Counterprotests for health make strong images

Posted on April 24, 2020 by David S. Meyer

Intensive care nurse Lauren Leander got a respectful hearing on CNN Thursday night, as she explained to Chris Cuomo why she decided to spend her day off staring down open up Banner University Medical Center ICU nurse Lauren Leander stands in counter-protest as people march toward the Arizona State Capitol in protest of Gov. Doug Ducey's stay-at-home order to combat the coronavirus April 20, 2020.protesters in Phoenix.

A few nurses dressed in clean scrubs, donned masks, and stood silently as they suffered ridicule and abuse from a few of the reported 1,000 protesters violating the stay at home orders of Arizona’s Republican governor, Doug Ducey.

Leander explained, “my message being a nurse is just to speak for the people who can’t speak for themselves and to speak for the people in our hospital that are suffering in ways that the general public cannot see….I know those people would be urging the general public to continue to stay home for them.”

Asked about the unmasked protesters who reject government restrictions on their movement or commerce, Leander responded, “You know, I would just love to be able to take them into the hospital with me and to, you know, put them in a pair of scrubs and to get them to see just the suffering that’s going on in the hospital with these covid patients that are isolated from their families and that are dying alone.”

Effective protest politics plays with symbols and creates images. Open up protesters in Phoenix carried placards about liberty, waved flags, wore Trump t-shirts, and carried weapons. They clearly meant to send a message that they were patriotic, powerful, and political. In addition to the shouts, there was an implicit threat that they were willing to break more than a quarantine.

Leander and her colleagues countered with professionalism. They were few and they were silent and still. Images of the confrontation spread around the web, and surely, anyone can see what they wish in the picture. But in telling her story, and essentially welcoming all the backlash that will follow online and beyond, the nurse explained that she saw the consequences of a global pandemic in her patients, while the marchers saw only the costs of the quarantine that was a response.

I don’t know where the nurses’ courage and commitment came from.

But Lauren Leander explained where they got the idea for uniformed silent protest. She explained that they were inspired by others who had already confronted open up protesters:

You know, we were really inspired by the other viral photos from the health care workers in Denver, you know, that were going around the internet, and we just were so impressed by their action and just the power in their silence and what they did. And we said yes, like, that’s the kind of action that we can take for something like this. That’s what we can do.

View image on TwitterThe few protesters who blocked the traffic of a drive-in protest in Denver’s downtown didn’t release their names or tell their stories, but the powerful photos by freelancer Alyson McClaran, circulated everywhere.

The images appeared on Twitter and Facebook well before they were taken up in more conventional media. The debates on social media were at least as heated and partisan as what took place in the streets.

Videos of confrontations where passengers leaned out of car windows to scream at those Health care workers stand in the street in counter-protest to hundreds of people who gathered at the State Capitol to demand the stay-at-home order be lifted in Denver, Colorado, on April 19, 2020.blocking traffic, demonstrating the volume of their commitment circulated too. One passenger screamed that the man blocking traffic loved communism and should go to China.

The dueling protests make conflicting claims about expertise, status, and information. Health care workers, who normally enjoy public esteem, and now are ritually cheered in communities around the country each evening, are deploying their status and their experience to serve as a counterweight to the passions of people who proclaim they want to make their own decisions about work and risk and community.

And the conflict won’t get resolved in front of Arizona’s state capitol or the streets of Denver. The debate about ending a public health lockdown has become even more heated and partisan in the streets. More important is how the images from those protests carry to a larger audience. The rest of us are invited from a distance to take sides.

In a different political moment, leaders would encourage us to remember that everyone wants to protect public health AND resurrect as much of the life we had before as possible as soon as possible. The politics could be about figuring out how to do so, gathering information and managing risks.

That’s not the moment we’re in.

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Generational Divides, Student Activism, and the Youth Vote

Posted on April 21, 2020 by David S. Meyer

Moblizing Ideas, a blog that Notre Dame’s Center for the Study of Social Movements maintains, commissioned a series on youth activism–way before most of us were tuned into the way the #coronacrisis would take over our politics and lives.

I’ve posted my entry below, but please read the thoughtful entries by Nicolás M. Somma and Mikaila Mariel Lemonik Arthur.

Emma Gonzalez tweeted out a picture of herself after she voted in Florida’s primary election. Along with 1.5 million other followers, I saw Emma smiling, displaying the “I voted” sticker that came with her first in-person vote. Emma started on Twitter when she and some of her classmates organized March for Our Lives in response to the horrific mass shooting at their high school. The Parkland kids brought a new energy and visibility to a growing movement for gun safety regulation, running through a full range of social movement tactics: a local demonstration where Emma gave a stirring “We Call BS” speech; a bus trip to lobby Florida legislators in Tallahassee; a national demonstration in Washington, DC, that drew more than one million people — and featured no speaker over the age of 19; a coordinated series of school walk-outs across the country; and a speaking tour in the summer of 2018 to encourage young people to vote.

I was fortunate to catch the Parkland kids when they visited Irvine, California in November 2018, for a rally on the campus where I teach about social movements. They distributed stickers and t-shirts, gave brief speeches, provided a platform for local young activists and candidates for office, and then ran a bus to City Hall where residents could register to vote. Activist actors Chelsea Handler and Natalie Morales were there as well; Chandler spoke. But the young people were the stars. After the event, they stayed for more than an hour, talking with students and others, and posing for pictures with anyone willing to wait. I still wear the t-shirt I got, which features a QR code that links to a voter registration site. Since then, some of the Parkland kids have endorsed particular Democratic candidates, but even when they differed, all have encouraged other young people to vote.

The Parkland kids were great: smart, committed, and disciplined, but hardly unique. Every Tuesday and Thursday morning, I saw other young people equally committed in my social movements course. Before class, almost every session, one student or another would ask for a minute to announce an organizing event: on guns or climate change or unionization or tuition. There were meetings, canvassing sessions, speakers, and demonstrations. Every student, even those who just needed credits offered at this time of the day, was invited to attend a new set of events, and sometimes conversations extended beyond the classroom to the walk out or a snack at the student center. A few students were visibly exhausted on the Thursday after the election. But their efforts paid off. Orange County, political home of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan — to say nothing of the local airport’s namesake, John Wayne, saw record high voter turnout for a midterm election, and flipped every House of Representatives seat to the Democratic Party for the first time since the Pleistocene era. (My very clever attempt at a hashtag, #Orangeisthenewblue, almost caught on, I think.)

So, does the dramatic social movement activism of young people in the Trump era affect American elections and more conventional political participation? Sure. In lots of ways, activism promotes activism. Commanding public attention for yourself and your issues encourages others with concerns to try to enter into public life as well — even on different issues. Greta Thunberg, who started a weekly climate strike outside the Swedish parliament, cited the Parkland kids, who she had never met, as inspiration.

But it’s more than this demonstration effect as well. Organizers and activists set examples, to be sure, but they also set up communication channels for wholesale dissemination of information about issues and activities. In ancient times there were leaflets, then telephone trees, but social media allow a much faster, and largely unmediated, spread of information than ever before. Occupy media teams livestreamed meetings, working on laptops, sometimes with portable generators. Shortly after Trump’s election, Indivisible posted a manual for action quickly downloaded thousands of times (Brooker 2018). The Parkland kids sat on a living room floor, working on a range of platforms through their phones. It’s easier than ever for someone with an interest to find support and encouragement online, as well as directions for next steps to social and political engagement.

Social movement activism promotes politicized education. Young people who engage in activism come into contact, online and in person, with other committed people, and they talk about the things they care about. A tentative interest can deepen into a set of political commitments (Munson 2009).

Importantly, those intellectual and political commitments are solidified through personal commitment. Activism creates social ties that help young people develop a sense of self that those around them reinforce. The resulting solidarity makes it a little bit easier for someone to find out about an issue or event, and to find a way to engage with others. Over time, young activists develop broader social networks that afford them access to a widening range of issues to care about, and tactics for promoting influence. Connections create nearby opportunities for activism, ranging from working for a candidate to showing up at a demonstration.

Contemporary democracies are structured to promote and channel political engagement in ways that stabilize, rather than undermine, the political system. This makes for a familiar story in American politics, where social movements, sometimes in short order, move from activism at the grassroots and in the streets, to creating caucuses in state legislatures and in the Congress. These days, however, protest and politics operate in concert, not opposition or strict sequence. Demonstrators show up at the polls, and people who vote are far more likely to do more than those who don’t.

For young people today, who share concerns about their future and that of the earth, there is an ongoing search for ways to protect themselves and their interests. First steps may be at a demonstration or a climate change protest or at the polls, but it’s quite likely that the path will go through many forms of participation and a range of issues. Even in these moments of desperation, these are the signs of hope for the future.

References

Brooker, Megan E. 2018. “Indivisible: Invigorating and Redirecting the Grassroots.” Pp. 162-184 in The Resistance: The Dawn of the Anti-Trump Opposition Movement, edited by David S. Meyer and Sidney Tarrow. Oxford University Press.

Munson, Ziad. 2009. The Making of Pro-Life Activists: How Social Movement Mobilization Works. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Organizing or Astroturf?

Posted on April 20, 2020 by David S. Meyer

Protesters demonstrate at the state Capitol in Harrisburg, Pa., Monday, April 20, 2020, demanding that Gov. Tom Wolf reopen Pennsylvania's economy even as new social-distancing mandates took effect at stores and other commercial buildings. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)Critics of the scattered “Open Up” protests were quick to circulate a fine article from the Washington Post describing how three brothers committed to gun rights had launched Facebook accounts to promote the protests.

The story, told by Isaac Stanley-Becker and Tony Romm, highlights the efforts of Ben, Christopher, and Aaron Dorr, who “manage a slew of pro-gun groups” across the country. The Dorrs are critics of the National Rifle Association for taking too accommodating a stance toward mainstream politics and the majority of Americans who support some restrictions on firearms.

As the backlash to state-based restrictions on social and economic activity across the states first appeared, the Dorr boys quickly started “<State Residents> Against Excessive Quarantine Groups.” Creating virtual groups for Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York must have taken minutes of work.

Critics jumped on the Dorrs’ gun politics and financial interests in organizing to dismiss the protests as “Astroturf,” that is, fake grassroots, and noted other conservative groups in more or less direct support of the protests, charges that appear inaccurate and unfair.

We like to think the movements we like are true expressions of the grassroots, while we want to dismiss those of our opponents are inauthentic fronts for nefarious interests. [Think for a second of how supporters of racial segregation attacked the committed white college students descending upon Mississippi to organize as outside agitators.]

In real life, America is big and diverse enough to support substantial numbers of people willing to employ movement tactics for an exceptionally broad range of causes.

Organizers, sometimes professional and sometimes funded, work to mobilize people on behalf of the causes they care about. They plan events, set dates, sketch out plans, make placards, and sometimes arrange permits, speakers, publicity, and sound systems.

In ancient times, mobilization entailed talking to people–in churches and kitchens, in front of supermarkets and factory entrances. It meant using the phone, showing up a meetings, and knocking on doors.

These days, social media promise a quicker path to an interested audience. Starting a Facebook group is really the least you can do. There is ample evidence that a host of conservative groups publicized the open up demonstrations; indeed, some groups have clamored for credit.

But for any kind of movement, people still have to show up. Real people feeling real grievances. Of course, real doesn’t mean right.

Protesters demanding Florida businesses and government reopen, march in downtown Orlando, Fla., Friday, April 17, 2020. Small-government groups, supporters of President Donald Trump, anti-vaccine advocates, gun rights backers and supporters of right-wing causes have united behind a deep suspicion of efforts to shut down daily life to slow the spread of the coronavirus. (AP Photo/John Raoux)The impulse to dismiss the protests as inauthentic explicitly echoes the recurrent denigrating descriptions of the Tea Party movement as a front of conservative interests, most notably, the Koch brothers. But for a while, thousands of people showed up at town hall meetings and anti-tax demonstrations, organizing their own meetings around kitchen tables. Many of them voted as well.

Effective politics means taking these movements, even if so far small and unpopular, seriously.

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Cabin fever versus Covid fever, COVID-19, 6/x

Posted on April 18, 2020 by David S. Meyer

The public reactions to the sprinkle of open up protests has been, like virtually everything else these days, heavily partisan and polemical.

The picture at left, from Huntington Beach, is one of the scattered protests to end–or loosen–restrictions on commerce and public assembly. It differs from most of the other protests reported only in that the weather is milder.

Waving American flags, along with other sorts of flags, protesters have been touted as American heroes and derided as deluded American idiots. (Always appalling, the reliably dishonest conservative flack, Stephen Moore, compared the protesters to Rosa Parks.) It’s a drastic mistake to sign onto either of these views, but there’s plenty of frustration.

Frankfort, KY

Frankfort, Kentucky

Almost everyone wants the restrictions to end, but the overwhelming majority of  Americans, Republicans and Democrats, believe the public health experts who say that isolation/quarantine/social distance is the best way to manage strain on the health care system and minimize damage from the virus. A very recent poll reports that only 10 percent of Americans believe we “should stop social distancing to stimulate the economy, even if it means increasing the spread of coronavirus.”

But you don’t need majorities to stage protests or make movements. Reports on the demonstrations describe relatively small turnouts of 100-200 people, save for Boise, Idaho where there were about 1,000 people, some armed, and mostly without masks or social distance.

And there are LOTS of reports. Vigorous protest that seems personally risks makes for a good story, particularly when the president of the United States is calling them out. Americans are tired of being confined, blocked from jobs and gyms, barbers and beaches, most shopping, and social life generally. And they are understandably anxious about what happens next as the economy collapses. For most of us, who accept the collective wisdom of public health officials, the lock down is awful; for those who don’t believe the scientists, it’s worse.

Image: Demonstrators Protests At Texas State Capitol Against Governor's Stay At Home Order

Austin, Texas

If you haven’t thoroughly studied public health, infectious diseases, or epidemiology (I haven’t!), the details of the restrictions won’t make intuitive sense. Responsible public servants will work hard to explain the details of their decisions, but it’s hard to think that most people are willing to listen right now.

Really, you want elected officials taking advice from people who know how epidemics work rather than those speaking only from personal frustration.

And there are paradoxes: On one hand, I should have the right to calibrate the risks I take with my life, suffering the consequences, including ridicule if things go wrong. (Like the motorcyclist who died in an accident while demonstrating against mandatory helmet laws.) On the other hand, there is no Constitutional right to infect. Public health officials are rightly more concerned about vectors than the risks individuals might choose.

Several hundred people attend a "Stand for Freedom" rally at the Capitol, protesting — and in violation of — Idaho Gov. Brad Little's stand-home order during the coronavirus pandemic in Boise, Idaho, Friday, April 17, 2020.

Boise, Idaho

The notion that we restrict ourselves or wear masks to protect others hasn’t been explained well enough or frequently enough, and it chafes at some versions of conservative belief anyway. Some conservative groups and politicians–who should know better–are working hard to ignore the social implications of individual choices.

People are turning up to protest because they’re angry, distrustful, and eager to change the world…back. But recognizing that their concerns are genuinely felt doesn’t mean these demonstrations are spontaneous or independent.

Alex Jones and Infowars helped organize the demonstration in Austin, Texas; a foundation funded by the DeVos family publicized the drive-in at Lansing. Tea Party Patriots, one of the organizations organizing the, uh, Tea Party, organized the demonstration in Virginia, along with gun rights groups, and Trump campaign organizations were everywhere.  The result of this constellation of sponsors is that the profile of the demonstrations skewed partisan, with Trump placards and hats, along with symbols from still-fringe elements of the right.

Meanwhile, Trump tweeted calls to “liberate” Virginia, Michigan, and Minnesota (states with restrictions and Democratic governors), even as none of those states came close to meeting the guidelines for lifting restrictions the Trump administration had announced a day earlier. The president made the difficult disputes about appropriate public safety measures much simpler, much more partisan, and far more distant from informed discussion.

At very least, the demonstrations will turn up the political heat on governors who are enforcing restrictions on social and economic life in their states, no matter how well-advised they are. But it’s likely to have a greater impact on Republican governors, like Ron DeSantis (Florida) or Gregg Abbott (Texas), who haven’t been very strict to begin with, than Democrats who don’t depend on those Republican voters.

The photos and videos online show few demonstrators wearing masks or observing public health advisories about social distance. Maybe no one will get infected, nor infect others after returning home from the demonstration or stopping for groceries on the way. Certainly, we have to hope so. Infections, if there are any, won’t show up for a week or two. If that happens, we have to remember the protests and the president’s enthusiastic support.

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Drive by tooting; protest in cars, COVID-19 5/x

Posted on April 16, 2020 by David S. Meyer

Honk if you hate government. A report from Lansing:

Activists are always looking for ways to demonstrate their concerns. A good tactic Protester Debra Cohen speaks into a megaphone at a demonstration against Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Hartford, Connecticut, on April 2.energizes your supporters, discomforts your opponents, and engages bystanders. Despite the extraordinary range of imaginable activities out there, most movements across the political spectrum rely heavily on a pretty narrow repertoire, and mass demonstrations are a familiar ingredient.

COVID-19 changes all that, and organizers are looking for alternatives (discussed here). So, maybe in the era of Carpool Karaoke and Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, the automobile is an answer.

People in cars can protest. A car offers the recommended social distance, some physical protection, and it takes up much more space than a body, amplifying the size of a  demonstration. It’s certainly not a routine part of American protests, but it’s also not completely new. [Please note, Catherine Shoichet wrote a good article about car protests, focusing on immigrant rights protesters honking for justice in Arizona.]

In Charlottesville in 2017, a white nationalist unhappy about the anti-white nationalist protest drove a car into demonstrators, killing Heather Heyer. The driver has since been sentenced to life in prison.

Years earlier, in 1964, a flank of civil rights protesters in New York City threatened to shut CORE Dump Garbage and Sit-indown the roads to the World’s Fair. (Because the world’s NOT fair.) But lots of demonstrators took mass transit and the threat turned out the generate more attention than than the action.

Ideas, tactics, and even rhetoric aren’t limited to particular groups or causes. Instead, organizers watch their other social movements–including their opponents–to prospect for new approaches that seem to work. So, White people opposed to desegregating public schools in Boston in the early 1970s deployed the whole arsenal of tactics (pickets, busing2_640demonstrations, sit-ins, and so on) that they’d learned from watching the civil rights movement.

We’re likely to see a wide array of groups try motorized events this year, until police develop effective ways of containing them.

Yesterday, a couple of thousand cars drove on the Capitol building in Lansing, Michigan to protest Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s strict lockdown orders. At this writing, Michigan has recorded nearly 30,000 COVID diagnoses and nearly 2,000 deaths. The shutdown there, as everywhere, has created grievances large and small: no haircuts; no school; no jobs.

Conservative activists in Michigan want the economy to “open;” they want to go to the stores, to work, to restaurants, and bars, and they claim that Gov. Whitmer is overreacting to a global pandemic, creating a remedy that is worse than the disease.

“Operation Gridlock” demonstrated the call to open the economy by shutting down Lansing, including part of the highway and an entrance to an area hospital.

The Michigan Conservative Coalition and the Michigan Freedom Fund (a project of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s family) organized the event. The Freedom Fund explained that it hadn’t organized, but only publicized the event. C’mon, in real life, advance publicity is a large part of the organizing task.

The organizers urged the drive-by protesters to honk and chant and stall, but to stay in their cars and maintain social distance. But between the passions of the moment and the extraordinary skepticism about conventional medical wisdom on the new corona virus, a couple of hundred people left their cars and assembled in front of the Capitol.

A few protesters wore masks, but most did not. Lots of American flags were visible, and it’s also easy to spot a few Gadsden (“Don’t Tread on Me”) flags, along with a couple of Confederate battle flags. (It’s hard to remember all of high school history, but my memory is that US-HEALTH-VIRUS-PROTESTMichigan fought for the Union during the Civil War.) There was visible support for Donald Trump, and a familiar recurrent chant about Gov. Whitmer: “Lock her up.”

And there were lots of guns, as in the picture at right. Whether or not the organizers wanted this look, when passionate people are mobilized, it’s very hard to maintain control of just what they say, what they carry, or even what they do.

Protesters discussed developing herd immunity instead of isolation, but were more interested in citizen expertise on the matter than  the advice of immunologists or epidemiologists on the matter.

Those who are listening to the medical experts, inside and outside the government, will find the herd in front of the Capitol alarming, and will worry about the transmission of the virus, then carried back to the families of the demonstrators. We may not know of any infections for a week or two, by which time demonstrators will have found an alternative cover story.

 

 

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Opportunistic Advocacy (1/x); COVID-19 (4/x)

Posted on April 15, 2020 by David S. Meyer

Effective advocates don’t want to waste a crisis. They try to photobomb into public attention to advance their concerns. Sometimes, it’s a clear fit–in direct response to the challenges of the moment; sometimes, they fly a long favored reform or restriction as a potential solution to a completely unrelated problem.

Conservative movements have tried to exploit the coronacrisis to stop abortions, gun regulation, the protection of voting rights, and the general process of government altogether.

Defining essential services and medical procedures across the states afforded politicians and advocates an unusual opportunity to exercise influence around the edges in ways that dramatically affect lives. Groceries and gasoline and pharmacies were sort of obvious, but stores that sell bicycles or marijuana require at least an argument. Religious services? And no one should want to go to the hospital to have a mole removed when the medical system is overwhelmed by infectious patients. People can, with more or less convenience and relief, put off knee replacements and colonoscopies.

  1. But abortion? Opportunistic abortion opponents leaped to classify abortion as an elective procedure that could be postponed until…..the quarantine ends? abortion is no longer possible? In states where conservatives held the balance of political power, anti-abortion activists forced abortion rights supporters to defend existing rights in States That Use COVID-19 To Ban Abortion Increase Our Risks ...the midst of a health crisis. This happened in Ohio, where the response to COVID-19 was data-driven and aggressive, and in Texas, where it assuredly was not.

Women who had already decided that an abortion was essential for them suddenly faced a confusing landscape in which access to medical abortions (with or without supervision) or a surgical abortion was suddenly in flux, batted between judges and legislatures. And anti-abortion activists again successfully politicized a medical procedure and pushed it into the political debate.

2. Demand for guns was perhaps less eGun Store In Newington Had Lines Out The Doorffusive and extensive than demand for toilet paper, but lines outside gun shops shot down the street and dripped around corners, with little evident social distancing. If things are starting to shut down, well, it makes some kind of sense to make sure you have enough weapons and ammunition, particularly if the toilet paper squabbles escalate.

Look how federalism works: Some states ordered gun shops closed, like clothing and sporting goods stores, while others designated them as essential, therefore remaining open. Local officials battled each other over the details, with some officials choosing to leave gun shops alone just to avoid the fight. That’s a win for the gun rights enthusiasts.

3. The battle over voting in Wisconsin went national, with the heavily gerrymandered, heavily Republican state legislature refusing the Democratic governor’s requests to A line of voters spread out on a sidewalk and wearing masks. In the front, a masked woman holds a sign that says "This Is Ridiculous."provide universal mail-in ballots or to postpone the election.

The circumstances were egregious: record numbers of people had requested absentee ballots and thousands hadn’t received them.

The US Supreme Court decided, 5-4, that these voting rights were really a minor matter, and reversed a lower court decision that would have extended the timeline for accepting absentee ballots–so at least everyone who requested one would have a chance to vote. (Ruth Bader Ginsburg penned a scathing dissent.) The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled, 4-2, that the governor could not delay the election. Both decisions were conspicuously partisan: Democrats wanted to make it easier to vote; Republicans didn’t.

The shortage of poll workers meant that the number of places to vote was drastically reduced: Milwaukee normally offers 180 polling sites, but this year it mustered only 5.  This meant that voters, under public health orders to stay at home, could spend a couple of hours in line with hundreds of others to vote.

Voters turned out, maybe in spite, certainly in anger. In the marquee race of the election, a Democratic challenger, Jill Karofsky, unseated Republican Daniel Kelly from his post on that same Wisconsin Supreme Court, even though Trump had endorsed Kelly. Unlike most recent state-wide elections in Wisconsin, it wasn’t close; Karofsky won by more than 120,000 votes, 55.3%-44.7%.

But this isn’t near over. Access to voting rights, in the era of the coronacrisis through mail, has become inappropriately partisan, with the president of the United States arguing that absentee ballots should only be available to people like him—and, presumably, the 7 justices of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, who all voted by mail.

4. Anti-government activists in Idaho are planning a mass gathering to protest restrictions on the size of social gatherings. Ammon Bundy spoke to a planning group of dozens, itself a violation of the state government’s social distance orders. You may remember Bundy, son of rancher Cliven, who took up arms to avoiding paying the federal government to graze his cattle on public lands. Ammon led the armed occupation at the Malheur Wildlife Reserve in Oregon a few years ago.

Government restrictions on a “God-given constitutionally protected right to peacefully assemble,” represent a far greater threat to human welfare than a virus to those assembled. Besides, they don’t really trust expert Outside the Bonner General Health hospital in Sandpoint, Idaho, officials have erected two tents to help treat patients if extra space is needed.medical advice any more than they trust the government. Vulnerable people could be encouraged to stay at home and protect themselves (with distance….and maybe guns), but that’s it. Ammon announced that he wanted the virus!

In all of these cases, the protesters had well-developed grievances and agendas long before COVID-19 existed. Conservative activists had worked long and hard to restrict access to abortion and the ballot, and strictly limit government regulations on guns and so many other things. They were ready to jump at the new attention and opportunities provided by the coronacrisis.

Such opportunism isn’t activism 101, but it’s certainly well-covered in a basic class.

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Comfort, Congregation, Contagion,Contention, COVID-19 (3/x)

Posted on April 2, 2020 by David S. Meyer

Public worship, especially when prohibited, is often political. The litany of martyrs who practiced their faith against the dictates of their governments Antigone vs. Creonstretches at least a couple of thousand years. Stories of individuals or groups standing up against authoritarian states to express devotion and fulfill duties–regardless of costs–make for powerful, sometimes inspiring, drama.

And picking the right (that is, wrong) place and time makes for politics even in countries that are broadly tolerant of religious practice. Religious people who pray trespassing on a nuclear weapons test site, civil rights or anti-abortion activists who pray while awaiting arrest, and Catholic human rights activists protesting cruel and inhumane policies on the border while practicing at least some of the sacraments, all deploy their faith in public as witness, and also as a political statement.

The First Amendment provides for rights to religious freedom and public assembly and, at least in principle, government bends over backwards to accommodate expressions of faith. Sometimes, the free exercise of religion entails tolerance of worship that seem risky or dangerous, including fasting, ingesting hallucinogens, or handling snakes.

But what are we to make of the arrests this week of pastors who led very large public services in defiance of public health bans on assemblies of even modest size?

Pastor Rodney Howard-Brown turned himself into authorities after acknowledging, proudly, that he had conducted two very large Sunday worship services at his church in Tampa, Florida, in violation of County orders. He was charged with unlawful assembly and violating public health emergency rules. Pastor Howard-Brown had announced that he would keep the doors of his church open until the Rapture. Besides, the church had kept family groups distanced and distributed hand santizer to the hundreds of worshippers. Given this context, it’s hardly surprising that he would describe the concern about the novel corona virus as “blown totally out of proportion.”

The next day, Pastor Tony Spell was arrested for holding Sunday services at his church in Baton Rouge, in violation of the governor’s orders prohibiting public gatherings of more than 10 people. Spell had promised to defy any public gathering bans in advance, suggesting that the governor was politically motivated. At his sermon, he defended the role of the church in meeting  the challenges of a public health crisis:

Our church is a hospital where the sick can come and get healing…Cancers are healed here, people are healed of HIV in these services, and we believe that tonight, we’re also going to pass out anointed handkerchiefs to people who may have a fear, who may have a sickness, and we believe that when those anointed handkerchiefs go, that healing virtue is going to go on them as well.

The pastors argue that churches provide a service every bit as essential as hospitals, groceries, and drug stores, and they’re not alone. Other ministers have held public services, tucking themselves into often ill-defined standards of essential services. The attraction is clear: in times of extreme stress, with uncertainty about not only health, but the economy, and the future more generally, many people can find comfort and direction in their personal faith, and in a community of faith. (Note that many churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples have responded to this need through online services or counseling, and even drive through communion.)

But the risks are also great, particularly in this case. The notorious “patient 31” was, apparently, a particularly prolific infector in her South Korean church, where people gather in dense crowds over long stretches of time before returning to the secular world. A close religious community provides a too-ideal setting for a virus to spread. Even more than that, Korean churches organized to oppose, mostly unsuccessfully, the strict public safety measures that seemed to have dampened the viral spread.

So, think: A faithful mishandler of snakes puts his life at risk, along with the well-being of his family, but does not put the larger community in jeopardy. In contrast, the person who decides that by exercising due care in sterile practices that he can minimize personal risk while attending a large service, also threatens the cashier at the grocery, and every person who passes through that check-out line–and their families. The careless vector sins against humanity.

The politics here are critical. The defiant churches are led by evangelical activists who support conservative causes and politicians. In their resistance, they call into question the real threats of viral contagion, and represent a real threat to public health. They are also, however, key constituencies for Republican politicians in some states, who put public health behind concern for commerce and Christ.

So, pastors have organized to demand that their services be classified as essential, nourishment of the soul being every bit as critical as for the body. Organized evangelicals have been extraordinarily faithful to the Trump presidency, and neither he nor his political acolytes have been eager to cross them. Trump has left it up to state officials to decide whether to issue restrictions on public gatherings, and more than a few Republican governors have followed his model. Texas governor Greg Abott, has relied on his evangelical faith to call for more God, rather than fewer guns, to prevent shootings in churches and schools; thus far, he’s left it up to local officials to decide whether to restrict public activity.

In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis has charted his political career along spring breakTrump’s sitelines, delayed state-wide regulations–even during a typically raucous and atypically dangerous Spring Break season–in deference to local governments. But yesterday, DeSantis announced a state-wide shut-down of all but essential services.

He allowed a massive carve-out: public worship is classed as “essential business.”

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Cesar Chavez Day, 2020

Posted on March 31, 2020 by David S. Meyer

In the virtual lockdown we’re living through in California, where one day bleeds into another, I’d almost forgotten about Cesar Chavez Day.  Here’s a piece I wrote about the holiday in 2018, recycled, augmented, and reedited, with a few distressing updates.)

Less tImage result for edna chavez speech, stephon clarkhan a week after Edna Chavez, the charismatic seventeen year old high schooler from South Los Angeles, electrified a national crowd with a demand to end gun violence, Californians celebrate the legacy of another Chavez.

On my campus, we commemorated Cesar Chavez Day today, rather than March 31 (his birthday), by closing.  The state established the holiday in 2000, and six other states have followed suit.  In California, the legislature calls upon public schools to develop appropriate curricula to teach about the farm labor movement in the United States, and particularly Chavez’s role in it.

A campaign to establish a national holiday has stalled so far (The Cesar Chavez National holiday website seems to have last been updated in 2008), but last year President Obama issued a proclamation announcing a day of commemoration, and calling upon all Americans “to observe this day with appropriate service, community, and education programs to honor Cesar Chavez’s enduring legacy.”

Political figures have many reasons for creating holidays, including remembering the past; identifying heroic models for the future; recognizing and cultivating a political constituency; and providing an occasion to appreciate a set of values.  Regardless of the original meaning, the holidays take on new meanings over time.  Columbus Day, for example, is celebrated as an occasion for pride in Italian Americans (e.g.), and commemorated and mourned as a symbol of genocide  and empire (e.g.).

Cesar Chavez’s life and work is well worth remembering and considering, particularly now.  His career as a crusader was far longer than that of Martin Luther King discussed (here and here) and he was far more of an organizer than Fred Korematsu (discussed here). Chavez’s Medal of Freedom was awarded shortly after his death in 1993, by President Clinton, but many of his accomplishments were apparent well before then.

Dolores Huerta, 2009

As a young man, Chavez was an agricultural worker; by his mid-twenties, he became a civil rights organizer, working for the Community Service Organization in California.  With Dolores Huerta, in 1962 Chavez founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers.  Focusing on poor, mostly Mexican-American workers, Chavez’s vision for activism was right at the cornerstone of racial and economic justice.  Establishing an organization, however, is a long way from winning recognition and bargaining rights as a union.

Chavez was a tactician, a public figure, a charismatic, and something of a mystic.  Modeling his efforts after Gandhi’s successful campaigns, Chavez was an emphatic practitioner of active nonviolence.  He employed boycotts, strikes, long fasts, demonstrations, long marches, and religious rhetoric in the service of his cause.  He also registered voters, lobbied, and worked in political campaigns.  He was a tireless and very effective organizer for most of his life.

But holidays are best celebrated with an eye to the future, rather than the past.

On Cesar Chavez Day this year, we can think about the large and growing Latino community in the United States.  The 2010 Census reports that Latinos now comprise roughly 1/6 of the American population, and more than 1/3 of the population in California. This is the youngest and fastest-growing population in America today, and they are severely underrepresented in the top levels of politics, education, and the economy.   The civil rights map is at least as complicated as at any time in American history, but not less important or urgent.  (The struggle about the DREAM Act is reminiscent of the debate about Voting Rights 45 years ago.)  The future of American Latinos is very much the future of America.

[2020: Through ill-advised, provocative, and racist policies, Donald Trump has done a great deal to make it easier to mobilize Latinos, and to forge a broader unity among the whole range of minority groups (racial, ethnic, religious, sexual, etc.). This organizing IS happening.]

And Chavez saw the civil rights struggle as a labor issue.  When Chavez and Huerta started their campaign, nearly one third of Americans were represented by unions.  The percentage now is now just about 10 percent, and less in the private sector.

And public sector workers, even if represented by unions aren’t doing so well.  The ongoing conflict in Wisconsin is all about weakening unions that are already making very large concessions on wages and pensions.  The campaign in Wisconsin is part of a larger national effort, which is playing out in Indiana, Ohio, Florida, and elsewhere.  Even in states where anti-union forces are weaker, state employees face lay-offs, wage cuts, and increased health and pension costs.

[The previous Wisconsin governor, Scott Walker, was largely effective at hobbling organized labor in his state. Aided by an extensive organizing effort and backlash to many Walker policies, Tony Evers eked out a narrow victory in 2018. Wisconsin may now be a highly contested true swing state, but one without many swing voters.]

This year, the Supreme Court will rule in Janus vs. AFSCME, and court watchers expect the Wisconsin model to be immediately exported across the country. [The wildcat teachers strikes in West Virginia, and now Kentucky, with credible threats in Oklahoma and Arizona, offer the hint of a new resurgent labor… more later.]

[Janus turned out exactly as union organizers fear, and continues to haunt the national landscape.]

But, we need to remember that you can’t attack teachers, nurses, police officers, and firefighters without hurting the people they serve: us.

Or should I say, US?

We commemorate the past to help guide the future. Edna Chavez, working in an urban setting far from Cesar Chavez’s organizing, carries the legacy forward, and adds more.

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Solidarity and social distance, COVID-19 2/x

Posted on March 23, 2020 by David S. Meyer

If you can’t meet in person, how can you protest effectively, or build the communities that can support effective action in the future?

Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest by [Tufekci, Zeynep]Online connections and social media provide an exceptional set of resources for organizers to spread information about issues and actions, bypassing obstacles of mainstream media (neglect) and repression (e.g., police who chase away activists wheatpasting flyers on walls and electric polls), but much of the work of building social movements/networks/trust is face-to-face. Moreover, online networks can easily be more segregated and insular than their real-life expressions. (Zeynep Tufekci’s book, at left, describes the heft and limits of online action well.)

In ancient times, like the last century, large demonstrations reflected thousands of hours of organizing efforts played out over months or years, where local groups built activist communities, common understandings of problems and politics, and solidarity–a feeling of connection. Social media allow organizers to generate the numbers far more quickly, but can movements be effective without all the infrastructure? (Rhetorical question; I don’t think so.)

extinction rebellion buddhists

Dharma Action Network for Climate Engagement (DANCE)

In real life, organizers build solidarity by bringing people together for common purposes. Around coffee or tea, activists learn about each others’ families and favorite foods. They share brownies or cookies, tell jokes and stories, argue about places to shop or eat, and share rides. Sometimes, they make plans to go for walks or meals, organizer play dates for kids, and build friendships.
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A picketer is arrested behind Loveman's Department Store. Civil rights leaders believed that if they could break segregation in Birmingham, it would collapse throughout the South. ©1963 Bob Adelman, Courtesy CDEA.

 

 

 

 

At meetings and at actions, people sometimes pray or chant or sing. There is a feeling that can come from such collective action, of warmth and trust and connection, that provides support and sustenance and courage to take on actions that feel scary or risky.

Sometimes an issue or a political commitment can bring people together, but political commitments also develop through social connections, and the accumulation of common experiences over time.  
At demonstrations and actions, activists build bonds through proximity, like the two crusaders who confronted Sen. Jeff Flake at an elevator to urge him not to vote to confirm Justice Kavanaugh, or the young people in the Sunrise Movement who sat in at Speaker Pelosi’s office–and elsewhere in Congressional offices.

Canvassers meet neighbors and learn about issues that they aren’t organizing on at the moment, and learn to recognize people they might see at the grocery store later in the week.

Protesters linked arms in the street on Inauguration DayWhen academics write about the sense of connection, often expressed through physical ties, common language and slang, styles of dress, and familiar songs, they often use the term “collective identity.” It comes from personal and physical contact.

Can all of this be replicated online? I don’t know, but I’m doubtful. I had a good long Zoom meeting this morning with nearly a dozen others who shared a common purpose and similar values. But I muted my mic so that they didn’t have to hear me eat breakfast, and I made my own coffee. We tended our own obligations during a break; no small talk. Others were interrupted by calls or deliveries, and had to drop off at odd times to deal with children and normal household obligations. No stories, shared food, and not too many distractions. It was far more efficient than a meeting in-person, but far more instrumental and limited.

So, I’ve been interested in how local groups are working to build social contacts in these moments of social distance. My JCC has, surprisingly, been inspiring. In the phone and email messages that announced its closing, staff offered to check in with daily calls to people who wanted the connection. Fitness trainers offered free exercise classes online, and preschool teachers provided online story times, reading children’s books to children who must be climbing the walls.

Historian and activist Lara Putnam reports on Twitter of organizers cultivating mutual aid groups, trying to serve community needs even with the currently necessary distance. Neighbors are offering to pick up groceries or help with errands and information. This surely does something to build community and solidarity. Maybe this provides a core connection that can support political action later.

Maybe.

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Social distance and social movements, COVID-19, #1/x

Posted on March 22, 2020 by David S. Meyer

How does good medical advice affect meaningful collective action?

Before the recognition of the highly contagious novel coronavirus, we were living in a time of intense political mobilization–all over the world. But now, advisories to maintain social distance undermine the most visible elements of social movements: public meetings, canvassing, civil disobedience actions, lobbying trips, and, of course, demonstrations. It’s ridiculous to think that activists can stage a large demonstration in a public space while maintaining 6-10 feet distances from each other.

Protesters wore protective masks as a preventive measure against the coronavirus.Globally, in a few places activists are marching together outdoors anyway, the cause so pressing that they are willing to take what they know of the risks: last week, thousands turned out in Kyiv to protest Ukraine’s concessions to Russia in talks to end the ongoing war;  thousands of yellow vest protesters marched in Paris, in defiance of a government prohibition on large gatherings.

Urgency matters, of course,  but these dramatic efforts can’t be sustainable. coronavirus france paris yellow vests protests macronEven faster transmission of a viral infection is a risk for those taking to the streets, and–even more–it’s also a danger to the larger society that the protesters want to protect. Committed organizers won’t want to increase the risks their supporters take–nor risk diminishing turnouts.

The health threat, in conjunction with harsher government surveillance and repression have, at least for now, shut down the months-long protests in Hong Kong, and it’s hard to see how such mass movements will reemerge until everything feels a little safer.

In the meantime, what can organizers do to promote the issues they care about and build the citizen power they need to change the world?

Physical proximity has been almost a precondition for building collective action. More than 150 years ago, Marx and Engels wrote that capitalism, by bringing workers together in factories and cities, was handing shovels to its gravediggers. The piece that matters now is that they thought that once people were close to each other, sharing and comparing their troubles, finding common ground, and building trust–they could cooperate to make effective politics.

The idea that cohesive communities built on face-to-face contact can organize collective action, unlike other claims in the Communist Manifesto, has stood up pretty well. Workers who came to know each other on the factory floor built unions, organizers going door to door built neighborhood groups, and college students living in dorms organized and animated student movements. Activists of all sorts build community and make strategy over long meetings in kitchens and living rooms, pubs, and church basements. Good organizers listen to the people they wanted to engage and build human relationships, not just political transactions.

COVID-19 threatens every classic element of social movement organizing, from initial strategizing to visible political expressions.

The Internet and social media can offer some responses:  Tea Party organizers used Meet-Up to find each other and set up in-person meetings. Occupy Wall Street streamed actions and meetings to get the word out when mainstream media neglected it. A stray Facebook post in the wake of the Trump election inspired organizers to put together the Women’s March.  Indivisible posted an online manual that reached millions of people across the American Resistancecountry, who built their own groups and planned independent actions, sometimes in coordination (see distributed organizing, described by Dana Fisher’s book–at right).

But all of those efforts were all directed to produce events in real life with people knocking up against each other, friends and foes and bystanders. The Tea Party staged national demonstrations and coordinated disruptions and Congressional townhall meetings. Occupy occupied—everywhere, with thousands of people living in encampments. The Women’s March appeared in hundreds of sites, mobilizing millions, and Indivisible groups organized in real life meetings and events across the country.

Social media provide a tremendous aid to organizers working to get attention to their issues and activities, and coordinating actions, but they don’t work around the need to present action beyond a computer screen or keyboard. The real life part of activism is blocked right now.

Beyond that, COVID-19 commands so much of our attention, both political and personal, that it’s hard to find space for action on other political and economic issues. People are worried about getting to or staying away from work, buying food and toilet paper, attending to children and parents, navigating social distance with friends and family, and trying to plan for a future that’s hard to envision. Organizers concerned with climate change, reproductive rights, health care, or economic inequality can’t ignore. Instead,  the challenge is to understand the daily struggles, maybe offer some help, and move to work for broader reforms.

The next question, in the shadow of the virus, is how.

(more to come).

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