The scene is Asheville, a small city in North Carolina with a much higher than average activist population, on a gusty day in late March. A line of about 60 people winds their way up through the center of downtown. In time to the pitter-patter of drumsticks on empty caulking buckets, they call and respond.
“What do we want?”/ “Peace!”/ “When do we want it?” Pause. “Now!” Off-kilter choruses of “there ain’t no power like the power of the people cause the power of the people don’t stop!” break out as the march continues. A single police car ambles by.
It was, on that afternoon, five years since the beginning of the Iraq war –- and protest was the order of the day, coast to coast. A thousand mustered in Washington, D.C. Some attempted to rope off the IRS building with crime scene tape, others harangued contractors from corporations such as Halliburton and Lockheed Martin. Los Angeles had 10,000, San Francisco 7,500 (including bike brigades). There were, as in previous years, the predictable smattering of arrests.
At night, on cue, there were vigils.
Clearer this year than ever is the fact that these protests are not a political movement. Instead the protesters have become another in a sea of alternative cultures. The signs, art and displays now less for the purpose of enacting actual change than engaging in an affirming ritual, hanging out with friends and self-expression. Despite the massive rise in the number of Americans against the war, protest attendance has actually declined.
Three days later, long after the protesters faded, American casualties in Iraq reached 4,000. The Iraqi dead are, literally, countless. As you read this, the blood continues to flow.
Coilhouse, is, of course, a love letter to alternative culture (says so right there in the mission statement). In many cases, all that’s expected from such a culture is affirming ritual, hanging out with friends and self-expression — serving to make the world more weird and wonderful than it was before. There can, of course, be political and social aims as well, but rarely are they the primary focus.
However, the devolution of the protest from political method to cultural theater is different. This is something intended for a particular purpose — to push society towards a goal — and touted as working towards that end by the organizers, groups and individuals who engage in it. In fact, the goals have been abandoned: these days, people go to protests like they do concerts.
It was not always so. The Civil Rights movement made extensive use of protests to accomplish its goals. Gandhi bought an empire to its knees and the Suffragettes got women the vote. In and of itself, it is a time-honored method and by its nature, the most visible. Its successes have lent it a certain romance: the brave marchers, ahead of their time, demonstrating for an unpopular but basic right, facing down the scowling and sometimes violent forces of the status quo.
The real story is, of course, more complicated. The Civil Rights movement used protests and civil disobedience as but one of many tactics. King and his allies organized extensively, giving them the numbers and discipline to make their boycotts, strikes and marches count. Like Gandhi or Emmeline Pankhurst before, they found the weak spots in the political system and attacked them relentlessly. They made friends and cut deals. They won.
The ’60s however, wore on, and the emerging flurry of countercultures merged with political protest for a moment that was as shining as it was brief. The pain-staking, often dull behind the scenes work of their predecessors faded, replaced by a sense that simply creating something different would miraculously bring about a better future. Theatrics, art and marching, present in every political movement in history, now took center stage.
By the time the wave broke, it left behind a generation that merged fighting for change and protest in the popular mind. Not just any protest, but the protest of one moment in history, recycled endlessly in the same slogans, the same tactics and even the same resurrected organizations. Perhaps there is the gut hope that this time it will go right, that the good days will come back. At long last there will be victory.
That has not happened. Instead the same culture has shifted causes as the decades have gone by: Reagan in the ’80s, globalization’s injustices in the ’90s and Iraq in our own time. In the process new generations, their idea of what political action means shaped by those that came before, have channeled their energies into it. Often they’ve fallen away, disillusioned.
A pamphlet for Asheville’s main alliance of peace organizations brags about their participation in protests for a slew of causes célèbres. Front and center is the establishment of a hotline, not to listen to input or connect people (with legal help, advice, organizations), but to provide information about yet more protests. Schedules around the country contain similar lists, replete with special showings of movies the audience already agrees with, potlucks, and the occasional bout of yoga.
Why? Because it’s easy, public and damned if it doesn’t feel like something is being done. Dressing up and waving a sign is more glamorous, after all, than talking to single moms about their problems at 8 in the morning or poring over the details of who in a bureaucracy actually screws things up. And it’s much more likely to get you laid.
In some ways the results (cultural masturbation that they are) resemble nothing so much as tribal warfare — less intended to harm the enemy than please the gods. Occasionally, some braves will rush forward, the ensuing arrest and brief detention a badge of honor, whether or not it actually does anything. The chants continue, up into the air, praying for rain.
When the sky fails to part, the excuses pour out: the media is biased! True. The police are repressive! Absolutely. Our government is run by an unresponsive Versailles-like elite, sans fashion sense! Oui. People are apathetic and lazy! Oh yeah.But is it any surprise they’re not rushing to join a culture whose methods have failed to produce results? And if a movement for change is waiting on a fair shake from the powers-that-be, the sun will sooner go nova.
There are notable exceptions. The massive Hispanic protests in 2006 flooded cities throughout the country and successfully fought off attempts to shove through xenophobic immigration laws.
More recently, the internet collective Anonymous has targeted the Church of Scientology. Drawing from the vibrant and eclectic nature of online culture instead of the gnarled husk of the ’60s, it pulled off protests worldwide. However, it remains to be seen if Anonymous has the staying power to truly damage the cult that it faces.
Almost unseen amongst much of the protest coverage, Iraq Veterans Against the War launched the Winter Soldier testimonies (a tactic from the ’60s that actually deserves to be brought back), bringing the brutality of the war home through the stories of those who’ve had to fight it. If such testimonials were relentlessly pushed in the public eye, it might start to do something. But the current protest culture lacks the organization (or motivation) to carry out such a move.
For all that I’ve been railing at the protest groups, it should be remembered that there are many good and decent people within them who are genuinely trying to do the right thing.
But, to review: New Orleans is a wasteland, many of its refugees crammed into formaldehyde-ridden trailers. There are more nuclear weapons than ever. Torture is acceptable. So are illegal wiretaps. The waters are rising and the atmosphere rife with poison. The economy is being driven into the ground by corporate housing scams. America’s military budget has now grown larger than WWII, thanks to a war that’s lasted longer. The architects of the law defend the president’s right to crush children’s testicles. Thousands upon thousands are homeless, maimed or dead.
To say today’s protest culture has fallen short of its goals is polite. To call it a complete fucking failure is honest. It is not 1967, it is 2008. There’s no such thing as a future you don’t have to fight for. Time for a better weapon.