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.

Cycle Of Violence Turning Into A Cyclone In USA

"We are fed up" sign against femicide held by a woman in Uruguay. Photo: Reuters

It would be impossible to keep up with all the incidents of gun violence resulting in innocent deaths in the USA this week.







There are a couple that stood out, though.

Yesterday 36 year old military veteran Albert Wong took three women hostage at a VA home in Yountville, California and all four were dead of gunshot wounds when police finally made it into the room.

The late Jennifer Gonzales, Jennifer Golick and Christine Loeber were mental health workers, employees of a nonprofit that treated veterans with PTSD. May these martyrs to gun violence perpetrated by men rest in peace.

Reports are that Wong suffered from PTSD, but no motive for the murders and suicide has been named.



Secondly, a football player was charged with manslaughter after shooting and killing a 17 year old girl in a high school classroom. Michael Barber of Birmingham, Alabama also shot  himself in the leg with the gun. Why was there a gun on campus? Why weren't the school's metal detectors in use that day? We may never know. Nor would answers be much consolation to the family and friends of the late Courtlin La'Shawn Arrington, who will now never attend nursing school as she had planned.

Then, in just plain old violence, videos have surfaced of a black dishwasher assaulted violently by police in Asheville, North Carolina for jaywalking. A policeman was allowed to resign but that is hardly likely to redress the racial injustice of beating and tasering a restrained man for being guilty of walking home while black.





Yup, Johnnie Jermain Rush did jaywalk -- across an empty street on his way home from a 13 hour shift at Cracker Barrel.

Also, the demagogue with bad hair has let it be known that the widely unpopular military parade he ordered for Veterans Day will not include tanks because -- wait for it -- they tear up the pavement.

Violence against roads is a concern, but not violence against people who are actually shot or run over by tanks funded by the 54% of U.S. tax dollars going to the Pentagon these days. Nor is there much concern for the collateral damage of churning out PTSD sufferers who return home and enact violence on themselves and others. Because, hey, "there's plenty of good money to be made supplying the Army with the tools of the trade."

I keep saying I'm too old to leave the USA, and I probably am, but it's tempting.



Look what women in Latin America did this week to protest femicide and other forms of violence suffered disproportionately by women and girls.

Only a women's general strike in the U.S. -- sort of like the one Iceland had in the 1970's -- has any chance of ending the cycle, or cyclone, of violence we find ourselves in.

A stop to business as usual might stop humanity circling the drain sooner rather than later.

Students will walk out of high schools all over the country this coming week, on March 14, to protest lack of congressional reform of gun policies.

I tried to organize a solidarity action at my elementary school but was told it was forbidden by my very timid principal. If I wanted to go up to the high school to join in the action there (organized by a girl I mentored in middle school!) I'd have to get coverage of my class and use personal time.

All my personal time for the year got used up in the Aegis 9 trial so I guess I'll cave to the bureaucracy on this one.

But I'll still fantasize about the immense power of all working women -- teachers, nurses, cooks, admins, managers, drivers, CEOs -- just stopping what they're doing until the weapons are all buried in a vault somewhere. 

Of course caregivers for the young or infirm would not want to stop work, nor would they need to.

The rest of us could do it on behalf of everyone being swept away in this endless cyclone of violence.

Why Voting Won't Save Us, And Why It's Time For A Women's Strike

Thelma Glass, a founding member of the Women's Political Council of Montgomery, Alabama

What to do with so much egregious government to respond to? In Maine we have a legislature in session that is attacking Medicare, Medicaid, public education funding passed by referendum, water quality via changes in mining regulations, Native sovereignty, and our status as a refugee asylum state -- just to name a few.

So I'm receving hundreds of messages a week similar to this one, from a former colleague, on facebook:

shared a link.
15 hrs
How about a rotating ongoing vigil at Poliquin's office with a sign: Poliquin's voted for Mainers to die.
I'd take a shift every week.

The link shared was news of the passage of draconian austerity in the form of the "American Health Care Act" published in the Washington Post. (The Post is a corporate government stenographer I'm no longer willing to read or share because it has been so destructive of truth; but most baby boomers cling to loyalties they developed when young. Here's an alternative by RoseAnn De Moro in Common Dreams, "Did the Marquis De Sade Write This Health Care Bill?")

Older white progressives have a hard time recognizing that the Democratic Party is not their friend.

This delusion extends to believing that an "independent" senator toeing the pro-Israel line and espousing socialist notions while voting with corporations would have saved the party.

Source: Amino.com

Millenials, on the other hand, have been kicked in the teeth by corporate government since the day they were born. As they stagger through life carrying the burden of their student loans, many can't afford a dentist. A dip into their social media threads finds them responding to the newest wave of healthcare austerity by calling for guillotines and other forms of violent rebellion.

I don't believe in the effectiveness of violent tactics, especially when the people are so thoroughly outgunned by the "security" forces of the state, whether police or military (this line is blurring rapidly).

Also, I'm a boomer heavily influenced by Rosa Parks and Jo Ann Robinson, women who believed that giving up the moral high ground i.e. abandoning nonviolent tactics like the Montgomery bus boycott would be a strategic mistake.

Another view in wide circulation among the woke on U.S. healthcare woes:

Phil Rockstroh sums it up: 

"If Obama and the Democrats had submitted and fought for a single payer plan rather than the byzantine, designed-to-fail (by the rightwing Heritage Foundation) Big Insurance/Big Pharma/Big Medicine Trojan horse ACA, there would not be the extent of discontent that has allowed the act to be challenged and its existence threatened. 

The popular outcry would have made the attempt to dismantle it politically prohibitive. 

Therefore, we are witnessing yet another example of how the lesser-of-two-evils canard in the end serves no one but the capitalist plundering class.In short, liberals and sham progressives, it is more propitious, result-wise, to be engaged in an honest fight, rather than to feign one, as High Dollar owned and controlled Democratic Party elites did in regard to Obamacare. 

Yes, the Republicans are soul-dead practitioners of shit-wizardry. But the fact does not provide cover for Obama’s and the liberal class’ own collaboration in the craven art."

This is countered by people calling for our "Representative" Bruce Poliquin to be held accountable at the next election and who will no doubt call on us to elect a Democrat to fix everything.

Poliquin is a man who wears $500 shoes to a town hall in central Maine, whose entire resume reflects his service to Wall St., and who will literally hide in the bathroom to avoid questions about how he intends to vote. All his office voicemail boxes are full, and all constituents get is a busy signal when trying multiple times a day to get through. On the rare occasion that they do get through they are told that "the congressman is still deciding." If they rally at an event he's willing to attend, he quickly cancels his appearance citing yet another family emergency. 

My impression is that Poliquin has watched and studied the film Ferris Bueller's Day Off very, very carefully.

I do not believe that working through the proper channels to request meetings or elect better represenatives are anything more than elaborate wastes of time at this point in the trajectory of history.

We have full on corporate government with the mass incarceration that goes with along with regimes abandoning non-coercive ways of earning support (like providing healthcare, housing, or public transportation) in favor of 100% coercion.

I also do not believe that most baby boomers will understand this. That's ok, we are the past not the future. We are old and in the way for the most part. 

Begging for scraps from the corporate table is also a waste of time.

Women's Political Council organizer Jo Ann Robinson's mug shot from the Montgomery County archives

Now is the time for Parks and Robinson-style strategy: start withholding support from the corporate beast.

If every woman who could get away with it would call in sick for two days in a row, the system would wobble. Then, others would join in. Einstein estimated that if 2% of the population stops upholding a system, that's enough to bring it down.

Baby boomers, many still working because they can't afford to retire, could play a key role here. Most of us could get away with not working for two key days (like the Monday and Tuesday of a new quarter or fiscal year?). Working class women who can't afford to lose wages should be subsidized by those who can. Caregivers for the dependent obviously would go on working. No one is going to stop feeding their 3 year old or bedridden mother to make a political point. That's ok if the 2% work together.

After 48 hours, the white males who run this country would be forced to notice their lack of meals, travel itineraries and business as usual. Phones would ring unanswered. Important emails would pile up in inboxes, or not get sent in the first place. Many in the ruling class would be scrambling to get enough calories -- or maybe they would just drink their calories until their liquor supplies ran out? 

The Montgomery bus boycott was a movement largely of women (and the making of Martin Luther King, Jr. as a national leader -- draw your own conclusions). The black female domestic workers who joined the boycott initially wanted to make a point about how valuable they were as a customer base for the bus line that discriminated against them.

The Mongtomery bus boycott was only planned to last for a day.

But the power of withdrawing so much support from a bad system was intoxicating. It snowballed quickly so that the cautious joined the first adopters. Community groups helped organize people to share resources so they could still get to work. 



Pregnant teenager Claudette Colvin's wildcat strike against bus segregation provided the spark that motivated the Women's Political Council WPC) of Montgomery to support Rosa Parks in a planned arrest followed by a boycott. Which strategy adopted by the WPC resulted in more change: voter registration, or the boycott?

May 1 this year saw strikes in many U.S. locations, with a theme of the power of immigrant labor predominating. That's a good sign.

What will be the spark for a general strike by women? My prediction: when the corporate controlled Supreme Court removes access to legal, safe abortion.

The ACHA is already well on its way to making abortion unaffordable. Even white baby boomers will strike against that.