In favor of civil disobedience

Like others in my generation, as a child, I was sometimes spanked. It wasn't a regular occurrence, something only used in exceptional circumstances. But when it happened, it was terrifying. I remember times locking myself in the bathroom to escape it.

The impulse to hit unruly children (which is apparently making a comeback) is at the core of the authoritarian way of perceiving world. Fascists believe disobedience demands a violent response.

As California experiences intense protests against a cruel federal crackdown on undocumented immigrants and an unequal response from the Trump administration and local police, I think it's a good time step back and think about exactly what protesters want, what tactics will likely be successful, and how governments will respond.

One thing needs to be clear: the Trump administration, in its unconstitutional, illegal, and unethical behavior, has brought this chaos upon itself. The list of things worth protesting are long: a program of mass deportation that isn't against violent criminals or gang members but targets undocumented residents with no criminal background who harvest our food and are the backbone of the economies of the US and Cascadia. Some immigrants, such as Kilmar Abrego Garcia, have been abducted with no due process and sent to foreign prisons.

Massive government corruption festers in the form of gifted luxury jets, the Elon Musk fiasco, and Trump's crypotocurrency bribe pipeline. This administration has illegally dismantled Congressionally-authorized agencies, threatens to revoke disaster funding to blue states, punishes law firms that challenge him, and threatens to prosecute political opponents. Trump has defied multiple court orders, and when asked if he must defend the constitution, replied "I don't know."

Newsom was right to say that instead of following the rule of law, the federal government is now following the rule of Don.

The current US government acts like a fascist government so now must be treated as a fascist government. Just yesterday, Christopher Rufo, the right-wing writer from Gig Harbor, Washington who manufactured the moral panic over diversity, equity, and inclusion, suggested on his website that protesters should be secretly abducted: "the agencies should dispatch unmarked vans to follow key agitators and snatch them from the streets while the media are not looking." These and other tactics are straight out of the fascist playbook. Arrest and prosecute all dissenters, whether it's a barista from Portland or the governor of California.

Protests would end if ICE, which operates as a paramilitary vigilante force refusing to identify themselves, were abolished. Protests would end if the GOP stood up to its leader or impeached him. Protests would end of the Trump administration chose to act legally. This hasn't happened, and so it is right and justified to oppose this government through protest and civil disobedience.

I think there's some confusion in the legacy media and among American public about what this means. Peaceful, non-violent protest takes many forms. The misconception is that protests against an oppressive regime using excessive force should all be orderly, happy rallies.

American writer Henry David Thoreau defined civil disobedience in his 1849 essay – in which he justified his actions (such as not paying taxes) in opposition to slavery and the Mexican-American War, which he considered immoral. He noted, “It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.”

Civil disobedience often involves, and even demands, breaking the law. And those who practice civil disobedience in opposition to immoral government actions, as Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and others in the US civil rights movement knew – often faced arrest or an unequal, violent response from law enforcement. This is what's happening in Los Angeles and took place in Seattle during BLM protests.

Non-violent civil disobedience can take many forms. Blockading an ICE facility, as happened yesterday in Seattle, for instance. Some who hamper the efforts of federal agents will face arrest and retaliatory violence. Protests can (and should) be noisy, unruly, and chaotic. What makes them non-violent is that they do not set out to harm other humans.

Protests, to be effective, should be non-violent even if they are unruly. As Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg notes in her wise essay On Organizing, research has found that non-violent protest movements against oppressive regimes were 10 times more likely to be effective and lead to democratic outcomes than those that involved intentional violence and warfare. But Ruttenberg notes those non-violent tactics took many forms:

It's not all sit-ins and street protests, or even vigils and die-ins. There are so many ways to gum up the works– some might involve not cooperating, like striking and boycotting, or even walking really, really slowly at work.
--Danya Ruttenberg

This is also clear in the current crisis: if the US government continues on its path of unconstitutional fascism and violent oppression of the people of our region, then the states of Cascadia may be forced to employ these tactics of non-violent civil disobedience, peaceful protest and a referendum to peacefully leave the United States if necessary. The non-violent movement for the independence of the Baltic States from the Soviet Union in the early 1990s is a good example to follow.

I'll probably see some of you at Seattle's Cal Anderson Park on Saturday for one of the hundreds of "No Kings" protests happening across North America challenging Trump's ego-boosting fascist military parade.