Sunday news: out of character edition

There's been much to report on lately, and I'll freely confess to being largely absent.  This, in part, has been due to not really feeling the need to add to the din lately, and also due to my being in the thick of things.  I'll have a few reflections on those things later.  Meanwhile, a few snippets of interest.

• I rarely find myself in agreement with Our Lord and Savior the Kristof, but in this case, I agree that you must go see the film Budrus, about the nonviolent struggle against the boundary fence in a small Palestinian village.  I have faith that a nationwide nonviolent movement is possible in Palestine (and don't necessarily think it means lining up all the women).  And, I had the pleasure of seeing this film at the Capitol a few weeks ago, followed by a panel featuring Ayad Morrar and Reps. Keith Ellison and Brian Baird.  See the film when it's in your town.  You will be moved.
• A Kansas City barber (nice town, btw) sums up Obama's image:  "That man has a hell of a workload, and Bush left a hell of a mess. I like what he's doing. But I can't feel it." 
• Maybe it's summer fluff, but I still suspect that Sonia Sotomayor will be my favorite justice.
• In spite of all the myriad issues that people have on their minds, I'm increasingly convinced the DC mayor's race is going to come down to education.  Here's the WaPo's take on Gray's plan.  I generally support the age 4-24 approach to education that Gray backs, but share concerns over how to pay for it.
• And while we're at it, what's the role of literature in the fight for justice?  One opinion on To Kill a Mockingbird.

Finally, I want to plug two events this week at the DC Council (Wilson Building, 1350 Pennsylvania Avenue NW):

• Monday, 4pm, room 500:  Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary hearing on ICE's Secure Communities Program.  The Council has already unanimously blocked MPD's planned participation through emergency legislation.  Come here advocates speak about why that rejection should become permanent.  DC would be the first jurisdiction to reject participating in the program, which requires mandatory immigration checks.  More details are here.
• Wednesday, 2pm, room 123:  Committee on Aging and Community Affairs roundtable on DC's recent LGBT health report, which notably failed to include information on transgender folks in the District.  My fellow members of the DC Trans Coalition raised a stink over this last week, and a hearing was scheduled 48 hours later.  How's that's for effective advocacy?  Details are here. 

I almost maybe sort of agree with Dan Choi

I was reading this interview with Dan Choi about his recent escapades in bondage...  er, civil disobedience, and I find myself unsure what to make of it.  Of course, the denial of his basic rights after being arrested is regrettable, but given DC's issues with these kinds of things, sadly isn't surprising.  But DADT is just not an issue I've ever been terribly jazzed about.  On the one hand, it's a blatant employment discrimination issue, and it needs to be remedied.  On the other hand, such a remedy would expand the reach of a bloated and corrupted military system that is used to pad the wallets of lawmakers and corporate executives while being simultaneously targeted against groups of largely defenseless and largely innocent people in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.  Identifying the lesser of those two evils is thus pretty tricky for a relatively pacifistic individual like me.  Thus I wish Choi success in his chosen struggle, while also hoping that the organization in which he rightfully should included is put out of business over time. 

That aside, he's quite right in pointing out how severely out of touch the uber-wealthy homonormative drones at the HRC are.  As I've ranted on too many occasions to link to, many of the mainline national LGBT organizations are doing diddly squat for poor folks, people of color, youth, trans folks,  small town/rural folks, queer people of faith, and on and on and on, and I'm glad someone with Choi's visibility is now making that point (and vainly hope that many both within and outside our community will listen to him there).  I also agree with Pam Spaulding and others that queer politicos should stop equating Democrats with allies, especially given their stunning accomplishments on our issues.  And I certainly have no issue with the use of nonviolent protest to make the case for justice.  

I guess my concern with Choi's actions boils down to two things:

1. What's the grand strategy for equality here?  What battles do Choi and his new organization hope to fight, and when, and in what order?  Nonviolent resistance is a powerful tool, but it's not especially effective if not driven by a coherent strategy with articulated goals.  Yes, having Kathy Griffin headline a rally is a pretty stupid thing.  But so is going to get arrested as a one-off event.  The goal of both events seems more like grabbing media spotlights and donations more than changing anything. 
2. Using nonviolence/civil disobedience to advocate for the right to serve in an organization that is inherently violent seems to require some mental and moral leaps that I don't know that I can make, as evidenced above.  I believe that as activists, we must walk firmly on the side of justice.  Yet the military (whether it does so willingly or not) actively perpetuates injustice both at home and abroad.  At home, it recruits from poor and downtrodden communities and runs these recruits through a few wars before letting them out with the scholarship money they joined to get (yes, that's a huge generalization).  In the field, situations like Abu Ghraib aside, we have to remember that modern warfare results in civilians making up roughly 90% of total casualties.  Prior to the 20th century, that proportion was reversed.  Using civil disobedience to prop up that kind of injustice seems to belittle the sanctity of nonviolent resistance.  

This little mental exercise you've just sat through hasn't really clarified much for me, so I doubt it has for anyone else.  It's just something I'm paying attention to, and it makes me uneasy.  I think I'll just continue to sit quietly on the sidelines of the DADT debate, and focus on some of the other social justice issues we're facing that aren't quite so morally muddled. 

As the world falls down and goes boom

This article in today's Post poses the question of whether or not Americans today (particularly the young folk) are apathetic, or just making use of new tactics to express discontent with the seemingly perpetually declining state of our Union. There are a few hypothoses here:

1. Americans protested like all hell in the 1960s because the sick combination of a military draft for a pointless war and blatant, sickening racial discrimination brought things to a boiling point. Draft them, and they will protest.
   
2. Anti-establishment rhetoric has been mainstreamed, and thus no longer motivates people.
3. Burning down several cities in 1968 seemed only to usher in roughly 40 years or so of rule by people who almost wholly disagreed with those who carried torches, making violent protest seem pointless.
4. Americans are increasingly politically active, it's just harder to get a real grip on the level of online and other, less traditional forms of expressing discontent.
   

Oddly, the first theory was raised in a conversation I had last week, and while there is merit to it, I think that given the unlikelihood of a draft coming anytime soon, we can't expect that motivator. The other three points seem basically true, but note that I added the word "violent" under proposition 3. No, violent protest didn't work. In fact, I (and others) would go so far as to posit that it was the turn to violence that killed the mass appeal of "bring 'em onto the streets" organizing.

Thus I have a few questions for viewers like you:

• Is all this online/door-to-door activism a good representation of using different forms of non-violent strategy? If so, are organizers intentionally trying to act non-violently, or are they merely using convenient tools that happen to not be violent?
• The year 1968 gets bounced around a lot for obvious reasons, but is it the wrong example? Isn't, say, 1963 a much better year to demonstrate non-violent protest?
• Given the two questions above, if we are not seeing people try to intentionally be non-violent, and we are simultaneously holding up the wrong example of what protest looks like, how do we (the peace movement, educators, whatever you think you are) build cognizance around non-violent ways to challenge our exceptionally trying times?

Looks like this turned out more intellectual than I originally anticipated, but I welcome your feedback.