Subscribe to Breaking NewsRuby-Sachs: In Defense of Direct Action
[James and Jenna also have strong opinions about this topic. Check them out and enjoy this week's debate!]
The legislative back and forth on gay rights is mind boggling. One day Maine introduces a gay marriage bill, the next day Arkansas rushes to ban gay adoption. Illinois starts towards civil unions, and then the bill loses momentum in the House.
In our coverage of these events, there are always a few readers who comment on direct action: avoid paying your taxes until you have full rights, boycott corporations that don’t support spousal benefits for same-sex employees, protest, stop traffic etc.
As a lawyer, it’s important to warn about the consequences of breaking the law. It puts you at risk in all sorts of ways beyond simple arrest for the one thing you actually did wrong. Convictions for any kind of offence can make getting a job, crossing borders, getting into school almost impossible.
As an activist, I appreciate the value of direct action. Even violent direct action has played an enormously important role in American and world history. I wonder if some of the progress we have achieved as a society could have happened without a little nudge from a few people and groups who were willing to risk everything to get the rights they deserve.
Direct action encompasses all sorts of practices. Some of them, like protesting with a permit, are pretty mild and most of us would agree are useful if not for the publicity than for the movement’s own morale. Others, like withholding taxes, are pretty extreme, result in incarceration and are sure to get people’s attention.
And that’s the point. If people are aware, and then maybe a bit scared and definitely talking about an issue, they are more likely to believe that government resources should be directed towards dealing with it.
If Malcolm X wasn’t using extreme language to scare white people in the civil rights movement, do you really believe everyone would have been thinking Martin Luther King was so reasonable? If MK wasn’t murdering people in the streets of South Africa, would there have been an incentive to negotiate with Nelson Mandela? The same is true for Sinn Féin and the IRA in Northern Ireland and the FLQ and the Parti Québécois in Canada.
Now. we are not living under Apartheid and so the level of violence in these historical examples is clearly inappropriate and would be ineffective.
That said, the radical movement within the LGBT struggle makes people pay attention and is part of the reason why the government is interested in hearing from more moderate organizations like the HRC. It is also the reason why judges bother to take organizations like Lambda Legal seriously.
Very few people choose to direct their own resources towards equality for other people. Most downright resent calls for inclusion and benefits for “sexual deviants.” Even in countries where gay marriage is legal, acceptance is still elusive for many.
That’s why you have to make your government pay attention.
Sometimes this will be through persistent knocking at his front door. But it would be more effective if he were inviting you in, desperate for a way to resolve the division and discord all the gay anger is causing in the country.
James is right, there needs to be lots of tough ground work done to win a movement (although litigating is a particularly inefficient example). But a successful movement takes all types and we would be remiss in not recognizing that much of the direct action I, for one, would not condone, does help.
We have to make the people in charge pay attention. There was recently a hate crime here and no one heard about it. The blogs covered it days before there was a blip on the news. It wasn’t until we protested that there was even real coverage by the mainstream media.
http://stuffqueerpeopleneedtoknow.wordpress.com/
Then there is Westboro Baptist Church’s latest demonstration at Harvard Law School.
“Five members of the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC), an anti-gay church based in Topeka, Kansas, were met with chants of “Hey hey, ho ho, homophobia has got to go,” by a crowd of HLS students who gathered to protest WBC’s message of hate on Friday, March 20. The Church members, who held signs which read “God Hates Fags” and “Mourn for Your Sins,” protested outside Gannett House, the historic home of the Harvard Law Review.
Police presence was heavy. Dozens of Harvard University Police and Cambridge Police joined forces to maintain order. Those students protesting the presence of the WBC were huddled on the South side of Gannett House and the sidewalk that runs along Massachusetts Avenue was closed to pedestrians. Ambulances and fire equipment lay in waiting, but conflict between the groups was limited to verbal spats and a battle of poster board.
One protestor held a sign mocking the WBC’s message which read, “God strongly dislikes hate.” Others were more traditional messages of tolerance, such as “Harvard is Proud to Be Diverse” and “We’re Here. We’re Queer. Get Over it.”
Here is ‘direct action’ 7th Grade teacher invites all kids and parents to his commitment ceremony, over 60 will come. His students discuss upcoming event with reporter. 12/yo ‘He’s not gay’, 13 y/o ‘No, he’s bisexual, ask him.’ (Teacher confirms.) THE FUTURE IS HERE.
nytimes.com/2009/03/23/nyregion/23bigcity.html
Every 3-5 years, whenever the GLBT community feels need for fragrant and flagrant self-flagelation, we bring out the “direct action vs. assimilation” arguement. And in the end, the zealots on either side retreat to their respective corners, and we come to the conclusion that you need both approaches. I’m glad to see that we are getting there a little sooner this time.
I remember the great pioneering trangender activist Connie Norman describing what a day protesting at the state capitol was like. In the morning you show up, make a lot of noise and generally make a nuisance of yourself. Then once you have gotten their attention, you go home, change clothes, take out the piercings, and go back and lobby in a more quieter but no less effective fashion.
Short of armed revolution, thats the way democracy works here in America. Whether the issue is GLBT or the Rutabega Growers Association. Ain’t America just grand? I think so. Sincerely. You should too.
I have to say that I and others in my country did not finally get our rights and responsibilities under the law by sitting on our hands bemoaning the inequities of life. As some here have said, continue to fight, get in their faces, do not give up. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, we shall fight them on the beaches, we shall fight them in the fields, we shall fight them in the streets, but we shall never give up, we shall never surrender.
As for the rather humourous if not entirely incoherent postings of what appears to be the resident twat, you know…the one, the only, RJLigier, I must say that your verbose prose of petulant posturing coupled with your obvious neurosis of self denial and loathing, make you more a buffoon to be ridiculed than someone who has anything of value to add to the discussion.
As such, I must, with some degree of reticence, dismiss you as not wothy of this debate. Please do yourself a favour and get a proper education or at least try a bit harder to form more cogent and thought out piffle, since that seems to be all you offer.
“I work with so many intellectually deficient and attention-deficit disordered LGBT individuals in management, it’s mind boggling.”
You are too funny.
Sincerely,
James
DeaninMI,
Miss Thing….stop projecting, please. I charge more by the hour if you project. Economic apartheid?!?!….are you kidding me? Until 1998, LGBT line could dismiss conservatives for nothing more than LGBT narcisistically hostile and borderline confrontational behavior toward conservatives. In the hard sciences and business, academics, professionalism , and expertise indicate merit based performance and promotion. I work with so many intellectually deficient and attention-deficit disordered LGBT individuals in management, it’s mind boggling. If I wished to remain with the firm, it’s a slam dunk federal lawsuit were I to pursue a management position. Economic apartheid does not exist.
And one other thing, Lead, Follow, or GET THE [HECK] OUT OF THE WAY.
I have been a soldier in the war against homophobia for over 35 years. I am not bloody LIKELY to lay down for those [jerks] now.
While I appreciate your point of view, there are times when a good [punk] slapping is warranted and required for the people standing in our way to equality. I am not now, nor have I ever BEEN afraid to administer it when called for.
(And YES, I am the one who decides when they have it coming, I refuse to wait on a committee to decide for me)
If no one wants to get into trouble with the law, then you can certainly be assured that oppression will never end.
The laws were designed to be intimidating and compliance with them while fighting for rights impossible.
No oppressed group has ever achieved that goal for this very reason.
The LGBT community can keep investing in the billion dollar a year protection racket called the LGBT civil rights movement while receiving little or no protection or they can fight with militant violence.
It seems ridiculous to think America should allow gays in the military to protect their kids if gays will not use military violence to protect their own kids (LGBT children)!
Maybe gays could show America and the rest of the world the way on how to get Iraqis and Afghans to surrender by merely posturing them into submission.
“we are not living under Apartheid”
With all due respect, I disagree. We are living under a system of economic Apartheid, if nothing more.
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I thought fruitcakes only came out at Christmas time.
As an attorney, you know that you are not entitled to special rights due to your neuroses. As a functional neurotic, you are entitled to all rights bestowed on any citizen of the United States. “Born that way” theory is fraud of the highest magnitude perpetrated against the American people. Release the suppressed information acquired by Kinsey and the Kinsey Institute and subject yourself to MRI polygraphs so the scientific community can have replicable, empirical data. Theory by the consensus of neurotic legal and medical professionals is not science.
Emma…well done.
No. Our kids go to school and the get the crap beat out of them, get called names and are running for their lives.
Our families are being pulled apart, unprotected, and defamed.
Our lives are being considered less than human.
Follow the law absolutely, but fight. Don’t sit in the corner, don’t go dancing the thumpa thumpa thumpa of the club all night. Don’t continue to dance as if you have nothing else to lose or live for. FIght, we are closing in on our rights.
We have lost our activist past. Our Pride parades are spectacles that do nothing to advance the community. And our activism only appears after we have lost something.
March. At home and on Washington. If ever there was a time to not be doing different things but acting as one. This is it.