Correction–No One Was Even Symbolically Arrested

From today’s Washington Post:

No one was arrested during Tuesday’s demonstration, Elliot said. But there was a minor skirmish between police and protesters when some tried to gain access to a parking tunnel next to the hotel. After a small group was allowed to deliver “citizen’s arrest warrants” to America’s Health Insurance Plans, the lobbying group hosting the conference, the crowd began to disperse.

Thanks guys, I feel that much closer to change.

Symbolic America

I just came back from a health care protest at the DC Ritz Carlton, and I have to say I was extremely disappointed. The turnout was fine, the speeches standard but more or less well delivered, and in terms of agreeing with health care for all, I do, so I was not really bothered by the plentiful propaganda.

Here is what does bother me. Today at 12:30 pm EST, give or take, about 50 people walked towards the Ritz Carlton to issue a citizen’s arrest for the CEOs of some of the largest health care providers in the United States at a meeting of AHIP, the heath provider lobby. They were duly arrested for symbolic civil disobedience by the fine men and women of the DC Metropolitan Police Department.

This act of disobedience, in which the heads of several labor organizations, including the AFL-CIO, as well as “survivors” of the health care industry, including a man who went blind because he could not afford his health insurance, walked up with a piece of paper and some signs to waiting police to be put into waiting cars, accomplished nothing. Some news organizations were present, but none of the big networks. No congressmen were in attendance. There is little if any evidence that the AHIP meeting was even disrupted. What I saw was a symbolic act of defiance made by people who wanted to show, symbolically, that they were in solidarity with the 46 million un- and underinsured Americans in this country.

News flash: the time for symbolism has passed. Not so breaking news: these rallies are a waste of time.

Now, to qualify my position, I am not against health care reform, health care for all, single payer reform, the government’s socialist violation of your right to be less healthy, or whatever you want to call it. I want to be clear: I agree with the ostensible goals of this demonstration. But it was completely useless for two reasons.

The first is our skewed understanding of civil disobedience, which seems to have died in this country around the time they killed Martin. Thoreau notes:

“Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally… think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil.”

The logical conclusion to be drawn, here, is that men must not follow unjust laws in the hope that they are changed, but defy them until they are defeated. This logic has been extended to hold that a conscientious group of protesters might disrupt the organs of government and other interests who act immorally. Buy that or not, I believe that “extension” was the what this rally aimed to achieve. But here’s the rub: if you aim to disrupt government and interest to make your points loud, clear, and public, WHY ARE YOU GETTING A PERMIT TO PROTEST AND PUBLISHING THE ROUTE OF YOUR DEMONSTRATION? That would be CIVIL OBEDIENCE and the direct result of it is: the police are waiting for you to arrest the appointed (and advertised!) demonstrators and that people in traffic know to avoid your rally so that you don’t disrupt their day.

Excuse me if I am getting pedantic here (I don’t think I am), but to my mind, the idea of civil disobedience is to intrude and disrupt, to force the otherwise blissfully ignorant mass to take note that some massive injustice is taking place in their country, and that they need to face it. Further, civil disobedience, if successful, should aim to obstruct the specific organs of policy (lobbyists, bureaucracies, and representatives) to which the act is opposed.

As far as I can tell, the organizers of today’s protest acted in the exact opposite to these goals, thus constituting an act of civil obedience, which is a waste of time. Why bother carrying your soapbox to a spot where no one can hear you talk?

Secondly, and more disturbingly, is that this farce ended in people being arrested. At first glance, this is actually the point of civil disobedience and I salute those (braver than myself) who would submit themselves to the punishment of an unjust system for righteous beliefs. However, these were not the arrests of those Quixotically opposed to the great corporate powers of health, but a ritual submission of actors in mediocre political theater.

Their arrests are symbolic–they had cops, lawyers, and probably even judges ready to have everyone processed and ready to be home by evening. This symbolism is meant to convey that unions, as a political group, are, to paraphrase a speaker, in solidarity with the “working” men and women of this country to create a more powerful “middle class.” Whatever confusion their language breeds over what group they support, the idea is that they should be clapped on the back for getting pinched.

Ok, I think that does take a certain caliber of bravery, I don’t want to slight it. But let’s not get confused–symbolism is a stand in for the real thing, and only that. We live in a culture that confuses symbols for the genuine. Let’s call it a post-modern dementia. Symbols are important. As Geertz notes, “man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun” and symbols, whether religious, cultural, or political, are the codes by which we recognize and understand the common heritage in which we are born into. But at the end of the day, a symbol remains a stand in, not the action. We wear donkeys and elephants not because we literally identify with them but because they identify the ideology which we promote through voting. But wearing the jackass is not the same as voting Democrat. Symbolic risks and symbolic acts and symbolic struggles are not the same as risk and action and struggle towards winning the fight.

When Rich Trumka got arrested today, he wanted everyone to know he is on the same side as those who don’t have health insurance in the United States. I salute him for his political position–but what the hell is he doing to alleviate the situation? The time has passed to take sides, the time has come to move beyond symbols and to move towards acts. Raise money. Donate to candidates that support government sponsored insurance. Vote for these candidates. Sue “big insurance” on behalf of dispossessed and recisioned so that they can get the benefits they were contractually promised. This is action. The rest is at best ineffectual and at worst the grossest kind deception–the kind where the weak are made to feel comfortable because someone has experienced modest discomfort in a show of solidarity with their great pain. That is poor comfort indeed.

So to close out this already too long post, I leave you with a quote from Dostoyevski, who had already diagnosed our problems today when he wrote Notes from Underground in 1864:

“We are oppressed at being men–men with a real individual body and blood, we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of impossible generalised man. We are stillborn, and for generations past have been begotten, not by living fathers, and that suits us better and better. We are developing a taste for it. Soon we shall contrive to be born somehow from an idea.”

The People Make Their Stand

As a DC transplant (like most in the city), I often find myself traveling to enjoy the holiday elsewhere.  While it’s nice to get out of the city every once in awhile, sometimes, I feel like I miss something by being away from my new home.  Well this holiday season, I did truly miss something important.

Anyone who has opened a newspaper this year knows we’re facing a lot of issues as a nation–war in two countries, climate change (or not), an economic downturn, health care wrangling, and what I feel is a general cultural malaise. Statistics suggest that as a people we are sour on our prospects, and that we might for the first time in history pass off a country to the next generation in worse shape that we inherited it. Many people feel that now is the time for Americans to take to the streets and take action to get what they want–whether its the anti-war stagnation movement or Obama’s uplifting “change” rhetoric–everything seems to point to a trend, or the desire of a trend, where Americans get more active in dictating their destiny.

Well, while I was gone 200 people in DC decided they’d make it happen.  They wanted to take a stand, and that stand was over snowballs.

To be fair, I do think this cop was out of line drawing his gun and getting worked up, but I can’t help but instinctively cringe when I hear them chant “fuck you pig.”  Really?  From the rhetoric some in the crowd are spewing, you’d think it was Iran’s Green Revolution at 14th and U.  There’s some rumor that there was an anti-war element here (maybe pelting a hummer with snowballs is the Yippieism of the new century?), but I don’t particularly buy it.  Just looks like people were having fun and things got way out of hand.  It is a little saddening, though, when you see a bunch of people who will stand up for their criminal intention right to have a snowball fight (“What’s his badge number? How do you spell your last name?  Get his license plate number!”), but you can’t get more than 1500 to a peace rally.