Have We Reached The Pinnacle of Protest?

This weekend was Tax Day and we were supposed to revolt, right?  Well maybe not revolt, but at least get together and shout about how much we want to see Donald Trump's tax returns.  People did, for the most part.  What I am hearing now on Monday is a lot of regret and irritation on both sides.

Trump, of course, is upset because he is likely hiding something and this issue won't go away.  He took to Twitter to acknowledge it as though it were a recurring issue when in fact it is just the same issue that it has always been.  Then he talks about how there are a number of paid protesters incited by the media.  So as he sat at Mar A Lago complaining about how he won fair and square and the election is over and there is nothing to see here, people were out protesting.

Why are WE upset, though?  Is Trump going to release his tax returns?  No time soon.  Is Planned Parenthood any better off than it was the day before he was elected?  No, in fact they are faring worse for federal support but better in private donations.  The Keystone Pipeline is moving forward.  Gorsuch presided over his first day on the Supreme Court today.  We are facing military actions in Syria, Korea, and let's remember that we just dropped the Mother Of All Bombs in Afghanistan.

So what is happening?  What is being done?  Can we say that message is beginning to get watered down?  Who are the Black Bloc and groups like them?

It is getting safe to say that the messages may be getting lost in all of the wannabe messengers.  We are getting reports of events starting off pretty focused but then falling apart as speakers take the mic to talk about taxes at a Planned Parenthood rally or Black Live Matter at a environmental protest.

Then you have the Black Bloc vs. Black Lives Matter.   The problem is that you have two different groups with decidedly different goals but they are welded together in the minds of outsiders watching because their structure is similar and tying them together can be convenient for those wanting to smear someone.

The Black Bloc is a group of anti fascists who wear all black and go to protests to, for lack of a better term, start trouble.  They wear helmets and masks and show up prepared for "battle".  As we saw in Berkeley this weekend, when the fighting starts, it is hard to tell which side is which.  The Black Bloc is an open movement though.  They do not have real uniforms or any kind of leadership structure; just a bunch of people doing stuff.

When we look at Black Lives Matter, we see they face the same problems.  There are people who can say that they started it and claim an origin, but are unwilling to own any kind of structure for it.  In fact, they openly eschew ownership.  Without that ownership, any one person can do any thing in their name causing the entire group to take responsibility; just a bunch of people doing stuff.

For a protester, this is and should be a disturbing trend.  The Occupy movement had noble beginnings but without any cohesive body or a spokesperson, it was quickly diluted and became a bunch of people sleeping on the street.

The other side is learning and the methodology has been very effective.  Let's look at the #NODAPL movement.  The Dakota Pipeline was something that was in the works for quite some time before the protests began and the Native Americans began to dig in.  There were lawyers and engineers working on the best way to route this pipeline through that land long before the first temporary tents were set up.  Time and consistency were their best weapons and they worked.

They saw a harsh winter coming and set a deadline.  While people were marching in circles in the cold and snow, they had lawyers hard at work and engineers creating multiple designs.  The uproar many were seeing on line was real but that is all it was...online.  As we approached the deadline, people showed up to show support.  Keystone knew it would not last though and at just the right time (the time when it would have been too cold for even their own people) they agreed to try to work it out.  People left, those who wanted to stay were forced out.  Days later, it was back on track for the build with protections being endorsed by President Trump.

So it seems we have reached an interesting space in the world.  The waters are so muddy that we cannot see the bottom, or the top.  The one thing that we can take from all of this is that everyone wants to speak.  Many say that the reason that Donald Trump is our president is because so many people out there felt that their voice was not being heard.  With his election comes  a flood and all of those people who were not being heard, now won't shut up.

Have we reached the pinnacle of protest; the point at which running out into the streets with a sign does no good or worse, does more harm than good?  I think that now we have to start thinking about what we are going to do with that voice.  We are heading towards something but what do we do when we get there?  The general idea seems to be to keep going; to always be campaigning and never solving the problem but making damn sure everyone knows there is a problem and whose fault it is.

Follow us on twitter at @writlargepodcst

How do you resist? Being a Resistance Early Adopter (explicit)

How does it start and where does it end?  Well, I can tell you it was not necessarily November 8th 2017.  For some people it started a long time before that and will go on a long time after.

On November 8th, I was coming back from Haiti, a place still devastated after an earthquake and worse still Hurricane Matthew.  I am going back in about two weeks, but I am not going back empty handed.

Weeks before we had started a compost pile.  Weeks before that we had started working on gardens in schools and how to get kids more involved in where their food comes from.  We started working on lowering food waste and discussing the environment.  We talked to 3rd grade teachers in Seattle and Atlanta and got them talking to each other and got the kids talking to each other.  We got them talking about what they can do in Haiti and what they can start doing about climate change and more.

As the compost pile started  break down, we talked about food and growing food for people in Haiti and how the people
in Haiti could grow their own food and food that can be exported.  It turns out the people in Haiti grow a lot of peanuts which is good in the short term but horrible for the land and caused a lot of erosion during the earthquake and worse still after the hurricane.  How do they manage waste?  How do they get electricity?  We talked about all that.

We had to catch our plane out of Port Au Prince early in the morning on November 9th.  Where we were staying, a little town in the mountains called Inviter, there was no cell phone reception and the monastery had wi-fi but not very powerful. We had to hike out because the roads were washed away.  So for several heart wrenching hours, we trekked through the dark in a strange land, thinking about how hard what we had planned would be, blissfully unaware that Donald Trump was winning the election.  Soon, as the sun began to break and we got closer to Port au Prince, cell phones began to buzz with the pick up of signal and moments of elation (many in our small group were certain Hillary was going to win) turned to screams of OH Fuck!  We had stayed with a really nice family there in the mountains, and a few in our small group considered staying.

As we prepare to go back, we wonder what a Trump presidency is going to mean.  It is going to mean working harder on this project, we thought, but also many other projects that we could only partially see coming.  How do you get support for a climate change push from an administration that does not believe it exists?  How do you reach out to a government coming from a country that is now more isolationist?  You can't edge the word Haiti in sideways when all we can talk about is Syria and Russia and China and Korea.  Once again, they are shoved to the back of the line.  They do not have oil.  They are not of strategic importance.  They are merely an island where people are suffering.

We can do something though.  We can resist.  We can realize that we are in somewhat the same boat as they as soon as we land.  When we land we start to talk about people who think that global climate change is a real and bad thing.  When we land we start to talk with people who think Black Lives Matter.  When we land we hear about children in the schools where we are building gardens who cannot afford food.  When we land we start talking about how to prepare these kids for a world where coal mining is promoted over tech, science, and innovation.

When we look back, we have been resisting since before it was called resistance.  Every Thursday, at ten a.m. we work in a garden behind a local elementary school.  25 students come over with their teacher to work with us, learn how to grow their own food and work on ways to get involved in their community.  Then they get to talk to 25 students in Seattle and 25 students in Augusta, GA and 25 students in Greenville, SC and talk about what they learned.

In that same garden, one of my students found three bullets and brought them to me.  In that same
garden, one of my Hispanic students told me that she was scared that her parents were going to be deported.

So we resist by doing what we have always done only amping it up a lot.  We have to understand the problems have not changed, they have only gotten help in becoming more problematic.  This week, next week and for as long as we can, we are going to be giving away plants grown by our kids so that people can grow food.  We resist by gardening and writing and teaching.  How do you resist?

Let us know how you resist at thelifecooperative@gmail.com