Politics of Protest, 2nd edition

Posted on March 5, 2014 by David S. Meyer

I’m happy to announce that Oxford University Press has just published the second edition of The Politics of Protest: Social Movements in America.

It’s really a new book, including discussion of things I’ve learned in the last seven years and the range of events that have taken place over that time.  The new edition includes a fuller discussion of media, including social media, which eluded me the first time through.  There’s also a recognition of some of the signal movements of recent years, including the gay and lesbian movements’ successful campaigns for open service and same sex marriage, the struggle between anti-immigrant and immigrant rights movements, the Tea Party, and Occupy Wall Street.

I’m happy about it and ready to talk!  (I’m particularly eager to talk about the movie rights.)

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Korematsu Day, institutionalizing commemoration

Posted on January 30, 2014 by David S. Meyer

Korematsu Day is celebrated today, and I repost the entry from the first Korematsu Day in 2011. The formal inclusion of commemoration in our calendar is a mixed blessing.  On one hand, it marks a terrible period in our nation’s history and recalls a destructive and explicitly racist policy of relocation.  It’s worth remembering.  On the other hand, it almost suggests that we’re beyond all of it today; we’re not.

Today Californians celebrate the first Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution.  Represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, Korematsu challenged the constitutionality of relocating and interning Japanese Americans during World War II.  Three Supreme Court Justices agreed with him; six did not, finding that the emergency of a World War justified allowing Congress to put civil liberties on the back burner (Korematsu v. US, 1944).

Korematsu’s challenge exacerbated rifts within the Japanese American community; large organizations like the Japanese American Citizen’s League were eager to prove their patriotism by cooperating with internment.

Maybe the arc of history really does bend toward justice; it’s certainly long.  In 1980, President Jimmy Carter established a commission to investigate the internment of Japanese Americans during the war; in 1983, Korematsu’s conviction was vacated.   In 1988, Congress apologized to the Japanese Americans for the internment, and the government paid (modest) compensation to those interned.  In 1998, President Clinton awarded Korematsu the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  More than fifty years later, we recognized courage and heroism in what we first saw as a crime.

We should derive more benefit from the vindication of Fred Korematsu more than he did.  To do so, we need to draw lessons from the cause and the case that extend beyond Japanese Americans in World War II.  This means, I think, paying close attention to discrimination on the basis of race justified by appeals to national security.

We should tell Fred Korematsu’s story in New York City, where the construction of an Islamic Center in lower Manhattan draws opposition.  We should recall the history in Arizona, when the state passes a law mandating that police demand proof of citizenship from people who look like they might be undocumented.

And we should all think about how people learn.  California Attorney General Earl Warren pressed for interning Japanese Americans immediately after Pearl Harbor, arguing that their presence in California represented a threat to civilian defense.  Thirteen years later, as Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, Warren organized the Court to issue unanimous decisions prohibiting racial segregation in the public schools.  I want to think he learned from the past, including his own past.

Apparently, one of the justices Earl Warren had to persuade was Robert Jackson, one of the three dissenters in Korematsu.  In dissent, Jackson wrote:

But once a judicial opinion rationalizes such an order to show that it conforms to the Constitution, or rather rationalizes the Constitution to show that the Constitution sanctions such an order, the Court for all time has validated the principle of racial discrimination in criminal procedure and of transplanting American citizens. The principle then lies about like a loaded weapon, ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need.

Justice Jackson took a leave of absence from the Court to serve as as the chief US prosecutor during the Nuremberg war crimes trials, putting him in a very good position to think about a government’s use of race politics as a means of mobilization during moments of crisis.

Perhaps Korematsu Day will be an occasion for fireworks and picnics one day.  Today, it seems like a good time for reflection.

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Celebrate Pete Seeger

Posted on January 28, 2014 by David S. Meyer

Pete Seeger died on Monday at 94.  He had a long and full life, one that touched many other people and helped carry many causes.  We had the good fortune that he outlived many of his (many) enemies who would surely have had interesting responses to his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or his Kennedy Center honors.

Pete Seeger appeared virtually everywhere on the American left over the last seventy years or so.  When he showed up to sing in lower Manhattan at Occupy Wall Street, I posted some thoughts here.

A couple of things I didn’t say, but probably should have:

Pete Seeger was a very accomplished musician, particularly as a banjo player and designer.

Pete Seeger did everything he could to bring exposure to others, including activists and musicians.  In 1967 he hosted Rainbow Quest, a PBS music show, and provided a forum for a wide range of musicians, including Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Jean Ritchie, Malvina Reynolds, Judy Collins, Doc Watson, Rev. Gary Davis, and Donovan–and many others.

Pete Seeger was also an extremely effective organizer and institution-builder.  He was a founder of Sing Out!, the important folk song/activist magazine, which has continued for more than 60 years–now online, and the Clearwater foundation, which includes a sloop, a festival, and an activist community in the Hudson Valley of New York.

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Tea Party State of the Union response

Posted on January 27, 2014 by David S. Meyer

After President Barack Obama gives his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, and after Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (from Washington state) gives the Republican response, Senator Mike Lee (Republican from Utah) will give the Tea Party response.  Senator Lee’s response, live-streamed on the web, won’t get the same television exposure as the other two, but it’s likely to make plenty of news.  (Rep. Michele Bachmann’s skewed Tea Party response in 2011 generated more attention that the presidential address, and more comedy; I say “skewed” because Rep. Bachmann mostly stared at the wrong camera.)

It’s not exactly the Tea Party that’s sponsoring Senator Lee, but the one of the largest Tea Party groups, the Tea Party Express, which has a sharp electoral orientation.  If there was grassroots consultation or any kind of formal process associated with picking Senator Lee (or Bachmann in 2011 or Herman Cain in 2012 or Senator Rand Paul last year), it’s not evident, not even the web-based voting major league sports employ to stoke interest in their all-star games.  The leaders of the Tea Party Express caucused and decided Senator Lee would be an effective spokesman.  Chairwoman Amy Kremer explained that “Senator Mike Lee has been both a tea-party hero for supporters across the nation, and a conservative leader in the upper chamber. He has introduced tangible policy solutions to some of America’s biggest problems.”  (Apparently, Senator Lee was last year’s first choice as well, but passed on the opportunity.)

Whatever the speaking slot has done for the movement, it’s not clear it’s helped the speakers.

The more important point, however, is the process of institutionalizing a Tea Party voice in the ritual of the State of the Union address.  The State of the Union itself, suggested in the Constitution, was routinely mailed into Congress until President Woodrow Wilson (tea party villain) decided to deliver the speech in person.  Now tradition and ritual dominate public attention for a week, beginning with speculation and ending with analysis.

Doubling the critical response, just in the last couple of years and just because the Tea Party Express decided to do it, alters the dynamics.  The Republican response can be echoed–or undermined–by the Tea Party alternative.  That alternative creeps into the news, generating respect or ridicule.  And Tea Party officials can jockey to promote themselves on the Tea Party line.  The group will claim its 5-15 minutes, and then attention moves on.  Institutionalization and routine reserves attention, but it also bounds it.  It remains to be seen whether this media moment helps or hurts the movement as a whole; certainly, it will go a long way in defining it.

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The March for Life and the risks and rewards of institutionalization

Posted on January 24, 2014 by David S. Meyer

Many abortion opponents showed up for the annual March for Life in Washington, DC this past week, commemorating (mourning) the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that established abortion rights across the United States.

I don’t know how many; the Park Service stopped providing crowd estimates years ago and organizers always inflate their claims (>500,000?) [on the demonstration numbers game, see], but certainly there were at least tens of thousands–and a somewhat smaller number of abortion rights demonstrators.  Because it was cold and snowy, and because it was the 41st March for Life (not the 40th), everyone seems to agree that last year’s march was even bigger.  The March is there every year, with crowds that vary according to weather, organizing efforts, and the political salience of abortion.

The March for Life was most extensively covered by supporters this year (e.g., Warren Mass in The New American; access to the Internet allows well-organized groups like the March to post their own accounts as well, highlighting the supportive tweet from Pope Francis)  Mainstream media coverage seemed to range from standard (local media did best: The Washington Post offered an article and pictures, as did Politico) to somewhat less (The New York Times offered only a picture with a caption).

Why?  Maybe it was the weather? Even The Christian Post used pictures from 2013, but there are other issues, some discussed in The Times‘ Public Editor’s (Margaret Sullivan) column.  The March for Life is a big, well-established group with a substantial professional staff.  It organizes and raises money all year for this event, and succeeds at generating some kind of substantial turnout each year.  This year’s theme, adoption, didn’t represent a new set of arguments or policy demands, just a continuation of a decades-long campaign.  It lacks the novelty or uncertainty of the kind of news that attracts extensive coverage.  Mainstream media were more comfortable, in more ways than one, covering the March in the context of the almost completely partisanized debate about abortion rights.  This means quoting elected officials and speculating on electoral implications.

The irony is that because the March has institutionalized so effectively, reliably turning out large crowds each year, those crowds and those efforts get less attention.

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Martin Luther King Day (2014)

Posted on January 19, 2014 by David S. Meyer

(This is a repost of the MLKing Day holiday note,  with an added image–at right–from the Mall in Washington, DC.  Have a good holiday.)

Martin Luther King died young enough and dramatically enough to be turned into an American hero, but it was neither his youth nor his death that made him heroic.

In his rather brief public life, beginning in Montgomery at 26, and ending with his assassination at 39, King consistently displayed rhetorical brilliance (on the podium and the page), strategic acumen, and moral and physical courage.

The effort to honor Martin Luther King with a holiday commemorating his birthday started at the King Center, in Atlanta, in the year after his assassination.  States began to follow suit, and by 1983, more than half celebrated King’s life with a day.  In that year, Ronald Reagan signed a bill making Martin Luther King day a national holiday expressing ambivalence, acknowledging that it was costly, and that King may have been a Communist.

The King holiday was about Martin Luther King, to be sure, but it was meant to represent far more than the man.  King stands in for the civil rights movement and for African-American history more generally.  I often wonder if the eloquence of the 1963 “I have a dream” speech winds up obscuring not only a man with broader goals, but a much more contested–and ambitious–movement.

The man and the movement are ossified into an iconic image, like a statue, which locks King and the movement into the politics of 1963-1965.  We accept King’s dream, that little children will play together, and that people will be judged by “the content of their character” (a favorite phrase on the right).

The image, like a statue, is available for appropriation to advocates of all political stripes, and the establishment of the holiday itself represents an achievement of the civil rights movement, winning the holiday if not broader economic and social equality.

Before the transformation of the man into an icon, King transformed himself from a pastor into an activist, a peripatetic crusader for justice.

But the pastor didn’t disappear; rather this role grew into something larger, as King himself transformed himself from a minister into a an Old Testament prophet, one whose primary concern was always the people on the margins, the widows and orphans, the poor and hungry.  In standing with those on the margins, King courageously used–and risked–the advantages of his privilege, pedigree, and education.  He also knew that he risked his safety and his life.

In his writing, King used his education and his vocation to support his political goals.  In the critically important “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” he cited both the Constitution and the Bible in support of Federal intervention in local politics to support desegregation and human rights.  (We know that other activists now use the same sources to justify pushing the Federal government out of local politics.)

King explained that he was in jail in Birmingham, Alabama, because he had nonviolently defied local authorities in the service of higher laws, the Constitution and the Gospel.  This was not like making a provocative statement on one’s own [profitable] radio or television show.  There were real costs and severe risks.

King was never less than controversial during his life, under FBI surveillance during his political career, and vigorously criticized by opponents (for demanding too much and too strongly) and allies (for not demanding more, more vigorously).

When he was assassinated outside a Memphis motel in 1968, he was standing with sanitation workers on strike, straying from a simpler civil rights agenda.  He had also alienated some civil rights supporters by coming out, strongly, against the war in Vietnam.  And Black Power activists saw their own efforts as overtaking King’s politics and rhetoric.  By the time he was killed, Martin Luther King’s popular support had been waning for some time.

Posterity has rescued an image of Martin Luther King, at the expense of the man’s own broader political vision.

Ironically, in elevating an insurgent to a position in America’s pantheon of historic heroes, we risk editing out the insurgency.

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Thanks to Franklin McCain

Posted on January 11, 2014 by David S. Meyer

Franklin McCain died at the age of 73, another chance for the rest of us to appreciate his commitment and courage, and to say thank you to remind ourselves of what’s possible.

McCain was one of the four freshmen (not those four freshmen) at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College who decided to desegregate the South one Sunday night in 1960.  Along with Ezell Blair, Jr., Joseph McNeil, and David Richmond, McCain sat in at a lunch counter in Woolworth’s on Monday morning, sparking the imagination of activists across the country.  They were determined to stay until they were served, and over the next few days, hundreds joined them, starting in Greensboro and spreading across the South.  (Find all of their biographies here.)

The story always astounds me, and I don’t think it really can be told too often (see here, here, and here, just for Politics Outdoors.)  The civil rights movement was certainly already well underway, and had a few significant victories, but Jim Crow segregation still dominated the South.

The Greensboro sit-in is the moment in Franklin McCain’s life that will appear in our history books, but it’s a substantial and significant life, worth noting beyond the world of his friends and family (please see Nancy McLaughlin’s piece in the local paper, the  News and Record.)

A few notes:

Franklin McCain was certainly a radical in 1960, but like his colleagues, he was determined to show that he was also a patriot, wearing his ROTC uniform when he entered Woolworth’s.  Coming from a relatively advantaged background–for an African-American man in 1960-he thought he had the obligation to do more than talk about civil rights and put his body on the line for his beliefs.  He also was not unduly optimistic about the chances of the sit-in working, but believed that he had a moral obligation to do something.

And his life extended well beyond the sit-in that day–or week–in February 1960.  He was a committed activist, but a professional scientist.  After graduating from college with a chemistry degree, he married Bettye Davis, another activist–who died just last year.  They had three sons and seven grandchildren.  McCain had a successful career working for the Celanese corporation as a chemist and product representative.  He also continued to speak and organize throughout his life, reflecting not only on the sit-in phase of the civil rights movement, but on the activism of young people for years afterward.  He encouraged rhetorically as well as by his example.  Elaine Woo’s LA Times obit ends:

“Never ask for permission to start a revolution,” he told college students in Ohio a few years ago. “If there is something you want or need to do … just do it.”

Franklin McCain was exceptional, and a real American hero, but there are many like him.

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Activism in office

Posted on December 29, 2013 by David S. Meyer

Kshama Sawant joins the Seattle City Council this week, and her support for socialism seemed newsworthy to the editors of the New York Times.

Kshama Sawant campaigns

The headline notes that the election makes Sawant “a rare elected voice for socialism.”  Sawant campaigned for a $15 an hour minimum wage in Seattle, and generally expressed strong support for the disadvantaged and stronger distrust of local, national, and multinational economic powers.

Kirk Johnson’s interesting article focuses on the dilemmas inherent in holding office.  No one, including Sawant, seems to think that there is widespread support for socialism per se, and she knows that she has to govern in order to be of use to anyone, including the movements she comes out of.  She introduced herself to voters as:

…an economics teacher at Seattle Central Community College and a member of the American Federation of Teachers Local 1789. She was an activist in the Occupy Wall Street movement, and is a fighter for workers, women, LGBTQ people, and immigrants.

Delivering benefits to the people she wants to represent means working with a City Council and a Mayor who don’t necessarily share all of her commitments, and finding a way to deal with Boeing, a huge local employer that reminds everyone it could leave the City at any time.  It means trimming her rhetorical sails from time to time, negotiating possible deals at the expense of Ideals.

This is a difficult balancing act for any activist who pursues elected office (it’s easier, alas, just to lose and maintain a clear political line), and paradoxically, tougher for someone working at the local level who bears responsibility for making decisions that affect constituent’s lives.  Johnson quotes a Sawant supporter who sketches out the dilemma clearly:

“If she remains only an activist, she’ll be a one-shot wonder,” said the Rev. Rich Lang, the pastor of University Temple United Methodist Church in Seattle and a Sawant supporter. But if she moves too far toward the center, “she’ll be shot down from the left as a compromiser,” he said. “There’s tremendous pressure on her.”

Councilor Sawant’s dilemmas are hardly peculiar to her or to the left more generally.  A member of the House of Representatives from a safe seat can often carve out a political career as an ideologue, while working backstage to bring goodies back to the district.  This was the story of Republican Rep. Ron Paul, the Texas libertarian who excoriated corporate subsidies and earmarks rhetorically, while making sure his allies and district got their share.

But personal ambition and political visibility make this kind of secret balancing tougher to pull off.  Three Republican Senators often tagged as Tea Partiers are confronting the same dilemmas in a brighter spotlight than Councilor Sawant will face–at least for now.  Rep. Paul’s libertarian son, Senator Rand Paul (Kentucky) mouths the same ideals as his father, but also looks to find ways to maintain Medicare and oppose open borders or immigration reform.  Senator Marco Rubio (Florida), an experienced politician, tried to lead the way on immigration reform without seeming to compromise on any other issues.  And Senator Ted Cruz (Texas) took credit for leading the Republican Party into a government shut-down that hurt his country–and more pointedly, his party.

All face the same conflicting pressures that could bedevil Councilor Sawant in seeking to govern effectively without “selling out.”

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Anticipating backlash?

Posted on December 27, 2013 by David S. Meyer

Not that it’s impossible, but it’s hard for any government, particularly the US government, to take rights away.  What seems intractable, like laws mandating schools segregated by race or prohibitions on “interracial” marriage, disappear, and over time, so does polite support for them.

Since the 1980s, we’ve witnessed an immense and seemingly intractable battle of countermovements on same sex marriage, and for a long time, all the victories were on the “against” side.   Over the last decade or so, however, autumn arrived, a leaf at a time, then whole baskets full, as country after country and state after state changed laws.

Massachusetts has sanctioned same sex marriage for about a decade, and the pace of new states dropping the prohibition has accelerated beyond the hopes of all but the most optimistic campaigner, sometimes by legislature or referendum, but more commonly, by judicial ruling.  Mostly, however, it was more socially liberal states that reformed, leaving marriage equality opponents expressing confidence in their ability to defend the rest of the country (e.g.).

And then Utah.

Last week Federal District Judge Robert J. Shelby ruled that Utah’s ban on same sex marriage violated 14th amendment protections for gay and lesbian couples.  Both he and the appellate court refused to stay the ruling pending further appeals; county clerks, first in Salt Lake City but soon throughout the state, began issuing marriage licenses.  Public joy and outrage attended the ongoing run of nuptials.

Historically, defining marriage has been the responsibility of the states–although the full faith and credit clause of Constitution compels states to recognize marriages performed in other states.

Even as public support for marriage equality has grown, such support doesn’t comprise close to a majority in Utah.  As the state’s appeal winds its way up to the Supreme Court, supporters and opponents will try to organize in light of new facts on the ground, particularly marriage licenses and celebrations.

It’s got to be easier to oppose extending marriage recognition to slightly different (read: same gender) couples beforehand than taking such recognition away.  Marriage opponents will be faced with the difficult task of organizing and mobilizing against distinct and identifiable couples.  Maintaining strict moral rectitude in the abstract gets harder when the specifics mean trying to take away something valued from a relative or neighbor (watch health insurance on this as well).  This is one reason why the strategy of coming out was so important and powerful.

Utah’s conservative political culture, buttressed by the institutional infrastructure of the Church of Latter Day Saints (whose members include a large majority of Utah residents) should provide the ideal setting for a powerful backlash–against marriage equality and against Federal intrusion in marriage rules.  Will it?  Or will the obligations of friendship and neighborliness trump the abstract?

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Same as it ever was?: Budget politics and the Tea Party

Posted on December 13, 2013 by David S. Meyer

Successful politicians sell out the movements that give them leverage, visibility, and power.  Until yesterday, when the House of Representatives passed a rather mundane two year budget bill that disappointed virtually everyone, the House Republican leadership, particularly Speaker John Boehner, was having a very difficult time being successful.  It wasn’t just that Congress couldn’t pass very much or that Speaker Boehner couldn’t really negotiate on anything because he couldn’t deliver the votes of his own caucus.  More than that, every so-called Tea Party move seemed to cost the Republican Party public support.  Speaker Boehner publicly acknowledged being dragged to lead a government shut-down just weeks ago, a strategy that played out badly for everyone, but particularly the Republicans.

The shut-down approach undermined as a tactic for at least the near future, House Budget Chair Paul Ryan entered negotiations with his Senate counterpart Patty Murray with reduced leverage and a strong determination to reach an agreement.  It was pretty obvious than any settlement between the two would be some version of the split the difference compromises that characterized most institutional politics in American history.  And so it did.

Conservative interest groups (including Heritage Action and FreedomWorks) saw this coming way in advance, and began firing on the agreement long before it was settled.  Mainstream Republicans have been trying to find a way to manage the Tea Party since 2010, and bits of evidence that they might be able to do so are just emerging.  When the House voted overwhelmingly (332-94) to pass the compromise budget agreement, those Republicans finally got something to be optimistic about–even as they bemoaned the deal.  Mainstream Democrats moaned too, but saw the prospects of the resurrection of old style institutional politics.

Emboldened, pissed off, and buttressed by the (at least momentary) support of most of his caucus, Speaker Boehner fired on those interest groups, announcing the end of their undue influence on his members.  (Remember, he said, these are the folks who brought you the shutdown–which I warned against.) Mainstream media portrayed the speaker as standing up to the Tea Party, but it’s not clear there was anything approaching a grassroots movement ever involved in this round of debate.  Although the Tea Party Patriots national office decried the budget and Boehner in particular (“Boehner declares war on the American people“), in doing so she looked very much like the leadership of those well-funded, but not broadly supported, Washington, DC interest groups.

The question now is whether those conservative groups can keep their promises and remobilize a movement that will hold Republicans who want to govern accountable.  Organizers were able to use the financial bail-outs of 2008-09 and the passage of the Affordable Care Act to stoke the grassroots into action.  I doubt that the agreement to pass a budget and keep government open can do the same thing, but we’ll see.

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