This originally appeared on my political blog at https://politicalmusingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2020/10/choices-in-democracy-including-inaction.html.
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There is a story about a boy in the Netherlands who put his finger in a leak in a dyke, and thereby prevented a flood. That story has all sorts of lessons in it, but the one I am thinking of is that of taking a small action to prevent something "bad" happening - such as, to choose a range of examples, listening to your doctor on health matters and those urging simple measures to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, acting early to stop despots like hitler coming to power - oh, and voting in elections, which is simple in most situations, but is more complex in the Unexceptional States of America.
I've just - well, last night - watched the Aaron Sorkin movie "The Trial of the Chicago Seven", about a group of eight, initially, seven white and one black (completely unconnected with the protests, incidentally), who were put on trial after the protests outside the 1968 US Democratic Party nomination convention (DNC).
The film necessarily omits a great deal, and I've got some of the missing extra points from John Schultz's books - although I've not read them completely yet (and have resorted to the academic short cut of reading intro and conclusions).
However, there are a number of points that I wish to make - and I wish to be clear I am limiting this discussion to democratic, or reasonably close to democratic, societies. Despotic regimes are a whole different kettle of fish (see this, this, this, and this book for some useful comments about changing those).
(Note:
I may tweak this after I publish it - I often have the habit of
noticing things after I've published that I missed before, even if I
slept on the draft.)
Firstly, the police.
The police were clearly operating under orders, but orders to be violent (and these orders were FAR beyond anything that could be considered reasonable) are not only questionable, but ILLEGAL.
Obeying such illegal orders puts those police into the same category as those Germans who claimed they were obeying (nazi) orders when they committed atrocities.
This is important. Despite the vital necessity of obeying orders in combat, militaries go to considerable
effort these days to emphasise the topic of obeying only lawful orders -
which is why the current investigation of my nation's commandos and SAS
seems to have originated with a whistleblower from inside the military.
It is why, during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, there were incidents where
my nation's pilots refused to carry out attacks as ordered because the
target was, for instance, beside a school. It is why some US personnel
refused duty with those from my nations who were rabid abusers who "saw the line [delimiting acceptable behaviour] and hopped right over it".
Militaries can be slow to learn, but they - in free nations, at any rate - do eventually learn (mostly
- and senior command in my nation's military, as with senior command in
my home state's police, are trying to be inclusive).
I've written elsewhere about problems that contribute to this slavish adherence to orders, even if those orders are illegal (such
as the hardening of attitudes and growing intolerance/cynicism of long
serving police who have been harmed by the trauma they are exposed to,
the flaws in recruiting and enlistment which place THEIR version of ORDER before the law [which is wrong], and the problems of the paramilitary approach to community service).
The consequences of this behaviour by police include them developing a bias towards thinking they are, not so much above, as within a special category of the law.
They're not.
The other major consequence of this includes a loss of community trust in police - or a loss of community trust from sections of the community (e.g., LGBTIQ+ people, members of ethnic, religious and other minorities, and women - and the current revelations of DV within police in my home state were matched more than a decade ago by police in one regional town doing what was effectively rape). Over time, that loss of trust leads to things like the protests since police killed Mr George Floyd.
On that, white people subjecting other people who aren't white (black slaves, blacks and coloured people, Native Americans, Indigenous people in Australia, etc) to murder / lynching / mob ("arbitrary") justice / legally sanctioned murder ("execution") has been happening for a long time - four centuries in the USA, two and a half centuries in my nation, longer when considering Europe's (and I am including the UK in that) imperial behaviour.
In the case of the protests outside the 1968 US DNC, there is a very important fact - shown in the title of Mr Schultz's book about the protests, which is "No One Was Killed: The Democratic National Convention, August 1968" (Mr Schultz's book about the trial is "The Conspiracy Trial of the Chicago Seven"). As Mr Schultz discusses, there were black people killed by the police just before and after the protests, including during the utterly botched "trial", and yet, despite the police being "white faced" with anger and clearly wanting to do more, no (white) protestors - nor any of the innocent bystanders police assaulted - were killed.
The
police at that time were clearly racist, and choosing to interpret
their orders in a way that enabled them to be racist - just as they had
done in previous decades, and just as they have done in subsequent
decades right up to and including NOW. (That includes my nation - see here, here, here, here, here, from two days ago this, and, of course, the nation wide issue of Aboriginal deaths in custody, which culminated in the Royal Commission last century, many of the recommendations of which have not been fully or properly implemented YET.)
That discretionary exercise of power shows that the claims of "just following orders" are lies.
What makes it worse is that, in my state at least, force command is trying to be inclusive and build a force that represents, is responsive to, and polices for, the entire community (e.g., see here), which, again, makes a mockery of the whole "obeying orders" rubbish.
Police engaging in disproportionate violence, bigotry, and abuse of power (including in how they think about themselves) are not protecting nor serving the community, they are not following the lawful orders of police, and they ARE ACTIVELY harming the very people they are meant to be protecting.
Liars - hypocrites! You are unfit to wear the uniform, and are letting down your other colleagues, the majority of police who DO want to be decent people and serve the community.
Now, the protestors.
As already stated, the protestors were - or predominantly were -
white, but not all were young. They had problems with unconscious bias,
including the unearned advantage of the circumstances of their birth.
There was, quite clearly, some mostly good thinking going on in the positions they were advocating - and there was NO doubt that the world needed to change for the better,
but I am left with a sneaking suspicion that a lot of the behaviour
seen in 1968 was more about rebelling against parental and other
authority - along the lines of throwing a tantrum - than a serious effort to achieve change.
In the short term, change requires pressure on those with power: protests that gain enough appropriate (not necessarily favourable) media coverage can do that, which is where exercising the right to public protest comes in to play - and keep in mind that Gene Sharp once listed 198 ways to protest non-violently, so protests are far from being the only way to act.
In the medium term , it takes a combination of political manoeuvring which may or may not involve protests and education of the community.
In the long term (think the two plus millennia campaign against slavery, and the century or so campaign for women's suffrage [voting]), it is all about educating and changing the community.
At all stages, you are after someone's hearts and minds:
- in the short term, what gets the media's hearts and minds is important, but that can be a problem if they take the wrong slant, and thus lose you the political hearts and minds who are the real target -
and if you're going after the media's hearts and minds by means of
aggravating the police, what do you do if the police become excessively
violent, as shown recently? Every death, injury or trauma committed by police must be weighed against both the ongoing deaths, injuries and traumas resulting from not acting against evil, and the possibility that - when the glamour of attention from protest are removed - there may be other, possibly better, ways to act (or to possibly do in conjunction with street protests).
Remember that this is a numbers game. I've had people suggest street marches for very small minorities, and, frankly, it would have looked nonsensical and been utterly ineffective - and those wanting to exhibit their courage by being abused or arrested would probably have been as ignored as the single person wearing a "sandwich board" (this was an interesting example of a supposedly ineffective sandwich board).
Also remember that protests do not always move political hearts and minds - think of Thatcher's hardening of resistance over the coal strikes, for instance.
I think of exactly that when I hear, for instance, young activists proudly advocate for militancy. No, militancy is not a tool for all occasions - there are many tools, and militancy in often in the "likely to cause collateral damage in the broader hearts and minds we're aiming out" tool box. - building
from that ;last point, in the medium term, you're adding in the quest
for the hearts and minds of enough citizens to achieve change - and that
requires a combination of first not driving them away (as Obama supposedly said, DDSS; as Gandhi said, "do you fight to change things, or to punish?"), and then and only then, educating them;
- in
the long term, it is about addressing cycles in society, including how
people raise their children, so you're back to the problem you had right
from the first step: how to reach the heart and mind of someone doing
wrong in a way that will result in them changing - not that will make
you feel better, but that will actually result in change. Street marches
can play an important initial role, but there's going to be more needed
- and they can do harm: in the case of the 1968 protests, they turned
too many voters away from the US Democratic party, and it doesn't matter
who initiated it or mishandled it, the whole situation led to a
damaging outcome.
Read this book, familiarise yourself with Cure Violence, view the other links I've given above, study Paul
K Chappell's work (especially the references to Gandhi), accept responsibility, and think carefully - be clear whose hearts and minds you're after, in what time frame, and exactly how that will achieve change, remembering to see the matter from their viewpoint, not how you think they should see it. (Also
think long term: how do you minimise burn out? How do you replace those
who have become burned out or been diverted by other parts of life,
etc? Four years is a typical time limit on the majority of activists, in
my experience. How do you develop not only the next generation of
activists, but the next generation/refinement of ideas and actions? How
do you adapt to broader changes, and work WITH others?)
Finally,
to think everyone is extroverted / angry enough to want to protest and
be the centre of attention to show the same flawed understanding of
human behaviour that is being shown by those who you are opposing. To expect them to be part of that is to exhibit the behaviour you want to change.
Moving on, the media.
The media were the targets of both the protestors and those in political power - especially as, at that time, the police hadn't realised that they were always being watched (it took the US military in Iraq a while to work that out too - which, in our now far more connected world, was incompetent).
The media, in my opinion, were being manipulated just as they were during the early stages of the war in Vietnam, by many people in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 (except for Knight-Ridder), just as too many have been during the current wave of protests in the USA, just as they have under the apparent leadership of the Murdoch conglomerate here in Australia.
Some weren't and aren't - John Schultz seems to have had a good idea of what was going on at the 1968 US DNC, for instance; The Guardian and The New Daily now are doing a reasonable job here in Australia, and PBS seems to be a good job in the USA.
Those
that were manipulated in 1968, or are being manipulated now, were/are
unprofessional, incompetent, naïve dupes - they were/are NOT
journalists. Some of those people were at an editorial level.
Yes, conveying the news is important - but that is in the context of the purpose of that information, which, in the political arena, is to enable voters to hold their elected representatives to account, not to please moguls nor the politically powerful nor to attract the easily led/misled in order to get clicks.
Forget about Knight-Ridder: there were plenty of people who could see the Iraq War was unjustifiable on the grounds claimed, just as there are plenty of people seeing through the rubbish being pushed now about managing the pandemic. Why not the journos involved?
I suspect the problem comes down to, as with the police, thinking you're separate/special - in this case, because you claim the title "journalist" (I have known a small number of journalists, by the way - some good, some not).
Some people clearly deserve
to wear that title with honour and pride - including those reporting
accurately now, and those who have reported well in the past - or will
in the future, but to parrot government propaganda (some media releases are NOT propaganda) uncritically makes you as much of a dupe as those police following illegal orders.
The media in 1968 who reported on the moments of violence without explaining the context and the lead up were not reporting the news: they were describing sensationalist snapshots and creating a false impression in the minds of their readers/viewers.
They were the other tools used by Daley to destroy the prospects of a Democratic victory in the 1968 US Presidential election.
So, on that . . .
Those in political power.
Mayor Daley was worse than a fool - he cost the US Democratic party that election, he cost the USA part of its soul - and the chance of having a leader who, since the 1940s,
had been arguing for civil rights, and he cost the world the chance of
having a decent human being leading one of the world's most powerful
nations. (Mind you, the USA and the world lost a lot more when Robert Kennedy was murdered
during that election [I find "assassinated" a bit of a weak word,
incidentally, for the taking of a human life - it suggests that the
political aspects have a valid role, and they don't].)
Would the Vietnam War have continued? Probably.
Would the Vietnam War have escalated? I doubt it, given Humphrey's less racist and more progressive history (Wikipedia describes him as "an early sceptic" about that conflict, until Johnson bullied him into toeing the party line), but the US military was itching - and had been, all the way through - for a million troops on the ground in Vietnam.
Would
a peace or at least an end to the Vietnam War have been found under
Humphrey? Maybe, if it didn't escalate, but there was a lot of bad
advice floating round. Humphrey's behaviour in the Senate after he lost
the presidential campaign suggests an end may have been found.
But what WOULD have happened would have been better civil rights in the USA (this
reports "Post election polls showed that Humphrey lost the white vote
with 38%, nine points behind Nixon, but won the nonwhite vote solidly,
85% to 12%") - and how would that have changed that nation and its influence in the world in the decades since?
Daley
has to be listed prominently in the annals of those who have created
and then used fear of disorder for political purposes - him, hitler,
Nixon, and the USA's 45th "president", although how well that will work
for the latter is still up for debate.
Which leads us to . . .
The voters.
This is where I circle back to the story I started this post with - the boy with his finger in the dyke.
The popular vote in the USA in 1968 was close - 43.42% to 42.72%, despite the landslide in the USA's unbelievable and undemocratic "electoral college" system (I've written a little about that "system" here). The choices facing voters in the USA were:
- an out and out white supremacist running in the US south (with a military VP candidate who wanted to bomb North Vietnam);
- a beat up about law and order (thanks, ironically, to Daley), lies about Vietnam (and there was Nixon's sabotage of peace talks), and a commitment to stop socially progressive moves;
- someone with a long and active history of being social progressive, and hints of being anti-war; and
- to be an arrogant, patronising and patriarchal IPOC
by cynically, hypocritically and stupidly "thinking" participating was
beneath you, was beneath contempt, or was meaningless, by choosing not
to vote.
Voters in the USA can choose to vote or not, and then they have to choose who to vote for.
While I've often thought voters (and I favour lowering the voting age, incidentally) should have a "none of the above" option, I've also often speculated that those who don't vote may be giving up any moral right to comment on politics (there are exceptions - for instance, Derryn Hinch used to not vote [but would happily and pay the fine] so that he could preserve his political neutrality as a journalist).
The biggest problem, however, particularly for the USA, is voter cynicism.
In my opinion, cynical voters as bad as cynical police - the cynical voters are just in a different situation, one that means the damage they do is slower to be seen, but neither actually really understands reality, let alone how to be a decent, responsible adult.
Cynical voters are the people who ignore the small leak in the dyke, or possibly even make a cynical remark along the lines of "well, what do you expect", and walk off to complain vociferously to their equally cynical friends.
Those voters are part of the group of voters whose attention is being sought - and extreme measures are sometimes needed to batter down their cynicism, or, in the case of other voters, their complacency, their refusal to see, their habitual and unthinking blind loyalty, their other faults.
The blasted theatre of politics is necessary to quite an extent because of voter inattention - or indifference.
And the thing is, the fact that some voters can see through all this - including voters in the USA in 1968, and some voters in Australia in 2019, means it is possible for other voters to be more aware and thus more effective.
As a general example of what can be achieved, voters can look at their streets, realise claims of widespread disorder do not match reality, and ignore propaganda saying otherwise.
When people are taught to defend themselves against misleading information on social media, a fair chunk of that is being taught to invest a modicum of effort into thinking, instead of reacting out of a habit (and cynicism is a habit).
Voters can do better; voters must do better - for themselves, for the sake of anyone they care about, for the sake of their nation, and for the sake of the world and the future.
Don't allow yourself to be duped by being cynical, by being uncritical, or by being habitual / blindly loyal.
One final category: justice
How could someone like Justice Julius Hoffman be allowed to act as a judge?
Yes, it is vital to the independence of judiciary that they largely be protected against criticism, which could be political, but they have to be unbiased and objective - and actually reasonably in tune with the times. A few decades ago I wrote directly to a judge who had criticised cross dresser during sentencing to criticise that aspect of the court case - I didn't criticise the decision of the conduct of the case (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here - all of which means one must be careful, respectful, and reasonable), only specifically the judge's claim that his views represented society, which they didn't.
I got a non-reply, one which simply confirmed how small his social circle evidently was, and left me briefly
thinking favourably of a proposal that judges decide guilt/innocence
and juries decide sentences - which would be (a) disastrous, as juries
could be vindictive (legally, "arbitrary" and inconsistent with other sentencing),
and (b) contrary to the whole notion of being tried by one's peers -
although, as the film I watched last night illustrated, that may not
occur anyway.
There is, however, a need for some form of judicial accountability or review. As I write this, I'm aware that one judge has a very high history of decisions being overturned on appeal, but I'm also aware that they are generally older (to the point of risking senility, in some cases, but most seem to have been quite alert and mentally competent until their demise), may have been somewhat cloistered by their involvement in law, and thus may actually be out of touch with community expectations.
The
word "may" is important, as when decisions have been tested by giving
the same evidence to members of the public to see what sentences they
would impose if they knew all the facts of the case, the public has
generally been softer in sentencing than the judges - EXCEPT when it
came to sexual assault, where the sentences imposed - particularly by
women - were far more stringent (and, in my opinion, more appropriate) than those imposed by judges. That means that, despite the risks I listed, on the whole judges do OK.
But there are still problems - and people have to be rich to realistically take matters to appeal.
On this matter, I have no solutions in mind (I've been working on this post for around seven [unpaid] hours, which doesn't help, either).
For your consideration, here are:
- links on judicial independence: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here;
- links of judicial accountability: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
I know what I want to see - an independent and accountable judiciary, with measures that give confidence to the actual community on that: apart from explaining what is there now (and explaining a few other fundamentals while at it), I don't how to achieve it, with regard to the judiciary, although I'm reasonably satisfied most of the time.
