Doing it Wrong

Protests are great, but they must be targeted to matter

My dear Americans, I am proud of you. Today, you’ll be out in the streets, protesting for democracy and for the principles upon which the United States was founded. You’ll be defending the Constitution with your attendance at the hundreds of No Kings rallies, expected to draw millions of people.

This is the First Amendment in action. It is the vox populi speaking out against tyranny.

And it is so necessary at this dark moment in time. As a criminal executive branch continues to unconstitutionally overextend its power and seize rights, as a feckless Congress is derelict in its duty to restrain this authoritarian power-grab, as a corrupt Supreme Court continues to violate the clear intention of the founders, the only force capable of stopping this madness is the people.

So I am deeply proud of you for standing up to be counted as opposed to this despotism. As a theater veteran (including as a director) I just have one tiny note for you:

You’re doing it wrong.

I know that sounds kind of harsh and maybe even a little cruel. But bear with me.

Aside from the narcissistic need to have his dick stroked in the Court of Public Opinion, the president does not care that you are out protesting. Oh, you’re wounding his ego, but that’s pitifully easy to do. A three-year-old could pull it off simply by saying, “You suck,” within his earshot.

Nor are the hyper-rich oligarchs responsible for you being unable to afford to eat or have decent housing or reliable, safe healthcare troubled by you taking to the streets. They’re not lowering grocery prices or rent or insurance premiums. They’re safe in their hi-rise bubbles and on their mega-yachts.

To keep with the drama theme, I’ll quote The Bard: it’s all “sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Here’s the thing: If you want to hurt these assholes, if you want the millions in the streets to matter, you’ve got to take action that has an impact. So here are some suggestions that might take these rallies to the next level.

Disrupt

I went to several 50501 protests myself before leaving the U.S. I wore my leftist t-shirts. I held signs. I raised my fist in the air.

But each of these gatherings happened at designated places at the state capitol behind barricades thoughtfully set up to keep the protests largely out of the way. I recall marching around the Round House in Santa Fe as lawmakers stood watching casually from their office windows and from the locked, glass doors of the foyer, viewing us as a curiosity. They were not disturbed or bothered.

And that’s because chanting, “Hey, hey! Ho, ho! / Donald Trump has got to go!” does nothing to actually make him go. It makes us in the crowd feel good. And we go home at the end of the day feeling as though we did our part to defend democracy.

But we did not effect change in any way whatsoever.

What actually works is disrupting the business of the nation. Instead of gathering in designated protest areas, we need gather in shopping malls, blocking access to stores. We need to fill the lobbies of restaurants and refuse to order anything. We need to fill the drive-thru lanes of every fast-food chain in town, park our cars, lock the doors, and walk away. Do the same in the parking lots of every big-box retailer.

The people exercise their power by refusing to participate in the system that is oppressing them AND blocking others from using it, too.

Timing

It’s nice that we can hold these events on a Saturday so that as many people as possible can participate (because they’re off from work), but unless we’re going after weekend shopping crowds, we’ve done nothing to interrupt the business of oppression.

These things need to happen during weekdays. There need to be general strikes. Everyone walks off their job, preferably at high-volume time periods like lunch hour.

Liberals are pissed because the government shut down I-5 in Los Angeles today, so the vice president can play admiral, overseeing live-fire exercises with the U.S. Navy. But that is exactly what we need to be doing.

Let’s shut down I-5 (and every other major commuter highway in the U.S.) at 8am on a Monday morning. Create a blockade of vehicles and humans, so that businesses can’t get their workers in. Shipping companies can’t move their goods from here to there. Blockade access to government buildings like the DMV and city halls.

Make it impossible for the business of the nation to be conducted. Not only can these institutions not be reached, the people who work them are out in the streets instead of at their desks or behind their counters.

Prepare for Consequences

Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Ghandi are hailed as revolutionaries who did things “the right way.” But they understood there was a cost to their movements. Oppressors do not willingly release their chokehold on power. Tyrants lash out, hoping to quell unrest with violence and fear.

That means the masked enemies of the people and their allies, the police, will attempt to break up these protests. They’ll shoot rubber bullets and tear gas into crowds. They’ll beat civilians with nightsticks. They’ll turn firehoses on assemblages. They’ll make mass arrests.

And they’ll vilify anyone who dares speak out against them, warn against an “enemy within,” and potentially invoke martial law.

There’s a lot of advice about how to stay safe at a protest, but, and I hate to be the one to tell you this, protesting isn’t safe. Things are going to get worse in the short term if we engage in real resistance. That is the nature of evil, and the people perpetrating this horror are evil.

They have also made it clear they’re going to keep doing what they’re doing. They’ll snatch rights, end benefits, and oppress. And every moment they are not resisted, they will be encouraged to commit greater crimes.

A Global Perspective

I don’t mean to come off as righteous. I had to go to Europe to learn these lessons. If you’re unfamiliar with the political climate in France, it is bordering on crisis. With the need to pass an austerity budget, the French parliament cannot come to a consensus. The far-right wants to roll back protections for immigrants and the poor. The left wants to tax the rich and protect workers’ rights. And the pro-business centrists want to keep cutting taxes for the ultra-wealthy and end government benefits for everyday French people.

Sound familiar?

Except the French parliament has toppled three prime ministers, making conducting government business impossible. The centrists refuse to form a coalition with the leftists, instead appointing one center-right PM after another. And the people?

They shut the damned country down via a general strike.

I don’t pretend to have a firm grasp of French politics, but I read about it every day. And it is obvious that ordinary French people do not take shit from the government. Instead, they take action.

Learn the Lessons of the Past

Listen, I feel for you. I write all this from the perspective of someone who used to think just like you. Despite my study of the so-called Civil Rights Era, I ignored the true cost of it. I focused on the result, which I happily viewed through the lens of history instead of through the fundamentals of culture and the present.

The number of people murdered, maimed, abused, and threatened are impossible to tabulate. And given the discomfort we all have with grappling with true atrocity, we sweep those consequences under the rug, preferring to focus on the gains those sacrifices won.

But revolution is not a business with no entry fees. We have to assume risk to defeat evil. I can’t predict how many people will get hurt fighting this madness or how many of our fellow citizens we will lose. I can only warn that the human cost will be high.

This is where we are now. We’ve had 45 years to turn aside from this destiny, and we’ve ignored every opportunity along the way. We’ve embraced the idea that “it can’t happen here,” pretending not to notice that it was happening in real time.

We traded struggle for comfort. We sold painful knowledge for deliberate ignorance.

This is the great sin of American culture post-Reagan. We don’t want to fight evil anymore. It’s hard. It’s exhausting. It’s dangerous.

We’ve kicked the can all the way down the road to its end. Now, there is only one choice left: Fight or die. Maybe both.

So, my dear, fellow Americans, I applaud your willingness to get out into the streets, to take a principled stand for democracy and decency. But a slogan on a t-shirt or a placard isn’t enough.

It’s time to stop saying all the right things and actually do them.