The Royal Treatment

Posted on December 10, 2010 by David S. Meyer

If you’re upset about the tripling of university tuition in Britain, why destroy Prince Charles’s car?  He didn’t raise tuition, can’t lower it, and will be able to find other ways to get to work–or whatever he does.

But activists found an opportune moment last night, when they caught the Prince and his wife, the Duchess of Cornwall, on their way to the theater.  According to the New York Times:

The confrontation occurred when a group of about 50 protesters, some in full-face balaclavas, broke through a cordon of motorcycle police flanking the car as it approached London’s theater district in slow-speed traffic. Some of the demonstrators shouted “off with their heads!” and others “Tory scum!”

A photograph of the couple, in formal evening dress, showed them registering shock as protesters beat on the side of their armored, chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce with sticks and bottles, smashing a side window, denting a rear panel and splashing the car with white paint. A Jaguar tailing the car and carrying a palace security detail was so battered that the police ended up using its doors as shields.

Shocked, indeed.

Prime Minister David Cameron called the attack on the royal couple’s car “shocking and regrettable.”

Shocking indeed!

The British royal family has, for more than 200 years, more often been subject to snarky comments than political protest.  With the establishment of parliamentary supremacy in the United Kingdom, a struggle that stretched over several hundred years after signing of the Magna Carta, but was pretty well established by the start of the 19th century, people who wanted something from the British government knew to target Parliament rather than the King.  Putting Parliament in charge of running the state surely saved the life of at least one king somewhere down the line, and created a vestigial role for a royal family that seems to exist pretty much to unify and entertain the British people–and others.

If the monarchy can’t deliver anything, then it makes sense to target protest at those who can.

But if you’re protesting in the streets after Parliament has just passed the tuition hike and a limousine holding the heir to the throne happens to come by…..

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Protest against Tuition Hikes: A Teaching Moment

Posted on December 9, 2010 by David S. Meyer

“They say ‘Cut Back.’  We Say ‘Fight Back.'”  The chants are the same across the Atlantic, even if the politics are somewhat different.  Students and other young people in the UK have taken to the streets to protest the Cameron government’s decision to triple tuition.

It’s still cheaper than a comparable education in the US, British Conservatives say; oddly, this hasn’t calmed the British students who have to come up with the money.

Student protests have been coordinated and aggressive.  Across the country, students have occupied buildings on campuses and staged marches through town centres (what Americans call “centers”).  But the focal point has been Parliament in London.  A series of demonstrations have seen unusual levels of disruption for Britain, featuring fires, arrests, and clashes with the police. According to the BBC:

The BBC’s Ben Brown, outside Parliament, said protesters shouted “shame on you” as news of the result filtered out to the crowd.

In violent scenes earlier, the BBC’s Mark Georgiou said there had been injuries to both police and protesters near to Westminster Abbey.

The Metropolitan Police say there have been attacks using “flares, sticks, snooker balls and paint balls”.

The political unrest has exacerbated rifts in a Conservative/Liberal Democratic coalition government that has seemed tenuous from the start, with 21 Liberal Democrats and 6 Conservative MPs voting against the policy.  Three ministerial aides resigned in protest.

American university students are also facing tuition hikes and education cuts, but have thus far been unable to create a campaign nearly as well coordinated.  Part of the problem in the US is that American universities are funded by diverse sources, including state and federal governments, and have depended more on tuition and fees for a long time.

By imposing a nation-wide policy, British Prime Minister David Cameron has made it easier for students to decide who to target and when.  American politics diffuses responsibility more broadly, and thus makes it harder for activists to hold anyone accountable.

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Is the Tea Party Over (part III)

Posted on December 8, 2010 by David S. Meyer

Only the left went on the attack against President Obama’s compromise on extending the Bush-era tax cuts.  Faced with intransigence from the Republicans in the Senate, Obama cut a deal.  He endorsed a two year extension of historically low tax rates for the wealthiest Americans in exchange for Republican support to continue the Bush-era rates for middle-class Americans, and extend unemployment insurance.  Liberals are now extending their anger at Republicans to include a president they had once claimed as one of their own.

What’s much more surprising is the silence from the Tea Party movement.  The Tea Party’s rhetoric during the last two years emphasized the perils of deficit spending.  It’s not surprising that Republican leaders would backburner their concerns about the deficit in order to secure low tax rates for their core constituents.  Spending on unemployment and the Earned Income Tax Credit, financed through deficit spending, is a small price for them to pay–largely because they don’t have to pay it.  (There is a strong Keynesian argument to make for these programs, which will translate into increased consumer spending and stimulate the economy; it’s not, however, an argument Republican leaders will make.)

But the populist anger that animated the Tea Party appeared to be more anti-government and anti-spending than pro-rich.  The election dramatically strengthened the position of the Republican Party, but this is a clear instance in which the Tea Party identity promised something clearly different.  Recall that they also expressed an anger at the deficit spending at the core of the George W. Bush program.

You would think that the deficit hawks at the grassroots would try to hold their Republican allies’ feet to the fire, forcing them to honor the (admittedly diverse and often contradictory) demands of the Tea Party.  The silence here is another piece of evidence that the election has taken the wind out of the Tea Party’s sails.

And the Republicans elected to Congress have, for the most part, been quite eager to defer their concern with the deficit in favor of preferred programs, like tax cuts for the wealthy.  Alaskans preferred independent patronage Republican Lisa Murkowski to a (perhaps) authentic Tea Partier, who might actually refuse Federal spending in Alaska.  Even Rand Paul, the new Senator from Kentucky, has emphasized the need to keep Medicare payments to doctors at competitive rates.

The Tea Party was a coalition between well-funded organizations sponsored by large business interests and populist anger about government spending, immigration, the deficit, health care reform–and scores of other issues.  How long can such a coalition hold together when Republicans actually participate in governance and make choices?

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Coming Out and Movement Politics

Posted on December 7, 2010 by David S. Meyer

An astonishing number of young men and women who came to the United States as children without government authorization are going public with their status.  When they come out, they acknowledge that they are breaking the law and put themselves at risk for arrest and deportation. Their stories make for dramatic and compelling testimony in support of the DREAM Act.  (Thanks to Roberto Gonzales for posting this link, for example.)

Coming out is a critical component of most movement strategies.  Coming out means revealing something about yourself that people might not know otherwise, and taking some risk in doing so.  We hear most about coming out as a political strategy from the gay and lesbian movements, and now, from DREAM supporters, but it’s really a part of most movements’ strategies.  Often, it’s about proclaiming a belief (rather than a legal status or sexual orientation): Christians testify to make faith visible; atheists go public to undermine the apparent social consensus on divine authority.  Advocates of animal rights, health care reform, racism or civil rights, and virtually every other cause you can imagine, make their beliefs known, hoping to build support for them.  People may go public with being (or not being) a virgin, or having had an abortion or cancer to show those around them that the experience is more common than others might have thought.

When people come out with their beliefs, they mean to show their friends, relatives, neighbors, and coworkers that what they believe isn’t marginal or odd, but is a position that makes sense to “normal people.”  Depending upon the belief and the context, they risk something about those relationships, and maybe even the relationship itself.  They might also be risking being cast out from their community, getting beaten up or killed, losing a job, or going to jail.  Risk changes depending upon the issue and the community.

When people come out, they encourage others like themselves to do the same, often explicitly, and certainly by example.  They hope that there is some safety in numbers.

And it matters.  When the Supreme Court ruled (Bowers v. Hardwick, 1986) that states could prohibit some kinds of gay sex, Justice Lewis Powell, who voted in support of the decision, reportedly told his colleagues that he had never known someone gay–one of his clerks was closeted.  Justice Harry Blackmun’s dissent was drafted by a clerk who was openly gay.

We have to believe that one reason support for same sex marriage has grown so rapidly is that more and more Americans are learning that friends and neighbors and relatives are gay, and are much less comfortable discriminating against people they have come to view as, maybe, normal.  No one doubts that gays and lesbians haven’t served in the American military since there was a military–even if their sexual orientation was hidden.  And as it gets safer, gay men and lesbians become more likely to come out, and coming out has been an integral part of a movement strategy.

But risk hasn’t disappeared for gays and lesbians, even if it has diminished in many settings.  Even relatively recently, members of Congress whose same sex activities were exposed were more eager to claim identity as alcoholics than as gay.

Kathryn Himmelstein’s study shows that gay teens, although no more likely to get in trouble than straight students, were likely to face much harsher punishments.  As reported in the New York Times:

She used data collected from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which followed middle and high school students for seven years beginning in 1994. The study is a broad overview of adolescent health but contained information on teen sexuality and both minor and serious misconduct. The study asked teens about nonviolent misdeeds like alcohol use, lying to parents, shoplifting and vandalism, as well as more serious crimes like using a weapon, burglary or selling drugs.

Notably, teens who identified themselves as lesbian or gay or who experienced feelings of same-sex attraction were less likely to engage in violence than their peers. However, they were far more likely to be expelled from school, stopped by police, arrested or convicted of a crime.

Girls who labeled themselves as lesbian or bisexual appeared to be at highest risk for punishment, experiencing 50 more police stops and about twice the risk of arrest and conviction as other girls who reported similar levels of misconduct.

Now what about those young men and women who risk deportation? Take Pedro Ramirez (right), elected student body president at Cal State Fresno.  Ramirez, a high school valedictorian and double-major, could not receive the small salary for being student body president because he doesn’t have a social security number.   Brought to the United States at age three, he says he didn’t realize he was an illegal immigrant until he started applying to colleges.  Cal State administrators were willing not to pay him, and to keep his status a secret, but Ramirez came out in response to a anonymous threat that he would be outed.  The LA Times reports

In a way, I’m relieved…I don’t want to be a liability or cost the school donations. I never really thought this was going to happen. But now that it’s out there, I finally feel ready to say ‘Yes, it’s me. I’m one of the thousands.’

He is one of tens of thousands, and increasing numbers of them have declared their status at marches or when questioning candidates for office.  They want to make their point as obvious as possible: they are young Americans who have already demonstrated significant achievement and tremendous potential for the future.  You may not realize that you know an illegal immigrant, they say, but you do.

In coming out, these people are risking not only their own deportation, but the safety and well-being of their families.  Their bet is that, when push comes to shove, Americans will want to protect young, ambitious, and honest young people who are among our best, brightest, and bravest.

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When Allies Disappoint

Posted on December 4, 2010 by David S. Meyer

This lame duck session in Congress seems like the last best hope for advocates of the DREAM Act, as well as the best shot for the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell through Congress–and not the courts.  Activists on both issues share a lot, not the least, disappointment in President Barack Obama.

Candidate Obama promised to press for comprehensive immigration reform, but in two years invested very little political capital in an effort he must have judged too costly and too unlikely.  Candidate Obama also promised to end Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and activists imagined an Executive Order, just like President Harry Truman’s edict ending racial segregation in the armed forces.  In office, however, he stalled, explaining that he was going to end it the right way, minimizing both political fallout and disruption in the military.  Of course, these aren’t the only groups who supported the Democratic candidate for president, expecting a more aggressive and effective advocate for positions he promised, sometimes not even so explicitly.  Health care reformers, civil libertarians, antiwar activists, and many others shared their disappointment.

Now what?  None of these advocates harbors the illusion that the other party will be more responsive to their concerns.  How can you pressure your allies without damaging them and putting the other guys into power?  Political life was simpler for them when George W. Bush was president and Republicans controlled Congress: their job was to mobilize discontent and pressure, and there was no reason to temper their demands or their tactics.  Now, with opponents making real political gains, pushing goals like the DREAM further into the distance, progressive activists are trying to figure out how to manage a relationship with a disappointing ally who could still be much worse.

This dilemma, of course, isn’t limited to the left.  Anti-abortion activists were disappointed with Ronald Reagan, who continually promised and continually failed to deliver on the promises to end abortion they heard, and those deficit hawks were mightily disappointed with George W. Bush’s budgets.  And, of course, Tea Partiers are trying to find ways to hold new Republican allies accountable.  Activists don’t want to be taken for granted, but are understandably slow to abandon what seems like their best hope.  They learn, however, that elected officials need to be reminded, often and vigorously, about how much their supporters expect.

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Fasting for the DREAM

Posted on December 2, 2010 by David S. Meyer

Students in San Antonio are fasting in support of the DREAM Act, which would provide a path toward citizenship for young people who came to the United States (illegally) as children, and have attended college or served in the military (Thanks to Ambreen Ali at Congress.org for posting the link to this story.)  They assembled in the hallway outside Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison’s district office, and pledged to stay until she met with them.  Senator Hutchison declined a meeting, urged the students to eat, and went back to Washington.  Sixteen students were arrested.

Senator Harry Reid (and others) are trying to put the DREAM Act back on the Congressional agenda during the lame duck session.  They know that chances of passage will be much worse in the next two years, once Republicans control the House and enjoy a larger minority in the Senate.  For activists, it’s even more urgent.  The hunger strike reflects this urgency–as does the participation of two students who are themselves undocumented immigrants.  (Putting yourself in the hands of the police can be a quick route to deportation, while also putting family members who may also be undocumented at similar risk.)

We’ve discussed the moral certainty that activists express when they take on terror tactics.  Willingness to kill, and/or to risk one’s own life and safety for a cause reflects an intense commitment, borne of moral certainty or desperation.

The hunger strike is a tactic in which the activists take on almost all of the suffering.  There is, of course, a coercive element to it–demanding that a target accede to some thing (even a meeting) to save your health.  But there’s more: Gandhi saw a hunger strike as a commitment to dialogue.  He believed that activists had to take on suffering to demonstrate their concerns and commitment, and that in doing so, they were asking for evidence that they might be wrong.  (In his terms, this meant that violence, which didn’t recognize the possibility of error, was absolutely wrong.)  Like civil rights civil disobedience in the South in the 1950s and 1960s, suffering violence (or personal harm) demonstrated both your own commitments and the inhumanity of your opponents.

The sixteen students in San Antonio got our attention because of their commitments.  It’s hard to think that they have something to say to Senator Hutchison that she hasn’t heard already; indeed, as they note, she supported a version of the DREAM Act in 2007.  That was, of course, before she ran (unsuccessfully) for the Republican nomination for governor, and before anti-immigration sentiment captured the national Republican party.

Now, activists in support of the DREAM Act face deteriorating political prospects.  And young people who saw a realistic hope of some path to citizenship when the DREAM was first proposed–a decade ago–see their personal prospects deteriorating along with their political goals.   They have to do more, and a hunger strike is one next step.

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War on Terrors

Posted on November 29, 2010 by David S. Meyer

It doesn’t take violence, or even the threat of violence, to get on a government watch list.  This fall, the Inspector General of the US Department of Justice released a study that found a number of activists groups had been wrongly subject to ongoing investigations of terror. According to the IG, Greenpeace, PETA, The Thomas Merton Center (in Pittsburgh) and the Catholic Workers, had been wiretapped, and their activists inappropriately placed on terrorist watch lists (for years).

The investigations, commenced early in the War on Terror, produced no criminal prosecutions and, according to the report, resulted in inaccurate and misleading information presented to the FBI Director; further, they continued well after it was clear that they were leading nowhere good.  Obviously, they did nothing to enhance American security against a threat from Al Qaeda.  (All of these investigations started in the wake of the attack on the World Trade Center.)  The report didn’t focus on the wasted resources, human and otherwise.

It’s not as if anti-government paranoids needed more evidence for their wildest fantasies.

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Science, Animals, and Terror

Posted on November 28, 2010 by David S. Meyer

Terror is a social movement strategy, but not a popular one in the United States.  Terror, and violence more generally, polarizes, and when people make choices, it’s not always on the side of the movement.

Animal rights activism takes diverse forms in the United States, and advocates take up a range of causes and political strategies.  The causes include the mistreatment of animals in production of food, clothing, science, pets, and entertainment (circuses, for example, or movies).  While some activists and organizations specialize, others sign onto a broad agenda.

Tactical variation may be even greater.  PETA, for example, has engaged in a public relations war, raising enormous amounts of money and working aggressively to get attention for its positions.  It’s gained the support of celebrity sponsors, including Pamela Anderson and many other young actresses, and it’s developed a reliable touch for creating media controversies with images.  Activists concerned with food work to pass legislation that regulates the treatment of farm animals  (Californians, for example, recently passed a set of protections largely focused on the production of eggs by an overwhelming majority–in the same election in which they rejected same sex marriage.); others stage rescues of animals from farms.

And some animal rights activists seek to stop experimentation directly by interfering in research they see as unethical and intimidating researchers.  The LA Times reports that a scientist at UCLA has been the subject of harassment and intimidation from anonymous animal rights activists. David Jentsch, a neuroscientist who studies addiction using small primates and rodents, reports receiving death threats at home and work.  Activists from the Animal Liberation front claimed responsibility for blowing up his car last year; they periodically leaflet his neighbors, and masked demonstrators chant outside his house.  He keeps his office locked, and employs armed security at his home.

Most recently, he received a package containing razor blades that activists said were contaminated with AIDS.  The package also contained a death threat:
“We follow you on campus,” Jentsch recalled the note reading. “One day, when you’re walking by, we’ll come up behind you, and cut your throat.”

Obviously, such harassment and threats are illegal; so is murder.  Animal rights militants keep their identities hidden, and communicate by issuing communiques to sympathetic websites.  They describe and justify the latest actions against Professor Jentsch on the North American Animal Liberation Press Office:

The use of force and threats of force to stop a human from physically torturing an innocent animal has been a tactic both criticized and supported within even the more staunch branches of the animal liberation movement. Even supporters of the Animal Liberation Front, by far the most active organization today, often fail to support the use of force against recalcitrant humans who refuse all more peaceful means at getting them to stop their abusive behavior towards non-human animals. Anyone who condemns the[se]…from a moral standpoint only professes their speciesism, unless they also deny the usefulness of force in human struggles against racism, including the successful struggles against slavery in this country and Apartheid in South Africa. Indeed, every successful struggle against oppression, both historically and concurrently, has required the use of stringent force against the oppressor, who seldom if ever relinquishes his power and ceases his exploitation of those he enslaves without being forced to do so.

Those who condone the continued use of public education, legislative maneuvers and legal protests, without the additional tool of sabotage and violence against the oppressor, condone the continued torture, abuse and killing of billions of innocent animals by a society inured to their suffering. Even restricting the argument to primate experimentation, against which most of the above actions were aimed, those who fail to condone such actions overtly condone the continued imprisonment, enslavement, suffering and death of these intelligent animals at the hands of madmen…If only legal and peaceful means, means utilized for more than 100 years against vivisectors, were effective, then there would be reason to the argument against the use of force. Instead, more animals, and more non-human primates, are imprisoned, experimented upon, hurt and murdered today than at any other time in history, and despite all the peaceful and legal strategies applied to their plight.

This kind of moral certainty is inimical to any kind of democratic politics, but it’s not limited to some animal rights activists.  Radical factions in national liberation movements, abolitionist campaigns, and contemporary anti-government and anti-abortion campaigns in the United States speak and act with this kind of certainty.  Failure to win through conventional politics, for them, only demonstrates the need for more dramatic–and aggressive–action.

So how does the violence work?

At once, terror and harassment directed at scientists who use animals (or, more practically, primates) can warn scientists off projects that require such experiments–or can lead them to contract their experiments off-shore, to labs not subject to the same oversight as those at American universities.   (Off-shoring doesn’t help the animals, but it moves experimentation further from sight and scrutiny.)  It might help stigmatize researchers who use animals in their research, isolating them from colleagues and neighbors.  (This was part of the radical anti-abortion strategy that included the murders of doctors.)

And/or it can discredit the animal rights activists.  They may argue that there are other ways to get answers to the scientific questions researchers like Professor Jentsch seek to answer…but scientists and Institutional Review Boards are better positioned to make such judgments.  They may argue that no scientific research is worth the lives of animals; they’re unlikely to convince most Americans on this point.  In the last year or two, some scientists have organized to engage the public debate, arguing for the necessity of animal experimentation to advance scientific knowledge and medical treatments relevant to human health. The violence makes it virtually impossible for animal rights advocates to build bridges to a public that might agree on some other issues, and opens a political space for supporters of testing to make their case.

And the government can use violence against scientists can be used to legitimate repression of the broader animal rights movement, and surveillance and repression can exacerbate rifts in the movement.  It’s very clear that other, larger, animal rights groups, like PETA and the Human Society, would prefer that the public face for concern with animal welfare be something very different than blood soaked razor blades, blown-up automobiles, and death threats.

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Seizing the Moment

Posted on November 26, 2010 by David S. Meyer

The scanning controversy created enough attention that other groups tried to appropriate it for their own purposes.  People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), always entrepreneurial in the search for attention–and often very effective–has been pushing its concerns in the scanning spotlight.  In addition to this ad, rejected by major airports, PETA produced an odd video, starring Pamela Anderson as a TSA officer keeping cruelty (in the form of animal products) off America’s flights. PETA’s ads and videos are intended to create controversy, and thus attention.  The key is getting the audience to look past the tactic to see the issue.

And Thanksgiving, when overstuffed Americans sit around a great bird carcass fighting with family members is always a good time to talk about food, hunger, and cruelty.

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Was Opting Out a Bust?

Posted on November 25, 2010 by David S. Meyer

Many people oppose the full-body scans now available at every airport, courtesy of the Transportation Security Agency (TSA). There’s a lot to object to: inconvenience, cost, radiation, inefficiency, delays, embarrassment.

There are individual remedies available: don’t fly; opt for a pat-down instead.  Neither, admittedly imperfect, approach does anything to stop the TSA from subjecting other travelers to the same scrutiny.

Activists want to do more.  Yesterday, screening opponents hoped to expose the costs of the policy; using the virtual communication networks we hear so much about, they urged air travelers to opt for the pat-down, slowing the long security lines, and maybe leaving some passengers on the wrong side of the security check-points when their flights took off.  Most reports describe National Opt-Out Day as a massive disappointment, which created no visible disruption in the long lines on an always awful day to fly.

The idea is one with a long history in protest politics: raise the costs and visibility of unwanted policies; make it harder for your opponents to do what they want to do by refusing to cooperate.  This will, ideally, make the issue more salient, polarize and mobilize audiences, and encourage your opponent to back down.  Basically, this is the template pattern of strikes and boycotts, and even many civil disobedience efforts.

How many people would have had to opt out to create enough chaos to polarize the debate?  Probably not all that many; the lines are already long and people are already irritated.  Activists could claim credit for people who refused the scan for reasons of propriety rather than principle.  (Getting travelers to pass through the scanners wearing metal badges with anti-scanning slogans might have created far more disruption, and made it easier for the activists to claim credit.)

However many people needed to opt out, the campaign generated a smaller number.  Of course, the TSA put more screeners and friskers on duty (but this would happen on the day before Thanksgiving anyway).  Oddly, somehow air travel went at least as smoothly as it normally does on this day.

What went wrong?  The only people who could participate in the opt-out are those who already opted in, buying tickets and planning to stand in lines.  Those who wanted to protest the scan procedure but were already near their Thanksgiving destination, without air tickets, couldn’t get close enough to the lines or the scanners to disrupt them.  Those in lines, who had bought (expensive) tickets, knew they were risking disrupting their own travel plans, as well as those of everyone else in line.  Missing a flight on the day before Thanksgiving means taking the risk that you won’t get to Grandmother’s house.  (I suspect many of those who viewed that outcome as acceptable–or even attractive–didn’t buy tickets in the first place.)

That most Americans apparently support the screening wouldn’t stop the anti-scanners from staging a more effective protest.  It’s important to remember that many movements we now admire created a great deal of disruption and inspired activists to take much greater risks when they didn’t have majority support (think civil rights).  More significantly, activists would have to organize the truly committed to pick spots where their numbers could make a difference.  Airport lines everywhere is a tough hill to climb.

Meanwhile, the activists claim victory:

THANK YOU for making National Opt Out Day a success!

Despite claims to the contrary, National Opt-Out Day was a rousing success.  The entire point of the campaign was to raise awareness of the issues of privacy and aviation safety at TSA checkpoints, with the ultimate goal of influencing policy – to ask the question “are we really doing this right?”  In that, the campaign was a success.  It was always about getting attention to the issue, educating the public and putting pressure on to change the current procedures.  With near daily headlines on the front page of newspapers and debates on television and radio news, the mission was accomplished – our voice was heard.  By the time November 24 rolled around policy change had already been set in motion.

The argument: threat of disruption brought attention to the policy and led the government to move toward reform.  I’m not convinced, are you?

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