It does not look as if the protests are going to go away, if last weekend, worldwide, is anything to go by. Protestors may not yet be fully aware of themselves as the World Opinion that Anthony Barnett hails as a historic breakthrough, but they show every sign of what online communities call lurking. This, despite the inevitable suggestion that they are letting the side down, as well as the soldiers on the front line. Bobs open letter to the demonstrators in his recent posting to openDemocracy, whatever the irony, is succinct:
I support the right of people to protest. It is exactly (and ironically) why we are in Iraq. However, I believe these demonstrations are actually putting the average American citizen, as well as our soldiers, in greater danger my job now is to get out of the way and let the professionals handle it. I will pray for them, support them, and argue for them. But I will get out of the way.
The time has come for you to get out of the way.
Susan Griffin clearly communicates the new fears of a clampdown, especially in the US, where 70% of the population are now reputed to be on board for the war. However even in the US, protestors do not seem to be accepting defeat in this sense: after all there is plenty more to protest about in the conduct of the war, the impact on democracy not just in Iraq, the promised humanitarian aid which is slow in arriving, let alone its aftermath and as many see it, one days shorter war will save lives that would otherwise be needlessly lost on all sides, and allow a desperately-needed recovery to begin.
On the other hand, many of us are bound to be disappointed. In an interesting article, As war comes: Plan B for the anti-war movement posted on www.workingforchange.com in mid-March, Paul Loeb and Geov Parrish (US peace movement activists who saw the same effect after the first Gulf war) remember the feelings of marginalisation and isolation which affected many, often the prelude to silence.
Since they believe that the movement must prepare itself for the long haul not only to stop this war, but to lay the ground work to prevent it from leading to wars on Iran, North Korea, Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil they pose the question, What made the difference between the people who retreated and those who stayed engaged?
One reason why people are not giving up yet is the sense that the protests have had an enduring impact, even perhaps as Jonathan Freedland argues in this week-ends Guardian on the course of the war thus far: though I doubt if those who demonstrate will be much comforted by a three-day delay of Shock and Awe to appease their sensitivities.
Freedland also suggests by the way, that anti-war clamour at the cowardly reliance on bombing in the Kosovo war in 1999 and in Afghanistan in 2001 may have paved the way to the use of ground troops in the land war currently under way in Iraq. Again, this is hardly what most of the protestors would have wanted. It seems that protest, like war itself, is at best, a pretty blunt instrument.
It is no accident that another openDemocracy discussant of the Politics of Protest, Bigjohn, turns to his mediation skills as a sales negotiator to move beyond the deadlock in that conversation the same skills that have been used to cope with everything from neighbourhood rows to the conflict in the Middle East. At a certain point both war and protest lead only to the same unproductive, uncommunicative stand-off and proliferation of enemy images.
Democracy means complexity
While we welcome Tony Blairs reluctant acknowledgement that his war, has produced deep divisions of opinion in our country, for those of us who care, not just about issues of war and peace, but also about democracy, the question must arise of what now happens to that deep division of opinion. What form or forms should it now take?
As we explore the full implications of this, we should not confine ourselves to re-examining war and protest. What we are really looking at is the whole range of ways in which conflicts are handled in our democracies, and the sense of frustration which more and more of us feel, especially in events of this kind of significance over our lives, with the old methods of representative democracy and its political parties, which leave the professionals [to] handle it.
Perhaps we need to think carefully about people power of all kinds not just about direct action demonstrations, strikes, pickets or symbolic protests, but about juries, the work of non-governmental organisations of every kind, tribal or canteen cultures, and everything dark from lynch-mobs to Big Brother! Dont we need to begin to distinguish and seek out those actions which serve our complex cultures and democracy well, as opposed to those which are unaccountable, adverse in their effects, even dangerous?
For me, the dividing line is something to do with whether an action is able to reveal the complexity and multiple different interests involved in an issue, or if it uses sheer force and the desire not to know to achieve its own goal, regardless of complexity. This is why the use of censorship, propaganda, force, violence all ways of shutting the complexity down is a bottom line issue in any democracy.
So what does lie beyond protest? In a fundamental way any activity which allows people with very different views to listen to each other in a safe space where they may be able to change their minds. This includes new ways for people to relate to their political representatives, such as referenda. But it is not confined to such methods.
At its simplest, we are talking about what Tom Bentley calls the informal spread of relationships, conversations and ideas, adding that, The technology and the organisational structure make it possible, but they are not the democracy. I am not saying that it is easy to do well. Particularly in the all-important encounter between the developing and the developed world Nawal el Saadawis article on the World Social Forum shows very well how it can work, and also what can easily go wrong. But this kind of empowering vulnerability can and does take a myriad of different forms. The list can be greatly extended from all forms of deliberative democracy, to include devolution, community regeneration, multicultural and cross-generational debates and roundtables, many different art forms, not to mention its highest manifestation friendship and love.
Paul Loeb, thinking self-critically about how little so far our marches and rallies have done to connect the tide of new participants to concrete networks that could support their involvement, describes an interesting development in Seattle:
This past December, a Seattle antiwar coalition called SNOW gathered 2,000 people from the city and suburbs at a local high school, and divided them in neighbourhood groups. The resulting 80 groups are now operating on their own with local facilitators and email listservs. Some are conducting vigils and neighbourhood marches, others door-to-door canvassing and handing out yard signs, others peace fairs, petition drives and potlucks. These efforts reach people who would never go near a downtown march Organisers could at least do their best to ensure that no one left a major march without knowing about the key local websites that could allow them to plug in and get connected.
What kind of relationships, conversations and ideas, I wonder, can we come up with in the Politics of Protest debate, to move us beyond protest. Is that where we want to go? Perhaps we think demonstrating that government actions are not in our name is a sufficient challenge in these embattled days or more than enough. But for all of us who have felt that protest was everything from wrong to insufficient it may be time now to start debating our democratic alternatives.
Protest, learning, and explanation
Meanwhile, as an eloquent voice from those who supported war, but who also acknowledges the deep division of opinion in our country, Matthew dAncona issues two challenges on openDemocracy one to his own side, and one to the protestors. Now that the war has begun, he urges, people must be brought to understand better the doctrine of pre-emptive action in all its revolutionary implications. It is up to the leaders of the coalition of the willing to explain, explain and explain again why they are doing what they are doing, and why it is right. Whatever we may think about war first, explain later dAncona, like all thinking advocates of the war, knows that now, more than ever, they must win hearts and minds.
As for the protestors dAncona repeats the old charge: You have to come up with an alternative way of dealing with the new challenges posed by, and implicit in, the 9/11 attacks. What unites the opponents of military action, I am afraid, is their conspicuous failure to do so. I do not believe dAncona can have been reading our Iraq:war or not debate or he would have noticed a great many proposals for alternative ways of doing things most of them to do, broadly speaking, with getting on better with ones neighbours, finding ways of increasing mutual understanding, and trust.
The protestors have learnt some of their own lessons: Erinleonard is not alone in this: The missed opportunity of the international demonstrations is the placards, banners, chants needed to give Saddam and Company the message that we may want peaceful resolution, but we intend to rid the world of them in the process The pity is we forgot to address Saddam Hussein directly.
Martin Shaw wants us to learn many more and urgently. But one of the more remarkable aspects of these openDemocracy debates and I am sure they are not unique in this is the sense people have had that the way they conduct the discussion links directly to their larger concerns about a war. This is LOR to erinleonard:
Look right here on this message board, or several other message boards, and watch the human species form alliances, distort facts, bend truth, and finally make verbal war on other authors. Sadly, even looking for peace most people cant stay sociable. Its the human condition. Now erinleonard, on the positive side, just like you have been doing, we all can make a decision that we should be civil to each other. Listen, and act in the interest of each other. Because until we can do it at the level of one person at a time, there is no way in hell of doing it at the government level. Keep posting erin, you have a clear message.
But it is true, isnt it, that the blunt instrument of protest is better at the negatives than the positives? The deeper problem of course is that the minute you turn away from blunt instruments, you are in the realm of complexity. What is impossible is to build these insights into a clear political programme to take effect in March 2003 one reason why increasingly dramatic deadlines have played such a deadly role in the build-up to this war. Those who urged continuing containment were also urging so much else that there was simply no time to argue the full case, certainly not in any public, meaningful way. So the democratic challenge to explain is not over for any of us. How can it best be met?
