There is also no single approach.
Questioning the intention and performativity of non-violent civil disobedience.
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post outlining why we need a diversity of strategies and solutions to tackle the myriad of challenges we face today as a human species. I was triggered to write this post because of a podcast that criticized individual action as ineffective because of its lack of efficiency (my words, not theirs—I'm paraphrasing generously).
When I wrote that post, I wrote it with clarity and conviction. I could distinctly see why their criticism was lacking. I wasn’t confused: I understood that their perspective was skewed by the influence of capitalist colonial thinking, pushing the myth of efficiency as a requirement for success.
But I’m going to be honest: I don’t always feel that conviction. Sometimes I waffle. Sometimes I gaslight. Sometimes I second guess.
Storytime: Recently, Netanyahu visited the US. There’s a lot to say about a war criminal being celebrated in Congress, but instead I’d like to focus on some of the action that took place while he was visiting. I’ve heard that there were maggots dumped in the dining room of his hotel and that people were pulling the fire alarm every half hour. This is action I can get behind.
There was also a peaceful protest at the US Capitol Building where 400 American Jews sat in to call Biden and the rest of his government to stop arming Israel.
In this moving reel, Jewish Voice for Peace shared the protest and the arrests that followed, set to an emotional soundtrack that quite literally gives me goosebumps every time I watch it.
So many of the videos shared of protests give me these goosebumps. They feel powerful. You can see the resolve in the eyes of the protestors. You can feel their passion and determination as they participate in these acts of civil disobedience.
But watching this video, I couldn’t help but question its purpose. Did Biden listen? Did Netanyahu?
Obviously not.
So what’s it all for then? I can’t help but feel that these sit-ins and protests are largely performative and don’t really accomplish anything other than providing moving social media reels for the masses. Maybe not even the masses.
I posed the question on Instagram in my stories the other day: is protest without civil disobedience just performative? Most people said yes. But not everyone.
(As a sidenote: this is one of the reasons that I haven’t left Instagram entirely—I am so incredibly grateful for the networks of comrades and co-conspirators that help me navigate these tough questions. Come follow me if you’d like to engage in these types of conversations @subsomatic)
Celeste from @liminal.spaces.shop shared some of their thoughts that gave me pause and made me reconsider my stance.
“There are lots of times when the goal of activism is to raise awareness, change policy, get funding, etc, and if the party you're trying to convince is relatively cooperative, non-peaceful protest may actually scare them back or make them reconsider allying themselves with your group. In that case non-peaceful protest would be performative (not actually useful or aligned with paths to meaningful change) and peaceful protest might be much more effective.
[…] Also, I think just getting people together in public about an issue helps them feel into community and the idea that we can take care of each other and that we have power to take action on things, even if it's a very mild event. So I'm not sure if any political public gathering is truly performative. It's gonna have radical impacts just because of that alone.”
- Celeste Inez Mathilda, Liminal Spaces
On reading their insight, I instantly recognized the ridiculous double standard that I had set: where solutions of all shapes and sizes were needed, but peaceful protest had been deemed performative just because it hadn’t achieved the lofty goal of an arms embargo, which, let’s be honest… wasn’t a realistic goal in the first place. Nor was it likely the actual goal of that specific protest.
So there’s two pieces to consider here:
What does it mean for action to be performative?
What are the intentions of the specific action?
I’m quite embarrassed that while I could recognize the impact of non-direct action like education and art on shifting community consciousness and cultural narrative, I had rejected peaceful protest as non-impactful even though the outcome was similar as non-direct action.
As if peaceful protest isn’t also impactful in a hundred different ways.
As Celeste lays out, the intention behind the action matched with the circumstances of conflict will determine the effectiveness of any specific approach of civil disobedience, peaceful or otherwise.
Does that mean that all protests should be peaceful? Hell no. Nor should all protests be violent. Just as we need a myriad of solutions, we need a myriad of strategies and approaches when opposing the state.
Again, here I had fallen victim to the false dichotomy of “either or” rather than “yes and” that I’ve run up against again and again in dismantling colonial culture, as if there is a right way and a wrong way instead of a galaxy of possibilities that shift and change with the specific circumstances of time, space, and lived experience.
When you are unsure, when you are gaslighting yourself, when you are waffling and second guessing, remember:
“We are here, in the midst of a beautiful chaos that our enemies always try to organize. We will be stronger than ever if we learn to triumph in this chaos, to move in the network of our own relationships, to communicate horizontally or circularly, to use only what really is ours and to influence others, to understand that not everyone is going to act as we act; that is the beauty of rebellion, and our effectiveness in it does not lie in making the whole world equal, but in devising the best way to relate in a complementary way to those who are different and follow different paths.” - Distri Josep Gardenyes, 23 Theses Concerning Revolt
This hit home for me, I constantly find myself in that wavering place. Thank you for sharing.