Are the movements in Ukraine and Thailand democratic?

Posted on December 10, 2013 by David S. Meyer

I don’t know enough about these cases to say.

Clifford Bob, who knows more than I do, writes with concerns:

I just read your blogpost on Ukraine and Thailand.  I was struck by that juxtaposition today also.  But one thing that bothers me is exactly what the protesters are after.  I haven’t been following either protest too closely, but from what I know about Thailand this is, very broadly, a case of protest aimed at bringing down a democratically elected government.  And that has been a major part of the protest ever since Thaksin won elections in the early 2000s.  The protesters, mostly middle class urbanites, want various changes to the Thai political system, to help ensure that  populists such as Thaksin and his sister, who depend mostly on the votes of poor rural people, can’t win elections or at least dominate politics–even if they won relatively clean democratic elections.

And the protests that helped lead to the downfall of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt are also similar.  Broadly, it seems that relatively well-resourced and “liberal” middle classes are taking to the streets to unseat democratically elected, sometimes “populist” governments.  It’s a very interesting phenomenon, and challenges a number of ideas that are commonplace among scholars of social movements and democracy.  I haven’t seen much about it, but one exception is Joshua Kurlantzick, Democracy in Retreat.  I’m also reminded of the US political system historically and today, with all its limits on democracy and fear of populism.

The New York Times reports that while Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has called for new elections, she’s refused to step down in advance of those elections.  The opposition is apparently wary of new elections that they would lose, and wants instead a council of wise people to rule the country.  Shinawatra’s achievements include high prices for rice farmers and universal health care.

Similar policies (substitute corn for rice) spurred a conservative populist (but certainly not majority) backlash in other countries you know about.

Protest movements aren’t always pushing for democracy.  The Times reports worries about the undermining of democratic institutions.  This is always a charge made against social movements, from below or not; sometimes, however, it’s appropriate.

Do any readers know more about this story?

(Add Ukraine and Egypt if you want.)

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Recipe for Democratic Revolution: What Works?

Posted on December 9, 2013 by David S. Meyer

Reliably?  Nothing.

Thais assemble in Bangkok to demand new government, November 25, 2013

As we see expressions of people power emerge and reemerge globally, it’s important–and hard–to remember that promoting democratic change isn’t like baking a cake.

When courageous people take to the streets to press for their governments to be more responsive and democratic, the fates of their movements are not fully within their control.

In Thailand, where activists have massed large crowds and escalated demands, the Prime Minister has dissolved parliament and called for snap elections, but this isn’t giving into the demands from the street.  Activists assume that allies of the ruling faction will easily win any election, and are pressing for alternatives.  But the King and the military have maintained neutrality; meaningful reforms seem quite distant.  What activists do will matter, but they’re not alone in this struggle, and opponents and bystanders have a lot of autonomy and consequence.  No magic recipe for success.

Ukrainian protesters topple statue of Lenin, December 8, 2013

In Ukraine, protesters have also escalated, punctuating massive rallies by pulling down a statue of Vladimir Lenin in Kiev.  It’s tempting to think that the dramatic symbolic triumph marks a turning point in real politics.  The provocation for protest at the outset was President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to reject steps toward integration with Europe in order to maintain close ties with Russia.  Activists want to turn West rather than East, and now to bring down the government.

Kindred efforts in Eastern Europe faltered and failed throughout the cold war in the face of the threat–or actuality–of intervention by the Soviet Union….at least until the very end in 1989.  Is Russia as threatening and powerful as the Soviet Union once was?  Again, this is mostly beyond the control of Ukrainian activists.  Again, the outcomes of their actions, no matter how sincerely motivated or well-considered, are largely beyond their control.  Again, no magic recipe for success.

Some of those who bravely challenge powerful authorities fool themselves (or are fooled) into thinking their odds of success are better than they actually are.  Others steel themselves with the sense of moral righteousness that sustains commitment even in the face of defeats.  Maybe most go back and forth.

Now think about Nelson Mandela’s twenty-seven years in prison, working on the same plan, largely insulated from useful information about its progress for most of that time.  Miscalculation?  Faith?  Longterm strategic thinking?

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Claiming Nelson Mandela

Posted on December 6, 2013 by David S. Meyer

The flags are at half-staff here in Irvine, mourning the death, and commemorating the life of Nelson Mandela.Nelson Mandela  President Mandela outlived and outperformed most of his critics, leaving us with an unduly warm and fuzzy picture of a genial elder statesmen.

There’s lots of reporting on Mandela’s life and legacy (I like Mitchell Hartman’s Marketplace piece, which quotes me on the anti-apartheid movement), and entrepreneurial politicians of the left and right are trying to hop in, appropriating the man and the moment to their own purposes.   One egregious example is former Senator Rick Santorum’s long struggle against apartheid in South Africa to his own campaign against the Affordable Care Act (and, implicitly, for president).

We should remember that Mandela mattered most when he was far more controversial.  He went to jail in 1962, explaining that he endorsed the African National Congress’s decision to employ a variety of means, including violence, to end apartheid.  He was labelled a terrorist, not just in South Africa, but also in the United States, and spent 27 years in prison.  He claimed, in 1962 and much later, that he never doubted apartheid would fall and South Africa would develop a multiracial democracy.  I don’t believe that, but I admire his ability to stay on that lofty message.  His cause was supported by Communists, both inside South Africa and outside, and he never renounced those who supported the ANC in difficult times to curry favor with those who did not.  I admire this too.

As President, he was stalwart in advancing a vision of a multi-racial state and NOT punishing or even stigmatizing those who had jailed him.  Given his experience, this is extraordinary.  I think it makes more sense to see him as a man who controlled and managed bitterness and resentment than one who felt no animus about apartheid in general and his own imprisonment.  He was after something bigger.  He got a lot of it.

In 1990 I was part of a crowd of more than one quarter million on the Charles River Esplanade who greeted Nelson Mandela, recently released from prison, when he visited Boston on a fundraising tour.  It was joyous, crowded, multi-racial (unusual in Boston at that time), and inspiring.  Paul Simon and Ladysmith Black Mambazo played music.

Now that others can try to speak for him, we will hear partisans of all kinds of causes attempting to claim Mandela’s strength, spirit, and effectiveness.  We would do well to remember how the speakers dealt with Mandela when he was alive–and in need.  Conservative Republicans, like Senator Santorum, were actively hostile to the man and the cause.  Without recognition of this turn, it’s probably wise to take such claims skeptically.

It’s hard to figure out what Mandela would have said or done absent the man himself, but we might consider those who supported him and the cause when it was far harder to do so.  Students who campaigned for their colleges and universities to divest their holdings in companies that did business in South Africa, constructing shantytowns on their quads were among them, facing charges of naivete–or much worse.  But they helped get Nelson Mandela out of prison, to visit Boston, and to become president of South Africa.

It’s hard to imagine those people campaigning against immigrant rights or universal health care, or for mindless tax and spending cuts.  It’s easier to see their children, now pushing for their campuses to channel their endowments away from carbon pollution, channeling Mandela’s spirit and his supporters’ dreams.

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Rep. John Lewis, comic book hero

Posted on August 15, 2013 by David S. Meyer

Without cape and tights, Congressman John Lewis is becoming a comic book hero.  (He’s already a hero of mine, and some of his exploits have appeared in this blog.)

From a piece by Sheryl Gay Stolberg, at the New York Times, I learned of a new comic (they call it a “graphic novel,” but this story is true, not fictional) depicting Lewis’s life in three volumes.

By day, Lewis is a long time Democratic congressman from Atlanta, wearing a coat and tie, casting votes and making speeches–not generally the stuff of comic book heroism.

But Lewis is also a crusader for civil rights and social justice.  He was Executive Director of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the early 1960s, a Freedom Rider, non-violent warrior, and a frequent civil disobedient.  His superpowers include extraordinary moral clarity and physical courage.  It won’t take you thirty seconds to find pictures of John Lewis, as a young divinity student or older member of Congress, braving fire bombers or police dogs, or just being hauled away in handcuffs.

Even quicker, you’ll be able to find his Congressional website which details his positions and activities on behalf of the poor and disadvantaged generally, the environment, and civil rights for gays, lesbians, ethnic minorities, immigrants, and generally anyone excluded from some of the benefits of American life.

Representative Lewis has told his story before, in a more conventional memoir of the civil rights movement, in talks before activist audiences, and in speeches on the floor of the House of Representatives.  He constantly reminds his audiences that he is fighting the same fights for social justice in mark-up sessions and committee hearings that he fought on the Edmund Pettus bridge nearly fifty years ago.  And he still takes his politics outdoors as well. keeping civil disobedience in his personal tactical repertoire, even since entering Congress.

Even educated Americans take the story of civil rights in America so much for granted that they actually know little of it.  Among the many very bright and well-educated students I encounter at the University of California, Irvine, I’ve met only a few who had heard of John Lewis.   Most know of two civil rights heroes: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks.  Neither is now around to continue the struggle, their heroism and activism safely now confined to the past.

(Part of what I teach is John Lewis and his story of taking a political struggle into mainstream institutional politics; this is a story, in part, about social change and the resilience of American institutions.)

History is another site of struggle for activists, who need to work hard to claim credit for their achievements in the past and the connections to current struggles.  The graphic memoir (comic book) here becomes another activist tool and tactic.

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Who’s running the immigrant rights movement?

Posted on August 12, 2013 by David S. Meyer

Lots of people.

No one.

In this regard, the immigrant rights movement isn’t very different from virtually every other social movement in recent American history.

While I’ve been awed by the bravery and commitment of the DREAM 9, subjecting themselves to arrest and potential deportation in the service of dramatizing the need for comprehensive immigration reform, others involved in the struggle for a very long time were less enthralled.  At the LA Times, Cindy Carcomo has the story of divided opinions among immigration rights activists.

Civil disobedience here is risky and it’s polarizing, and it’s unlikely to do anything over the short and medium term to affect the balance of power and commitment in Washington, DC, meaning mostly the US Congress.  Carcomo cites Dave Leopold, an immigrant rights lawyer, who says the efforts would be better directed at pressuring House Speaker John Boehner.

How?  Not so clear, but there’s a hint elsewhere in the Times.  A front page story reports that a liberal group, America’s Voice, has been donating money to support South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham’s reelection bid.  Senator Graham is a conservative Republican who supports international military engagement and comprehensive immigration reform, that is, not conservative enough to head off a Tea Party-ish primary challenge.  Pragmatic politics?  Foolish compromise?

Advocates of immigration reform will differ on shorter term demands, tactics, and strategies of influence; they’ll also differ on longer term goals.  And they won’t be able to stop those allies they disagree with from pursuing approaches they view as foolish or counterproductive in the first place.  Remember, immigrant rights activists were initially reluctant to allow the DREAM Act, what seemed like the most tractable piece of their broader agenda, to be carved out from a comprehensive bill.  But they couldn’t stop the DREAMers.

Social movements in America do not easily submit to anyone’s control, even that of long time activists.  Made up of multiple groups and individuals who drift in and out with a range of ideologies and resources, movements develop idiosyncratically as leaders frantically try to cultivate cooperation and coherence.  And the immigrant rights and reform struggle is just another example.

Remember that gay and lesbian activists divided over the wisdom and value of a strategy based on access to marriage.

And that the early Tea Party groups were supported by well-funded national groups that mostly supported an open approach to borders and immigration.

Now marriage equality is the prime front in the gay rights struggle and Tea Partiers–if not all the national organizations–are on the front lines fighting immigration reform.

America is an entrepreneurial environment for social movement activists, and groups and leaders have a harder time establishing monopoly control of a movement than companies do in markets.

Movement strategy emerges from competition, as organizers try to get support from activists, funders, and authorities, while they try to convince, cajole, and contain their allies.

It’s complicated to watch, and more than that to try to coordinate.

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DREAM 9 and organizing around civil disobedience

Posted on August 8, 2013 by David S. Meyer

I’m in awe of the courage and commitment of the DREAM 9, and their (probably inappropriate) confidence in their ability to move the immigration debate forward toward some kind of reform.

On July 22, the nine young non-citizens, who had been brought to the United States as children, entered the United States by crossing the Mexican border in Nogales, Arizona.  (Cindy Carcomo has been covering the story for the LA Times.) All had grown up in the United States, and three went to Mexico specifically to stage this action.  They didn’t try to sneak in.  Instead, dressed in graduation robes, they announced their undocumented status, hoping to be detained and tried before an immigration judge.

[It’s not so easy; these are not the sorts of people either Homeland Security or the Obama administration wants to focus on.  See a recent report on This American Life, which featured a powerful story of young DREAM activists who worked hard to get into an immigrant detention center in Florida in hopes of preventing the deportation of others.]

These DREAMers asked for political asylum, claiming specific threats of violence and discrimination if returned to Mexico.  But from the start, they’ve been looking for legal relief for perhaps a million people just like them, and for another 10 million long term undocumented residents of the United States.  It’s a bold and risky strategy.

Oh, of course all activism entails some risk or cost, but in America most of us have ready access to all kind of extremely safe and protected ways to protest, including demonstrations, petitions, and pickets.  But the nine knew that they were courting a long term of incarceration in bad circumstances followed by deportation to a country most of them didn’t know very well.  All had friends and families and most of their worlds in the United States.

Their bet is that their bravery in exposing the costs of a dysfunctional immigration system would generate a round of attention that could spur a concerned American public to press Congress to move on comprehensive immigration reform, or at least a DREAM Act.  It’s a bet that’s not likely to pay off very soon.

But the DREAM 9 have generated national attention and concern, and Homeland Security has given them a path toward organizing, if not citizenship.  Their claims for asylum are unlikely to be accepted when heard before a judge; only a tiny fraction of such claims from Mexican immigrants are granted.  But it may be a few years before the cases progress, adn they think time is on their side.  In the interim, these DREAMers will be able to reclaim some of their lives. One, Lizabeth Mateo, will be starting law school at the University of Santa Clara; she wants to be an immigration lawyer.

And their political struggle continues.  They were welcomed as heroes when released at a bus station in Tucson, and within hours were back at the detention center, protesting outside, and they’re not alone.

The National Immigrant Youth Alliance and DreamActitivist.org have been tracking these Dreamers, and organizing around them since their arrest.  Their efforts have included rallies and vigils, a petition campaign, and a rolling hunger strike that allows supporters to take on a little of the hardship the nine embraced.  Activists have targeted President Obama for focused attention, and forty members of Congress have signed letters of support, although that number is probably already outdated.

The DREAM 9 are building upon at least three years of other DREAMers coming out by going public and revealing undocumented status, often in the context of civil disobedience actions.  The earlier efforts have whet public attention to the issue and the tactic, and built stronger activist networks of support.

There’s little reason to believe that these DREAMers, no matter how sincere, appealing or brave, are likely to move a majority of House Republicans to take their own risks in confronting anti-immigrant sentiments within their party.  But the nine have raised the issue, again and powerfully, giving supporters an occasion to do more.

Civil disobedience works, when it does, as part of broader political campaigns, by activating audiences and engaging larger numbers in a wide variety of actions.  The DREAM 9 may not be the the final effort that tips institutional politics toward reform, but these efforts and risks are not in vain.  This DREAM will not die.

 

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Cooper Union occupation ends with promises of consultation

Posted on July 16, 2013 by David S. Meyer

Cooper Union students, who have been occupying the offices of the school’s president for more than two months, have announced that they’re moving out.  Free Cooper Union started when the Board of Trustees announced that they would begin charging tuition next year–a departure from 111 years of free tuition for admitted students.

The student protesters were stalwarts, maintaining a constant presence of dozens of students through the end of the school year and beyond.  What got them out?

As the (former) Occupiers, administration, and trustees of Cooper Union announced on the school’s website, the administration and the students negotiated a deal that will allow politics to continue in a less disruptive way.  The Occupiers get amnesty for anything they might have done in the struggle, providing they agree to obey school rules in the future.  They also won the creation of a new Working Group which will be charged with finding ways to restore a tuition-free education.  The agreement stipulates student and faculty membership in the Working Group, and that if outside financial expertise is needed, it will be provided from acknowledged experts on finance at elite universities (none of which are tuition free).

This may be the best deal the students could get; after all, their occupation couldn’t go on forever, and they were well-aware that the administration had the capacity to end it summarily by calling in the police.  But it’s hard to think that this working group will reverse the trustees’ decision to charge tuition.  Really, creating this kind of special commission/working group/ad hoc committee, is a common tactic for taking the steam out of protests.  (This is, by the way, what Lindsey Lupo’s fine book is all about.)

Cooper Union’s tuition-free model apparently collapsed during the Great Recession when rent from its primary asset, the Chrysler Building, faltered.  Outside experts deplored the school’s failure to develop a diversified portfolio over the years, or to build a more sustainable model for funding its program.  A Working Group can rehash all of this.

But earnest, intelligent, and hard-working students in the new Working Group will be sitting at the table with far more sophisticated financial players, people who will tell them how much they regret having to charge tuition, and how committed they are to making sure that needy students will get sufficient financial aid to be able to attend Cooper Union.  They might even be telling the truth.  Students will have to manage their classes, their own finances, and their post-college aspirations.  The next generation of Cooper Union students will enter the school with individual plans for managing the new tuition and debt.  It will be extremely difficult to reopen the tuition issue in a serious way.  Students will have been heard, then herded into an institutional politics that’s unlikely to generate anything they imagined they wanted.

This is the kind of thing that most people think of when they use the word, COOPTATION.

Full disclosure: many years ago, on a less important issue and with a much less developed protest, I was part of a group that signed off on such a deal.  We got to make a presentation to the Board of Trustees, and I sat on a special committee that discussed space for a year.  I wish the Cooper Union students a better fate.

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Martin, Zimmerman, judicial backlash and policy change: update

Posted on July 15, 2013 by David S. Meyer

Yesterday I claimed that the disappointment and mobilization in the wake of unpopular judicial verdicts in the Rodney King and O.J. Simpson cases didn’t lead to changes in policy.  (That’s another disappointment!)  I asked for corrections.

Lindsey Lupo, a political scientist at Point Loma Nazarene University, who has studied the issue, wrote in response:

Regarding your question about whether police policy changed after the Rodney King beating, you are correct in that it did not…even in LA.  Just after the beating in 1991, Mayor Bradley instituted the Christopher Commission to study the LAPD. It was headed by Warren Christopher and released 4 months after the beating, but 13 months before riot.  It made sweeping recommendations but not much changed in LAPD culture after its release (a report called “Five Years Later” was released in 1996 and confirmed this, particularly with regard to use of force, bias, cultural awareness, and racism). In 2000, another commission was instituted to study the LAPD in the wake of the Rampart scandal.  It too found that not much had changed in the last decade.  I’d venture to say that not much has changed even now….in LA or elsewhere.

Professor Lupo is an expert on these issues, and the author of the excellent book, Flak-Catchers: One Hundred Years of Riot Commission Politics in America (Lexington Books, 2010).

Full disclosure: I was proud to serve on Prof. Lupo’s dissertation committee.

 

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Zimmerman, Martin, and the Courts

Posted on July 14, 2013 by David S. Meyer

Don’t count on the courts to produce justice, but sometimes it’s disappointment with the legal system that does make change.

We expect too much from the courts and we’re constantly disappointed.  The trial in Florida could have ended with George Zimmerman sanctioned in some way for shooting and killing an unarmed teenager; a court could have given him a long prison sentence.  It didn’t end up that way.  Pundits can argue about whether the verdict was appropriate legally, even if not morally, but it’s clearly not enough.

Even under different circumstances, that court couldn’t do anything about:

a hollowed out public sector which leads to the proliferation of untrained but armed amateur police patrols;

the availability of firearms;

the practice of racial profiling;

the fear of crime.

Even worse, if horrifically obvious, no court can undo the damage done.  A civil suit may later lead to a financial judgment that garnishes Zimmerman’s earnings for the rest of his life, but that doesn’t bring back the child.

Social movements try to advance causes, but courts try and resolve cases. The legal system is all about containing and managing disputes, filtering out politics and larger issues.

The legal system may not yet be done with George Zimmerman.  The federal government could file civil rights charges; the Martin family can file a civil suit for wrongful death.

All that is far less important than the larger causes.

In the wake of George Zimmerman’s acquittal, frustrated and angry people have tried to find ways to channel their efforts.  Activists, supported by the NAACP and Moveon.org are pressing the Department of Justice to prosecute Zimmerman for civil rights violations.  There’s a petition you can sign.

Some activists have tried to raise money for Trayvon Martin’s family.  Money is no substitute for a son, of course.  It’s just what they can do; it’s not a very good way to say you care, but it’s a way, and it may be the best they can do.

There have been vigils and rallies and protests across the country, mostly very peaceful and sad.  In Oakland, however, demonstrators have broken windows, set fires, and clashed with police.  It’s part of a longer story there.

What happens in these painful days is less important, ultimately, than what happens in the weeks and months that follow.  The criminal justice system generated this verdict, an unsatisfying judgment about an awful event.  It becomes something more only if activists are able to shift focus from the courts to the less contained and even more difficult world of politics, turning the killing into a catalyst for policy reforms on guns or public services or racial profiling.

Note: this rarely happens.  Neither the acquittal nor the subsequent conviction of the police who beat Rodney King led to changes in police policy nationally–or even in LA.  (Correct me, please, if I’m wrong on this.)  The frustrations over O.J. Simpson’s acquittal didn’t lead to better protections for women seeking protection from stalkers–even famous ones.

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Massive hunger strike in California prisons

Posted on July 9, 2013 by David S. Meyer

An astonishing 30,000 prisoners in California prisons have refused meals.  The Corrections Department doesn’t call it a hunger strike until 9 meals have been missed, but what’s going on is pretty clear.

A hunger strike reflects commitment and desperation; prison inmates have very little leverage in influencing the decisions that affect their lives.  California prisoners have employed the tactic recurrently in recent years.  Immediately, the inmates in 10 other prisons are supporting the ongoing campaign of inmates that the super high security Pelican Bay facility to limit solitary confinement to five years.  (five years!)  But California inmates have other grievances: they want education and rehabilitation programs; they want decent medical care; they want less crowded prisons.

A panel of Federal judges agrees with them.  An appellate court has ordered Governor Brown to reduce the population held in California’s prisons.  Governor Brown, no political neophyte, knows releasing nearly 10,000 prisoners on relatively short notice is bad politics; he also knows that paying for adequate housing and health care is bad for the budget.  Governor Brown has delayed and appealed repeatedly, hoping for a win that seems unlikely, but he’s been able to stall reform for years.  The inmates are doing what they can to try to enter the debate.

The crisis in California prisons is real and has been a long time in developing.  Since the 1970s, ambitious politicians have learned that proposing harsher treatment of criminals, particularly longer sentences, was potentially helpful and politically unassailable.  The voters joined in, passing a Three Strikes law, mandating life imprisonment for the third felony conviction, by referendum in 1994.    California has also historically posted the highest recidivism rates in the nation, with more than 70 percent of released prisons returned to prison within three years.  So, California prisons are overcrowded, filled not only with dangerous and violent felons, but also sickly geriatric prisoners in need of health care; the prison system is inadequate and extremely expensive, crowding out spending for programs that provide more direct benefit to most Californians.

Convicted felons in prison have little say over any of this, and those that do–elected officials and voters–are generally not very sympathetic to the prisoners.  The hunger strike doesn’t have much of a chance of influencing the debate and refocusing attention, but it’s the best chance the inmates have.

By refusing meals and work, California’s inmates are trying to remind everyone else in the state of their existence.  Skipping the first few meals is painful, but after a few days, hunger apparently disappears, then strength follows.  I’m not aware of any hunger strike that has mobilized 30,000 people in a fast.  Whether Corrections officials deem it a hunger strike today or not, be sure that they’re trying to figure out a strategy to handle massive non-cooperation, hoping that they can avoid both force-feeding and inmate fatalities.  If even half of those who started continue on, any strategy will be unlikely to succeed.

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