If Protesting Doesn't Do Anything, Then Why Are The Powerful Determined To Eliminate It?

Indigenous people led a protest at the White House during the Obama years, holding a die-in to illustrate the effects of the proposed Keystone oil pipeline on multiple forms of life. Source: toyboathouse.com

I'm going to take a step back from considering the accelerating madness of current events to ponder a question that dogs me and other dissenters: what can we do about it? "It" being, for me, the wars on Afghan people, Palestinian people, Yemeni people, Syrian people, Iraqi people, indigenous people, black people, immigrant people, female people, etc. Also the destruction of Earth's life support system by unhinged capitalist exploitation, wars being a major factor.

Anti-Vietnam war protesters march down Fifth Avenue near to 81st Street in New York City on April 27, 1968, in protest of the U.S. involvement in the Vietnamese war. The demonstrators were en route to nearby Central Park for mass “Stop the war” rally. (AP Photo) Source: namvietnews.wordpress.com

It may be that what sparked this blog post was watching a bit of archival footage of thousands of young people -- my generation -- in the streets chanting "no more war." This was in the intro to a documentary about mythology and hero's journeys. I had switched it on expecting to see a lot of art from various cultures but instead found myself watching two old white men talk about people, using all male pronouns and 99% male examples. Ho hum, I turned it off.

Let me just say that I don't like to be one of those elders who dwell insistently on the past. It's a mistake because it closes off our minds to learning what perspectives younger humans are bringing to this long, strange trip we're on. Maybe it's just because I'm on the tail end of the baby boomers and thus not old enough yet to dwell primarily in the land of memory. In any case, perhaps ironically for a history buff, I find people insisting on living in the past to be extremely boring.

Bath, Maine resident Bruce Gagnon's hunger strike against a tax giveaway to a weapons manufacturer drew supporters who fasted with him, press coverage from a local newspaper, and probably influenced eventual reduction of the giveaway to $45 million. Source: Joe Phelan photo / Portland Press Herald

Another thing that jogged my thinking about what kind of resistance is actually effective was some negative feedback in response to a War Tax Resisters annual gathering that I was invited to speak at. The requested topic is something I know about intimately since, while I wrote about opposing LD1781 and then went to do my paid job, my husband went to his unpaid citizen lobbyist job at the Maine legislature earlier this year. The mega wealthy corporation General Dynamics was twisting arms and telling lies to get a big tax giveaway from our very poor state on top of the largesse from the Pentagon and the city of Bath where they operate a shipyard that builds weapons of mass destruction.

So the WTR folks asked if I would talk about that resistance. Another activist in Maine contacted me to say that he was dismayed that a particular advocate of war tax resistance had shilly shallied on the question of whether the IRS can or will go after a war tax resister's social security checks. I can attest that they can and will because they did so to my husband's check after we refused to pay the hefty balance owed to the war machine even in addition to the thousands they had already deducted from my paycheck. "Make them come after it," is a slogan of WTR and make them we did. However, when it was all paid back and the monthly SS deposit was restored, my husband said he didn't want to do that anymore. So, full disclosure, I am a bit of a fraud as a war tax resister at this point.

 A helicopter used by the U.S. military in Afghanistan Source: scout.com

The other thing that has been stuck in my craw lately is the request by a local mom that we have schoolchildren send messages to her son who is on a helicopter crew in Afghanistan. I remember this student as a sweet, bespectacled boy with acne, and gentle soul who was respectful to his teachers even in adolescence (fairly rare around here). His mom and he are not doing well emotionally. He enlisted because of his love of helicopters, but now he's battling the horror and depression of picking up dead and mangled humans and flying them elsewhere.

The possibility that little children be put on the road to thanking him for his service filled me with horror and dismay. In the political vacuum that a public school in a conservative rural area creates so that civil war doesn't break out in the lunchroom, it is considered fine to bring up supporting a local boy without any hint of concern for the thousands of mangled Afghan boys and girls that the 18 year long occupation of that country has produced.

So I just had to raise my hand.

I said, let's be careful when we're speaking to students about this request not to glamorize the prospect of enlisting in the military. We're speaking to an audience that has seen thousands of hours of sophisticated advertising designed to make them believe that enlistment is glorious and heroic, that hides the ugly reality from them. And recruiters lie, all the time.


It was quiet as everyone contemplated this turd in the punch bowl.

Then one brave soul spoke up and said, I have a son who did that, enlisted, and he is not the same as he was before.

I followed up with an email to the group providing a link to the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, in case they wanted to know more about what's going on in Afghanistan. One person responded and I'll bet she will follow up because she is a life long learner with a keen interest in other cultures, and in learning about what she does not know.

So here's what I'm thinking does and does not "work" in terms of resistance to the kleptocracy that seems intent on destroying the world in exchange for a bit of transitory "wealth."

Voting Are you kidding me? I could paste in 1,000 links here to show that free and fair elections and true representation for people like me and thee is a thing of the past in the USA. One will suffice: Maine's Senator Susan Collins received hundreds of thousands of dollars in "dark money" campaign contributions after her support for the loathsome Brett Kavanaugh to ascend to the Supreme Court.

Protesting/Demonstrating Remember that film clip of thousands of young people chanting "no more war" and ask yourself if that's what ended the war on the people of Vietnam. If your answer is No or Maybe not, there were a lot of factors, ask yourself this: did it end the draft?

Ending military conscription forced the Pentagon to rely on the economic draft which has always pushed young people who grew up in poverty to enlist. Relying on volunteers has led to paying the NFL and other sports franchises to stage patriotic pro-military shows at games, beefing up the recruiting budget, going after increasingly younger students during the school day, and stop-loss which forces traumatized veterans back into combat again and again and again. A sobering thought from this baby boomer: a tour of duty in Vietnam was a year, then you got to go home. The fact that the rest of your life might be ruined by what you saw and did there was of little interest to those who sent you, but it has led to one of the highest suicide rates for any group in our country.

Wendy Bergeron-Laurence staged a 13 hour lone demonstration in Waterville, Maine July 9, 2013 to show her support for theTexas legislator who had staged a 13 hour filibuster on behalf of women's reproductive freedom.

Protesting in person, sometimes all alone, goes on all the time -- though it is mostly ignored by corporate media. Just how much the ruling elite fears outpouring of political action from the people was illustrated this week when it unveiled extensive new restrictions and fees for protesting in the nation's capital. The National Park Service has jurisdiction over many of the spaces used for protests, and it is required to gather public input before imposing the new regulations. You can learn more about the details and weigh in here.

War Tax Resistance This has been going on for centuries, with the American Friends Service Committee (aka Quakers) leading and educating. There are a lot of forms of withholding the tax dollar that Congress spends about 65% of on military these days (more if you include the Veterans Administration budget). You can hide income so it isn't taxed, you can become too low income to owe taxes, or you can simply fail to pay up. Advice is to do it honestly and with full disclosure so that the IRS can't convict you of tax fraud. Not enough people have done this to be able to tell if it is effective. Certainly borrowing to fund wars that exceed the public purse is galloping, and servicing that debt may be a crucial factor when this empire falls.

Communication  I like this one the best. Lots of protesting/demonstrating operates in this arena. Because it really is about people's hearts and minds, because information is power, and because the dissemination of misinformation has become turbocharged in the age of mass media and the Internet. Just this past month all of us cell phone users got a mandatory text message from FEMA so that the executive branch of the feds can warn us about emergencies. The effects of 9/11 are wearing off; students in 9th grade today were not even born when it happened. Can't wait to see what kind of terror our rulers come up with next to justify even more surveillance, repression and wars for resources.

Women and supporters in Poland protesting abortion ban in 2016 Source: The Bubble

Civil Disobedience / Women's Strike  When this comes up somebody always has to reference Lysistrata. Did I mention that I'm old? So, I don't think a sex strike is going to be nearly as impactful as would the women of this country simply withdrawing their labor. (If sex seems like work, then by all means refrain from that, too.) I do think this has a better and better chance of occurring, but it won't be in response to wars, because the empire's wars are largely invisible except to working class and poor families with loved ones involved (see Communication above). It probably won't be in response to rape culture, either, although that's an issue more and more young women are refusing to remain silent about.



A women's general strike will probably come about in response to the loss of reproductive freedom. The women of Poland and Ireland have set an example for U.S. women to follow, and I hope I live long enough to see us do it. Is the future female? Stay tuned.