Zen priest, Peter Coyote, on protest: "I’m watching the Los Angeles reaction to ICE raids with trepidation and regret.
Three years ago I taught a class at Harvard on the “theater of protest”— designed to help people understand why so many protests turn out to be Republican campaign videos working directly against the interests of the original protest.
A protest is an invitation to a better world.
It’s a ceremony.
No one accepts a ceremonial invitation when they’re being screamed at.
More important you have to know who the real audience of the protest is.
The audience is NEVER the police, the politicians, the Board of supervisors, Congress,etc.
The audience is always the American people, who are trying to decide who they can trust; who will not embarrass them.
If you win them, you win power at the box office and power to make positive change.
Everything else is a waste.
There are a few ways to get there:
1. Let women organize the event. They’re more collaborative. They’re more inclusive, and they don’t generally bring the undertones of violence men do.
2 Appoint monitors, give them yellow, vests and whistles. At the first sign of violence, they blow the whistles and the real protester sit down.
Let the police take out their aggression on the anarchists and the provocateurs trying to discredit the movement.
3. Dress like you’re going to church. It’s hard to be painted as a hoodlum when you’re dressed in clean, presentable clothes.
They don’t have to be fancy they just signal the respect for the occasion that you want to transmit to the audience.
4. Make your protest silent. Demonstrate your discipline to the American people. Let signs do the talking.
5. Go home at night. In the dark, you can’t tell the cops from the killers. Come back at dawn fresh and rested.
I have great fear that Trump’s staging with the National Guard and maybe the Marines is designed to clash with anarchists who are playing into his hands and offering him the opportunity to declare an insurrection.
It’s such a waste and it’s only because we haven’t thought things through strategically.
Nothing I thought of is particularly original.
It was all learned by watching the early civil rights protests in the 50s and 60s.
And it was the discipline and courage of African-Americans that drew such a clear line in the American sand that people were forced to take sides and that produced the civil rights act.
The American people are watching and once again if we behave in ways that can be misinterpreted, we’ll see this explained to the public in Republican campaign videos benefiting the very people who started this.
Wake up.
Vent at home.
In public practice discipline and self control.
It takes much more courage."
Zen teacher and author/narrator with Ken Burns
Note: Carry an American flag. As the administration creates a fake emergency to justify a state crackdown, it's important to honor the values and vision of democracy for which we're advocating.
When the Enquirer came for pics back in 2017, I smiled a big toothy grin and held a big flag as it felt so empowering and good to stand with my adult daughter, pastors, Franciscans, nuns, kids, parents, grandparents and some women from our women's groups for the values we tried to pass on.
After the protest, we sang and marched to a church where we heard poignant witness of immigrants trying to build a better life for their families against insurmountable odds.
Many Marines, National Guardsmen and vets are over on Threads and Substack expressinging their disagreement over being used by this lawless administration.
Peace, santi and shalom to all. ☮️
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Peter Birkenhead
I’ve always liked Peter Coyote, but wow that post of his that’s going around is so wrongheaded.
A protest is not an “invitation to a better world.” A protest is a disruption of the status quo. An attention-grabbing blast of sight and sound meant to be unavoidable. An insistence.
Coyote says, “No one accepts a ceremonial invitation when they’re being screamed at.” True enough. Nobody wants the enemy at their ceremony. Or their achool, or their workplace.
Nobody wants ICE at their Quinceanera, or naturalization ceremony. That’s the whole fucking point. The screams of protestors are the opposite of an invitation. They are a demand that the enemy leave town.
Dr. King’s Birmingham Campaign was a means of gumming up the works, of illegally disrupting lunch counters, businesses, churches and libraries with sit ins intended to overwhelm local jails. The march from Selma to Montgomery purposefully blocked traffic, to draw the attention of both law enforcement and a national television audience.
It was a wrench in the machinery, meant to stop its terrible work. To stop segregation, stop discrimination, stop police brutality, stop murder. It was meant to save lives.
ACT-UP was similary focused on purposeful confrontation to save lives. It was guided by a one-line statement of principle: “Direct action to end the Aids crisis.” The organization was unafraid of alienating institutions of power, or offending the sensibilities of genteel liberals. It led a movement that was, by necessity, as in-your-face and immediate as it could be. ACT-UP isn’t remembered today for polite invitations to ceremonies, but for screaming “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it!” It is remembered for its insistence.
There will be a time — maybe — for invitations and ceremonies. Peter Coyote describes a vision of a better world, and I’m all for working towards realizing that vision. But the point of the protests happening in Los Angeles and across the country is not to make peace or forge unity with our enemies as a means of finding Utopia. The point of the protests is to save people’s lives.
Right now.
