Beyond Protesting – Ten Things To Think About
The ten items to think about list is at the bottom. But before I write it, I think I should express how I got to the point of thinking about and listing the ten ideas.
This morning I attended a peace “action” in Berkeley. The issue has made national news recently as the government is threatening to divert 2 million tax dollars from Berkeley school lunches to the Marines as punishment for the City Council voting that they did not invite, nor do they welcome United States Marine Corps recruiters in their downtown area.
So what is an action? Well an action is where we get out of our comfortable routines and do something. Maybe we go to a protest, maybe we write letters, maybe we make phone calls, maybe we do any of a number of things which are, as the word says, acting.
This morning, though, I was peripherally taking part in an action. See, this morning I was taking pictures. We knew there was a planned sit in. We knew that always means a possibility of arrest, and because there were so many people at the council meeting earlier in the week, we knew there was potential for a lot of people.
I woke up early, I put on my telephoto lens, and grabbed my laptop because I was going to the office after the protest. This set up an interesting image. Me, with laptop on shoulder, button down shirt, dress pants. In fact, I looked like a clean, young professional. All the electronic equipment, and the fact that I dressed nicely today meant I looked, **gasp**, professional.
The police officer who first saw me asked me who I was with. I was confused. After further conversation he asked, “LA Times? NY Times? Washington Post?”
And as a result of my honest, yet possibly deceptive response, I had a different vantage point from others all day.
“Freelance.” I said. And from that moment on I was able to jaywalk, when the protesters would be yelled at for standing off the curb. I was able to walk between worlds, talking openly about the protest with the police officers and openly with the journalists about the war and with the action participants about the police.
What struck me the most was the conversation I had with the lead police officer. I asked him what his major issue is with events like this, personally, not as a law officer. He reminded me of something I’d forgotten. He was doing his job.
Now, that’s something I often hear from people I villainize. “Right” I think, “You’re just trying to justify your brutality.” But truth be told, it is rare for a person to act out of pure evil the way we see them.
He told me that he has been to protests himself and what bothers him personally is when he talks to store owners who feel their business has been impeded. Now, he could have been blowing out hot air, but I did notice the protest was underneath an MCAT review center. My brother is in Medical School. I remember him studying for the MCATs and I could see how people would ask for a refund if they had to deal with protesters speaking through bullhorns.
So it got me thinking. What are the injustices we do when trying to do justice, and do we think about this enough? For me, in my history, the answer is a lot of injustice I don’t notice and certainly don’t focus enough on. As a result, I have decided to write down a guide list of top ten ways to be more just and consequently, effective, during actions:
- Patronize the local shops. (Today there was a beauty salon, a Japanese restaurant, and a copy place beside the recruitment center. I guarantee their business was hampered today, but what if everyone got a haircut and bought lunch there?)
- Contact local businesses before the action, ask about their sentiments on the issues and what ways they could cooperate. (I bet you’d be surprised how many times a business might even donate water or some other item).
- Publicize the businesses when publicizing the event. (Tell people not to bring a lunch. Especially if you have talked to the organization and they have a bad taste in their mouth about protesters for whatever reason, change their minds.)
- Create “publicity lanes.” (Today I noticed how many times I had to stand in the street to get a lane to take my picture. Obviously we want good publicity at our events so let’s help the media get good pictures. We need to make it easier for the Cameras to see our faces.)
- Engage in civil conversation. (People who didn’t know who I was, and thought I was the media, gave me cold stares and made no attempt to talk to me. Part of this was over bitterness at how the protesters were portrayed earlier in the week. The police were kind and cordial to me. If I had no idea about what the protest was about, based exclusively on my experience from today I would have written a story more sympathetic to law enforcement based on this point. If we go out of our way to hear the opinions of journalists and converse – not debate or argue – we will find ourselves portrayed more kindly in the media and get our message out more clearly.)
- Have fun, and wear it on your face. (Far too many people today looked like they were dragged there or forced to go. My pictures reflect this. Progressives get labeled as angry. Let them only see smiles.)
- Avoid antagonizing police. (Most of these people, believe it or not, are unaware of the points of the protest. Some of them even tried to suggest a better location for the protest, and the lead police officer yelled at them for communicating. If you really want to get under the skins of the police, don’t yell at them or call them names, instead befriend them and convince them to join your protest.)
- Invite people off the street. (Sometimes people don’t know how to get associated with those of us who are in these groups. They want to, they slow as they read the signs in passing, but nobody talks to them. Don’t harass them, and certainly don’t intimidate them, but ask them if they understand what is going on. Maybe you’ll win someone over from apathy to passion.)
- Be willing to learn from the other side. (This is one of the hardest for me. But I learned so much from this police officer today that I can’t stress how important it is that we are willing to be open and receptive to the opinions of others. We don’t see the whole world and we all have pieces of the whole truth.)
- Be wholly nonviolent. (Tension builds in the throat, and it builds quickly when we are upset. We need to be aware that how we speak to people can be just as violent as slapping them or pushing them. I cannot stress enough that to overcome evil we must be good. And we must supersede violence in word and deed for those in the violence paradigm to shift and realize there is more to this world than guns and domination.)
http://paceebene.org/blog/kevin-ressler/beyond-protesting-list-ten-things-think-about