorkin did not know about this trial. And apparently a Steven Spielberg had to tell him about it, which is odd. And there are many political complexities he seems not to grasp. Unlike his peers from an earlier Hollywood generation. Nonetheless I really respect him as a craftsman.
The manual for color revolutions was written by Gene Sharp–The Politics of Nonviolent Action
Gene Sharp (1928-2018) was the world’s foremost expert on nonviolent revolution and has been described as the “Machiavelli of nonviolence.” In a lifetime of academic work, he has established nonviolent action and people power as successful instruments for political change. Sharp’s writings on nonviolent struggle have been used by social movements around the world, from the jungles of Burma to the streets of Serbia and Cairo’s Tahrir Square during the Arab Spring.
“Effective protests, even if way below Chicago ’68 levels of disruption, could undermine the party efforts to project a Kamala win as inevitable”
But not a single protester would support a Trump presidecy today. If that´s what undermining would mean.
There is no counter-culture any more which makes you wonder: Who will the adressee be of a protest?
What makes efforts unlike 1968 very boxed-in. Not an easy task.
I have been thinking back on discussions 2001 re: violence. An affiliate of the black block argued that raising the cost for both sides – protesters and the police – had been key in some cases at 1980s protests against German NPPs.
I was not well enough informed about what had been going on in the background back in the 1980s to judge that.
But in either case:
Be it Douglass be it the 1980s – you cannot just transfer practices of the past into today´s environment.
Media abuse the slightest notion of violence they can use as imagery. And you have lost a lot of sympathy.
Norman Finkelstein advised the protesters not to use “From the River to the Sea Palestine Will be Free” even though it´s a good slogan. It would have been perfect 40 years ago. Instead he opted for the other one, which, damn, I forgot. But it´s the one slogan they have been using. It´s the one about genocide.
The media and public environment have changed radically in the past 20 years alone.
I am sure the Chicago protesters will know what they´re doing.
One question though:
If the surveys are not fake, some say indie voters who could decide battelground states would vote for/against Harris based on her position on Gaza.
Now, would the Democrats really oppose Israel if it offered them the presidency?
I doubt that but it´s an interesting question.
Another topic would be “consciousness-raising”.
I have become critical of German environmental protest by now after seeing reactions of those who have to be won over. So blocking traffic – may be obviously – is not the right way. Neither blocking airports (the economic pressure on airlines won´t reach adequate levels.) Or throwing tomato can content (get the joke? 🙄) at the Mona Lisa.
US protesters as often appear to be better in this. Of course obviously it´s easier to protest effectively against genocide, to be fair.
But this is another topic.
Thank you for this. I haven’t read links yet so don’t know if this is included, but yesterday’s report by FAIR on media control of the narrative during the pro-Palestine student protests and encampments seems like a good addition here: https://fair.org/home/students-left-out-of-discussions-about-student-gaza-protests/
As someone living in Brooklyn the past 25 years I witnessed the strength of Occupy and then Black Lives Matter and how, almost simultaneously but definitely systematically, non-participant media and humans tried to evacuate each of those powerful, wide-scale protest movements from both their goals and their effectiveness.
By the time of the pro-Palestine occupation at Columbia, the style-guides for reporting on protest appear to have been codified. However WKCR, the student-run radio station at Columbia, engaged 24-hour coverage of the demonstrations (and counter-protests) the encampment which otherwise could possibly have been suppressed in relative silence. Instead, this student radio station broadcasting to one of the largest populated cities in the world—which also has a global internet following—likely shamed corporate media into covering the demonstrations. Sadly FAIR’s report breaks down the results of that wider coverage.
Having aged into adulthood in the mid 80’s the public presence of anti-apartheid shanty-towns protesting for university divestment from South Africa is one of my earliest memories of arriving at Syracuse University as a freshman. Something that soon happened as universities and colleges divested across the US. Those protests were unpopular and eventually removed by the administration, but without the swiftness, violence, or relative silence the recent Pro-Palestine protestors faced on many campuses.
As the author Harsha Walia quotes Angela Davis in her excellent, “Undoing Border Imperialism,” on the sense of futility that sometimes accompanies even successful protest movements, “What we manage each time we win a victory is not so much to secure change once and for all but rather to create new terrains for struggle.” I think about this quote a lot in my attempts to maintain sanity. Also Naked Capitalism helps…
Protests help. Definitely. Living in Seattle in the winter, I participated in many of the weekly pro-Palestinian rallies and marches. Including, from an overpass, the blockading of the Interstate 5 that runs through downtown Seattle. All were well organized, with security, food and water, and medical aid.
From a college student, entranced by Leon Uris’ novel, “Exodus,” and discussing with my friends the feasibility of living in a kibbutz as post-grad experience, to a post-9-11 searcher for more information about the Middle East and finding horrifying first person narratives from the 1948 Nakba on the shelves of the local public library, my transition from Israel-supporter to pro-Palestinian advocate, has become complete. (And this is only a part of my wakening. As other commenters here in the past few days, I feel like my eyes have been slowly opening to the ‘evils of empire,’ shorthand for the chaos the US has sown over the decades.
I have noticed, in the past ten months, a definite shift in the narrative: from anything negative about Israel being labelled ‘anti-semitic,’ to more emphasis on separating out the religious aspect of Judaism from the state-building aspects of a group of Jews, i.e., Zionism. One can be anti-Zionist without being anti-Semitic. This difference has not percolated to a large group of people (such as my dearly-loved family) but give it time. And, Ian Welsh has written a nice summary in today’s blog: The End of Presumptive Anti-Semitism.
Here’s the problem: McCormick place is in the middle of nowhere, just on the shore of Lake Michigan, away from the city’s housing and commercial district. So there’s no business or transportation to be interrupted, except for the Outer Drive along Lake Michigan. It’s sort of a long park to the north and south, thanks to Abraham Lincoln’s work as lawyer for the Illinois Central giving it rights along the shore that blocked any urbanization along that route.
If there is a demonstration, might it be best to hold it in Chicago’s business district — say near the Tribune Tower on Michigan Avenue near the Chicago River bridges at the start of the “Magnificent Mile” of elite shops?
The Chicago River (and Sanitary Ship Canal) goes right by it.
Oops! Thinking of the Merchendise Mart
Don’t underestimate the hatred that the VBNMW Dems hold for anyone critical of them, especially if the criticism is from the left. They hate leftists far more than Republicans, even though they hate them too.
I mean actual hatred, not metaphorical. It’s visceral. When (not if) police crack down violently on protests the Dem diehards will be the ones cheering loudest for more blood.
I have become so cynical that I’d caution anyone not to protest at all. If the Ds are expecting a big noisy protest they will have plenty of CPD at their service. But what a disappointment for the Ds if nobody shows up in person to demand political change – because that very demand creates the perfect venue for the Democrats to pretend to be the party of progress. And genocide exists in a different universe entirely. To march around with a poster saying Stop the Genocide is pathetic. The Ds will do an excellent job of making fools of themselves without any outside stimulus. Just exposing their bizarre behavior and letting it go viral, like the hapless Australian Olympian, Raygun, will be the most damaging thing. Let the Ds go ahead and roll around on the floor. The internet and cell phones will defeat the party of the war mongers. Maybe with a backdrop of pictures of the actual goddamn genocide.
As you can imagine, I vehemently disagree. If you don’t do anything to oppose abuses, they will multiply. And protestors will tell the Dems that the anti-genociders aren’t buying Team Harris pious claims that they want peace but will do nothing concrete to stop the killings.
As for fools, go look at Kamala’s TikToks and get back to me. The Dems are successfully repackaging stoopid as cool.
Good example of Kamala’s speeches right here – she’s like a parrot:
https://youtu.be/0K3rbIEsZC0?si=UXnjAgQEKJzhUe9m&t=5
it’s insane to me how ‘kamala is brat’ has successively convinced people that kamala is ok. and all the kamala dancing videos. i had an instagram story highlight with some of her classics like ‘the wheels on the bus’ clip a year ago, but now people are allowing the ironic kamala enjoyment to become real and it’s just so dangerous. branding kamala as sillygoofy stops people from taking her policies seriously! her campaign feels more like a meme than any actual policy, and people are so poisoned by tiktok and taking everything ironically and as entertainment that they fail to realize the serious trouble we’re in. real bread and circuses moment.
Since our host has written about the Powell Memo and the conscious effort by the establishment to discredit activism, perhaps that should be considered as a reason why the current environment is not like the 60s. For many on the right a belief arose that it was the war protestors who lost the Vietnam War and business didn’t care for Nader’s independent critique either. As the press itself became more rightwing during the 80s and 90s they began to cooperate with the suppression of protest news. Then when it became in their interest–given a largely Dem orientation–protests were given renewed attention during the hated (by them) Trump presidency. In short the media thumb is very much on the scales here and perhaps that’s the very reason that plutocrats like Bezos show interest in owning money losing newspapers.
The grassroots battle seems to be a lot harder than it used to be and that grass has even been invaded by astroturf. But good luck to the protestors in Chicago.
>> Relevant to upcoming events, in Chicago the Black community is aware and upset about accelerated immigration into the city. It affects their jobs and dilutes their votes. There are also about a half-million Muslims in the area. If one in a thousand show up unhappy about Democratic Party treatment of (*unnamed*), that’s a brigade-sized force.
Basing expectations on what students can do is not a good benchmark. See this tweet from February:
>> Telling Palestinian Americans to vote for Genocide @JoeBiden is like telling Jews to vote for Hitler. Joe Biden is our Hitler. Joe Biden’s genocide of Palestinians is already the worst case scenario. There’s no “greater evil” than Joe Biden.
Change the names all you want, it’s the same Executive Board.
It is true that the venues are well-isolated. However, between false flags and dead relatives, there could be spots that get incandescent. This thing could end up anywhere from a damp squib to state collapse. But it is to be noted, there are few given opportunities Timewise for mass gatherings, when a locus can attract without needing direct organization. When’s the next, Election Day? Inauguration? Certification of the results?
I think Marcie Smith’s “Change Agent” two-part series – examining the impact of Gene Sharp on political movements – was helpful for me to understand the overarching question Yves asked:
https://nonsite.org/change-agent-gene-sharps-neoliberal-nonviolence-part-one/
https://nonsite.org/change-agent-gene-sharps-neoliberal-nonviolence-part-two/
It was shared with me by an activist friend shortly after it came out. Being active in both domestic political/labor organizing and anti-war/anti-imperialist activism, these articles gave me some much needed context into various political struggles I was tracking domestically and internationally. Of particular value, it helped me understand why protests seemed so much more effective abroad than in the US.
With that important intervention in thinking, we locally set to rearrange our tactics, organizational approaches and structures to avoid pitfalls laid out by Smith. More generally, the articles lay out how the political leadership vacuum left by the cointelpro (and other) state assault was filled by easier-to-manage decentralized, often single issue, anarchistic groups and tactics. This was the zeitgeist of western resistance movements from the late-70s through to, at least, Occupy Wall Street. It still exists today, though it is much more contested today as the appropriate approach to social and political change.
Finally, it is worth noting that these organizational strategic and tactical formulations dove-tailed almost perfectly with the shift from Marxism to forms of Post-Modernism as the dominant intellectual philosophy of left academics. This was all in the works before “the end of history” – meaning the latter slogan was being aspirationally worked out ideologically long before the idea was declared triumphantly as achieved.
Anyway, hope the articles (lengthy as they are) are helpful contributions in addressing the prompt Yves set for us at the top.
Here is some of the schedule: chicagoactivismhub.org
The CIA manual, as noted above, was written by Gene Sharp. His books are redundant, easily found online, and influential on US protesters, too, though usually indirectly.
The game played at National Special Security Events like the DNC is whack a mole. Protester infrastructure, like housing, legal, kitchen, wellness space, etc is targeted by multi agency police response coordinted by FBI, National Guard is available to do perimeter control, Secret Service does what they do.
The Poor Peoples March will approach McCormick center due to the permit application going unnoticed by the city for too long to reject.
Goal is to demonstrate power to the protesters themselves, so they go home celebrating whatever little victories they get: Numbers, noise, triumph in a scuffle, keeping the legl team humming after a raid, meeting new friends across the country. If this goes well, it also builds morale in those who are watching, including support fri
onts in the West and even in Gaza and the resistance axis.
A strong DNC protest week will feed into a more active and confident fall season of action in Michigan, on college campuses, in cities, etc.
For me the main benefit of such protests at this moment of a falling empire is for the protesters themselves. In other words, to counter the feelings of isolation and despair, and the intense campaign of gaslighting by the regime. While this may appear to be navel-gazing, its critically important to maintain and even build the infrastructure of regime opponents in their own localities.
This local infrastructure could become the foundation for a democratic and socialist “state” where the participants have built long-standing relationships with people who would never go to Chicago to protest. The US in many ways is more a collection of state and local entities than a singular national one, except for foreign policy and the federal budget/money system. More decentralized than many other nations, the opposition to the regime must also be somewhat decentralized. There is an organizing aphorism we have used for years: organize locally, coordinate nationally.
Indeed, the BLM and Palestine support movements have essentially followed this aphorism with hundreds, if not thousands, of protests, actions, etc. happening all across the nation. I believe the BLM eclipsed the Vietnam War opposition in number and breadth of actions. For example, about a dozen towns in Montana saw protests where we have less than 1% black population. See also this attempt at counting civil opposition in the US.
As boots has rightly pointed out, nonviolent action academic Gene Sharp (and I would add Erica Chenowith) have written the CIA color revolution handbook. But the understanding of the nature of power that Thoreau, Gandhi and King have revealed, and Sharp and Chenowith have studied, also applies to the US. In essence, the powerful depend on the collective contributions of everyday people for their power. To the extent that contribution is withdrawn, the power is diminished. For example, the employer could not make a profit without the cooperation of the workers. A strike is powerful because the employer depends on the workers working.
One other very important element to build a successful regime change movement is the method of organizing used. If Chicago becomes just a one off mobilization of protesters, then it would be a bit of a wasted opportunity. What has become the usual methods of organizing (Saul Alinsky/Industrial Areas Foundation style) have really been all about mobilizing: important but incomplete.
Jane McAlevey has effectively demonstrated that the missing element is what she called “whole-person” organizing and others call “deep” organizing. She pointedly criticized the Alinsky/IAF style of organizing because “he delinked the [organizing] method he observed from the mission or motivation of the left-wing organizers – organizers who were committed not only to winning campaigns but also to radically altering the power structure itself.” No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age p. 41. The “CIO Method” that McAlevey fosters is the organizing method used by the CIO unions in the 1930s and 40s and by much of the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 60s. Arguably the 2 most successful social movements of the 20th century.
The Chicago Teachers Union, the United Teachers of Los Angeles, and the Democratic Socialists of America are but 3 groups regularly employing the CIO Method, and so are building sturdy local infrastructures of opposition to the regime.
♫ (Judy Collins)
It isn’t nice to block the doorway
It isn’t nice to go to jail
There are nicer ways to do it
But the nice ways always fail
It isn’t nice, it isn’t nice
You told us once, you told us twice
But if that’s freedom’s price, we don’t mind…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQvfwdCAxrM
‘Waging Nonviolence’ is a website I recommend for nonviolent protest ideas and strategies. George Lakey is a founder of the site and often contributes to it. His classic book “A Manual for Direct Action” (1965) is no doubt familiar to many here. His more recent book is “How We Win” (2018).
i’ve heard some things from friends on the ground in chicago. they’re a little worried about how aggressively militant a lot of the younger out of state protestors on social media are. and how escalations towards the police in chicago will result in worse conditions for chicagoans after the convention is over.
and as the comment section’s resident college student: nobody i’ve talked to has any idea how the campus protests are going to play out once school is back in session. i have some really mixed thoughts on the protests myself, like how one of my protest’s demands was to drop the charges against the arrested students which, as an arrested student, i think is a stupid demand. they were misdemeanor charges, not felony charges like at some other places. that’s nowhere near our main focus. i have so many issues with the protests but again, it’s better to do something than nothing at all. gonna be a really weird semester though, between the protests and elections.