The “practice” of dissent - the craft of challenging authority

By now, you know that the Ontario Government has decided (Bill 57) to dismantle the Environmental Commissioner’s Office (ECO) and disperse parts of it to the Provincial Auditor and other parts to the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks.

I am not going to get into lengthy arguments for preserving the independent and free-standing ECO. I have posted enough news stories on my Linkedin page to cover the issues. Suffice it to say that given the importance of mitigating and adaptation to climate change, dismantling the ECO and blunting its efforts to “nudge” government action is not wise. 

Dismantling the ECO is just the tip of the iceberg

As a facilitator and stakeholder engagement practitioner, I have often been retained by a government ministry to deal with a short-coming or policy gap uncovered by the ECO. The struggle of environmental organizations to position environmental policy issues on the political radar has been a long and challenging activity. I fear that the efforts of the U.S. Administration to dispense and reverse environmental protections will migrate across the 59th parallel and seep into Ontario’s political agenda. The Republican/Trumpian priority on enabling development in national parks, opening up protected areas to oil exploration, removing environmental scientists from policy development entities and the denial of climate change are indications of a deep-seated philosophical reversal about the importance of the environment. I fear that the Ontario government’s decision about the ECO is just the tip of this populist/right-wing iceberg.

Other than signing petitions, what can I do?

I have already endorsed CELA’s petition and used my Linkedin page to promote the petition. But will that make a difference. As one of my colleagues noted in an e-mail, “is it all over but the crying?” 

So, I set forth on a journey through the literature and media articles, to explore, what one author called, the “practice” of dissent - the craft of challenging authority. I found intriguing articles with titles like:

• “Is There Any Point to Protesting? We turn out in the streets and nothing seems to happen. Maybe we’re doing it wrong.” - The New Yorker, 2017;
• “198 Methods of Nonviolent Action”, The Albert Einstein Institution, The Politics of Nonviolent Action, by Gene Sharp.
• “From Protests Past, Lessons in What Works”, The New York Times, 2018

What I found was a rich trove of information that broadened my perceptions of the “practice” of dissent..

A study of 2,500 protest events 

In my search for types and examples of social action and protest, I found an amazing study by Thomas N. Ratliff and Lori L. Hall(2014) entitled “Practicing the Art of Dissent: Toward a Typology of Protest Activity in the United States “. 

• “by drawing on a sample of nearly 2,500 protest events occurring in the United States reported in the Los Angeles Times (LAT) and New York Times (NYT) from 2006 to 2009, we examine activities performed by protesters in terms of the ‘‘practice’’ of dissent—the craft of challenging authority in different spheres of the lifeworld.”

Some obvious, some far fetched

The following tables list, in raw form, the types of social actions/protests the authors included in their study. Although their choice of words to describe some of the activities forced me to grab for my dictionary, their list is an useful “cheater sheet” in itself.

They classified the 2,500 into 6 categories 

They identified 6 categories of protest activities with frequency distributions for each category. Although several of their “labels” for the categories were not intuitive, most of their categories were self-explanatory.

1. Literal Symbolic,Aesthetic, and Sensory (61% of the events)

• ...protest uses art and artistic practice (i.e., paintings, street theater, artistic displays, images, etc.) to challenge authority

2. Movement in Space (9% of the events)

• ... protest marches, parades, walk in a procession from point A to point B (often to and/or from symbolic or politically important places) 

3. Solemnity and the Sacred (11% of the events)

• ... Vigils, prayer, rallies in format of religious service, candlelighting, laying wreaths, moments of silence, and dedications. etc.

4. Civil Disobedience (7% of the events)

• ...sit-ins, blockades, occupations, bannering, ‘‘camping”, etc. Civil disobedience includes any activity by a protester which involves willfully defying a law or demand made by authorities

5. Institutional and Conventional (10% of the events)

• ... press conferences, lawsuits, lobbying, etc.

6. Collective Violence and Threats (2% of the events)

• ... collective violence such as pushing, shoving, hitting, punching, damaging property, throwing objects, verbal threats, etc

I used their 6 categories (and supplemented these with 3 additional categories) as the skeleton for describing each and included examples that I found in various articles.

Category 1 - Literal Symbolic, Aesthetic, and Sensory (61% of the events)

This category provided the first surprise - I had never thought of “protests” as an artistic endeavour. The authors’ premise is that social protest is an “art”:

• “...protest uses art and artistic practice (i.e., paintings, street theater, artistic displays, images, etc.) to challenge authority; and protest is an ‘‘art form’’ in the sense that the practice of protest is a skillful, strategic performance exhibiting sensory techniques that evoke and channel emotions for social and political change.”

This category includes a wide variety of artistic displays, paintings, artistic posters/banners, street theatre, dancing, musical performances, speechmaking, chanting, displays of portraits, displays of flags and symbolic colors, wearing of symbols, etc. 

• “One of the most frequent activities at protest events is the use of signs or placards with slogans or phrases expressing claims, goals, grievances, or solutions for certain social problems.”
• “Verbal activities involve chanting; speechmaking; yelling or shouting; public and collective discussions; recitation; loud noisemaking; canvassing for votes, signatures, money, or opinions; describing the project or goals of a claims making group; recruitment of the public through ‘‘short talk;’’ and debating. 
• “... chanting is one of the most frequent activities at protests, where protesters will repeat a phrase or slogan in a more or less organized, collective fashion”.

1.1 Pink Pussyhats, knitted by each individual women, symbolized their protest against Donald Trump

The New York Times described the scale of the The Women’s March on Washington on January 2017 as “larger than the inauguration the day before. People marched in more than 600 locations around the world, on every continent, even Antarctica. Even the most conservative estimate — 3.3 million marchers in the United States — would make it the largest protest in the nation’s history”. 

Although the Women’s Marches would fit under Category 2 (Movement in space), the unique feature was that many of the participants wore (knitted by each individual themselves) what became the de-facto symbol of feminism in 2017, the pink pussyhat. The pussyhat was an artistic expression of their collective and visible protest of Trump and his outrageous “grab ‘em by the .... Photograph from Shutterstock.

1.2 Protesters use singing to express their protest to pro-coal presentation

There have been numerous examples of protests where the marchers sing songs to amplify their dissent - “We Shall Overcome” (Pete Seager), Give Peace a Chance (The Plastic Ono Bend) and The Times They Are a Changin’ (Bob Dylan).

However, in this case, protesters broke out in song, in the middle of a UN meeting, in Bonn, Germany, to protest the White House and coal industry representatives’ presentation regarding the continued use of coal. Imagine the dilemma the security people faced with the disruption of the meeting being cause by a group of non-violent protesters who are just singing their opposition. Photograph from BBC article in 2017.

1.3 Four story tall sculptural whale, made of 5 tons of plastic

This is an example of an artistic object created and permanently placed as a protest against the use of plastic in society - especially its damaging effects in our oceans. Unlike one-time protest marches, this “monument” was designed as a permanent feature on the Bruges Canal in Belgium.

Studiokca, a brooklyn-based architecture and design firm, created this colossal whale as part of the 2018 Bruges triennial to protest the 150 million tons of plastic waste in the oceans. Studiokca, chose a whale, breaching from the water, to create the first ‘skyscraper of the sea’ to show the scope and scale of the problem, as well as emphasize the necessity for government, individual and collective action.

This 5 ton whale demonstrated that a small group of artists can create a “protest monument” without the need for a major mobilization of the community for a march, parade or sit-in. All it takes is the motivation and creativity of a small group of individuals with the capacity to create something for the urban space.

Category 2 - Movement in Space (9% of the events)

This category of protests includes the traditional marches, parades, picket lines, etc. Surprisingly, this category only accounted for 9% of the 2500 events. The photograph is from The Atlantic article “ How Mueller Could Defend the Russia Investigation From Interference”, Nov. 2018

The New Yorker, in its coverage after the Mid-term Election, noted that only 2 of 7 climate change measures on the ballot passed. These climate change proposals were the subject of numerous marches and street protests, all of which were accompanied with the requisite signs and banners. Photo from the New Yorker Nov. article “ Efforts to fight climate change had a tough election day”.

“We are living through a golden age of protest”

These are the classic forms of protest we associate with dissent. The Guardian in a 2018 article entitled “We are living through a golden age of protest” noted:

• “We are in an extraordinary era of protest. Over the course of the first 15 months of the 45th presidency, more people have joined demonstrations than at any other time in American history... The overall turnout for marches, rallies, vigils and other protests since the 2017 presidential inauguration falls somewhere between 10 and 15 million. (Not all of these events have been anti-Trump, but almost 90% have.) That is certainly more people in absolute terms than have ever protested before in the US... People have been marching and rallying in huge numbers, but stronger forms of protest, like sit-ins or street blockades, have been quite rare. Out of some 13,000 protests tallied by the Crowd Counting Consortium between January 2017 and March 2018, fewer than 200 involved any kind of civil disobedience. Millions of people have protested all around the country, but amid all that activity, there have been only about 3,000 arrests for nonviolent direct action.” 

Grabbed the viewer’s attention for short, one-time hit

The problem is that once the march is over and the media return to their offices to report on/broadcast their coverage of the assembly, the 24-hour news cycle moves on -while the sanitary crews move in to clean -up the debris left over from 10,000 people marching from point A to point B (usually some government building).

“The main goal of demonstration is to make people in power uncomfortable.”

In her book “Direct Action: Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism”, journalist L.A. Kauffman argues that “the main goal of demonstration is to make people in power uncomfortable.”

• “There’s not a single consensus on what direct action is. I tend to define it as any form of organizing or activism that’s outside the authorized channels of participation in our government... any form of protest, whether it be a simple rally or all the way to a lockdown blockade where people have embedded themselves into lockdown devices and are blocking a bulldozer—I see a huge spectrum covered by direct action”.

Category 3 - Solemnity and the Sacred (11% of the events)

This category was another surprise to me. It includes vigils, candlelight ceremonies, prayer and other religious ceremonies protesting the death of individuals, paying homage at funeral sites. 

I had not thought of vigils and candlelight ceremonies as a form of protest. To my mind, vigils simply represented our religious respect for people randomly killed by some deranged individual. But on further examination, especially when I thought about the vigils for black males shot by police, it became apparent that these vigils were a potentially potent form of protest. 

3.1 Vigil for Thurman Blevins

The photograph below is from the vigil for Thurman Blevins who was shot by police in Minneapolis in summer 2018. His death June 23 would lead to protests across the city as activists decried the killing of yet another black man at the hands of white police officers.

3.2 The Pittsburgh synagogue shooting

The Pittsburgh synagogue shooting was a mass shooting that occurred at Tree of Life – Or L’Simcha Congregation in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on October 27, 2018, while Shabbat morning services were being held. Eleven people were killed and seven were injured. 

This was the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in the United States. The physical memorials to the victims remained in place as an on-going testimonial to their lives and the tragedy. The slaughter and the community’s treatment of the victims and their families calmly, but emphatically, raised the issue of increasing antisemitism in America.

3.3 The école Polytechnique massacre

The mass shooting at the école Polytechnique in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, on December 6, 1989 resulted in 28 people being shot of which 14 women were killed. The shooter, Marc Lepine, claimed that he was “fighting feminism” and calling the women “a bunch of feminists,” before he committed suicide.

 The Canadian women’s movement sees the massacre as a symbol of violence against women. The anniversary of the massacre has been commemorated as the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. Commemorative demonstrations are held across the country each year on December 6 in memory of the slain women and numerous memorials have been built. The photograph of the Minto Park Memorial is from the Wikipedia website.

Vigils and candle light ceremonies are a singularly solemn form of protest 

Funerals, vigils and candle light ceremonies are a dignified form of protest and need to be treated in a respectful manner. They differ from the other categories of dissent and protest in the dignity they convey and the commemoration of the loved ones who died. As the religious and community leaders in Pittsburg reminded the President, the funeral was not an appropriate time or place for his visit.

Category 4 - Civil Disobedience (7% of the events)

This category includes various forms of civil disobedience - sit-ins, blockades, occupying offices of the governing administration ( often university offices), government buildings, public parks and spaces (e.g. Occupy Wall Street camping in a park) and roads, bridges, etc. These occupations are often accompanied by banners that drape the premises and announce the protest.

These protests are magnets for the media given the variety of photographs they generate and their duration - usually lasting several days (unlike the one-day duration of marches and parades). This media coverage is amplified by the visibility and pronouncements of the “authorities’ whose building/premises are occupied/threatened.

4.1 The BBC reported “Extinction Rebellion protest block London bridges”. 

The photo below is from the Nov, 2018 article of the BBC reporting on the blockades of London bridges. Blockades of roads and bridges are a common tactic because of the traffic disruption they cause - again, aerial shots of the traffic congestion provide the media will the attention grabbing photo that attract their audiences.

The Extinction Rebellion is a glaring example of an activist organization in which its members have pledged to be arrested and are prepared to go to prison. XR is described by Wikipedia as an international social movement: 

• “Extinction Rebellion (sometimes shortened as XR) is an international social movement that aims to drive radical change, through nonviolent resistance in order to minimise species extinction and avert climate breakdown....Established in 2018, it is responsible for various acts of civil disobedience that took place in London... Citing inspiration from grassroots movements such as Occupy, Gandhi’s independence movement, the Suffragettes, Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement, Extinction Rebellion intends to rally support worldwide around a common sense of urgency to tackle climate breakdown.”

4.2 Protesters confront/obstruct police over the Munk Debate between Bannon and Frum

The controversial Steve Bannon and his promotion of the populist movements internationally, sparked protests and confrontations with the police in Toronto in 2018. Protesters did not want Bannon to be allowed to speak and participate in the Munk Debate with David Frum. The photographs are from the Munk Debates website and the CBC reports.

“One in five US college students says it’s acceptable to use violence against an “offensive” speaker”.

Street confrontations between students and security forces (including police) are increasingly common protests. The source of the confrontation is the proposed participation of some controversial speaker who the students regard as inappropriate and seek to prevent their appearance. Quartz website posted an article entitled “One in five US college students says it’s acceptable to use violence against an “offensive” speaker”.

• “In the last several months, American universities have been shaken by a flurry of public, and often violent, student protests against controversial speakers coming to campus, from Milo Yiannopoulos to Richard Spencer to Charles Murray, all of whom are recognized as provocative conservatives with contentious opinions. US colleges have long had a liberal bent to them. What is striking, though, is how far students of that majority political view are willing to go nowadays to protect it, especially in the wake of Donald Trump’s election.”

4.3 Dakota Access Pipeline protests

• “The Dakota Access Pipeline protests are grassroots movements that began in early 2016 in reaction to the approved construction of Energy Transfer Partners’ Dakota Access Pipeline in the northern United States. The pipeline was projected to run from the Bakken oil fields in western North Dakota to southern Illinois, crossing beneath the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, as well as under part of Lake Oahe near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. Many in the Standing Rock tribe considered the pipeline and its intended crossing of the Missouri River to constitute a threat to the region’s clean water and to ancient burial grounds. In April 2016, Standing Rock Sioux elder LaDonna Brave Bull Allard established a camp as a center for cultural preservation and spiritual resistance to the pipeline; over the summer the camp grew to thousands of people. The protests drew considerable national and international attention and have been said to be “reshaping the national conversation for any environmental project that would cross the Native American land.” (Wikipedia website)

Photograph is from ABCNews article “At Least 2,000 Veterans Arrive at Standing Rock to Protest Dakota Pipeline”, Dec. 2016.

Category 5 - Institutional and Conventional (10% of the events)

This category includes the typical “conventional” dissent and protest activities - public speeches, letters of opposition or support, declarations by organizations and institutions, signed public statements, deputations, written briefs, position papers, study reports, mass petitions, press conferences, lawsuits, lobbying, etc. 

Unlike the civil disobedience protests, these protests are non-confrontational and nonviolent activities. Generally these institutional and conventional form of dissent and protest are more ‘‘acceptable’’ because they operate, to some degree, within the system. 

5.1 Briefs, position papers and study reports

Written submissions are a major vehicle for communicating protest under our rule of law culture. From the simple brief to a comprehensive position paper to the reported findings of an advocacy group, the basic approach is to marshall one’s concerns about an issue and to describe a preferred option(s). Often, these written submissions are in response to the governing entity’s request for comment about something being proposed.

5.2 Town hall meetings/public forums

Town hall meetings are perhaps the most common form of protest in our Canadian culture of “peace, order and good government (POGG). Although usually convened and moderated by the governing entity, the pressure to convene a town hall meeting comes from the stakeholders who are agitating for some public forum to air and vet their concerns and dissatisfaction. 

This photograph below (from the Nov, 2018, CBC article) illustrates the town hall format. In this instance, the waterfront residents of Pigeon Lake filled the Ennismore Community Center to standing room only to protest the increase in shoreline vegetation caused by wild rice beds, developed and harvested by First Nations. 

The problem with town hall meetings as a form of protest is that they tend to be one-time events that are sometimes conceived by the governing entity as “a therapeutic exercise in vetting the public’s frustration”. Unless the public/stakeholders are the convening authority, their value is questionable.

5.3 Petitions

Petitions to governing entities are a classic example of the “practice” of dissent. We have a long history of using petitions to protest some action by a governing entity - local petitions to prevent some proposed land use, petitions to support an individual or family being deprived of some medical procedure to petitions to alter some provincial legislation or program. 

The use of petitions as a form of social protest has been facilitated by easy-to-use website like Petition Online, Go Petition, Act.ly Twitter Petitions, Online Petition, etc.

The screen shot below uses the petition sponsored by the major environmental groups and signed by over 2000 individuals and organizations that object to Article 15 of Bill 57.

Since governing entities in Canada are under no obligation to do anything about petitions other than acknowledge receipt, the conventional wisdom is that a petition needs one of more of the following features to have an impact on governing entities:

• the number of signatories has to be substantial enough to indicate/imply a majority of the public support the proposition;
• a number of the signatories are considered opinion leaders or “influencers” respected by the governing entity, the public and the media;
• the media reports of the petition are substantive and supportive, especially the editorial coverage.

Interestingly, the European traditions regarding petitions elevates petitions to a higher status:

• “... participatory democracy, of which Switzerland seems the perfect example. There, if you gather sufficient signatures, you can generate a referendum, and if enough people vote for it, why, it passes into law. It’s the nearest we get to the ancient Athenians casting shards to vote.” (“Are online petitions a valid form of protest?”, The Guardian, 2015)

In the UK, petitions to the government receive the following treatment:

• “The Petitions Committee reviews all petitions we publish. They select petitions of interest to find out more about the issues raised. They have the power to press for action from government or Parliament.
• At 10,000 signatures you get a response from the government.
• At 100,000 signatures your petition will be considered for a debate in Parliament.” (https://www.parliament.uk/petitions-committee)

5.4 Unprecedented climate lawsuit by group of young people against US Government

The Washington Post in an Oct 2018 article covered several rallies to support a climate change lawsuit brought by 21 young people (who argue that the failure of government leaders to combat climate change violates their constitutional right to a clean environment) against the federal government in 2015. On Nov. 2, the U.S. Supreme Court refused a federal government request to disallow the lawsuit. (Andy Nelson/AP)

Category 6 - Collective Violence and Threats (2% of the events)

Collective violence such as pushing, shoving, hitting, punching, damaging property, throwing objects, verbal threats, etc., is usually committed by a relative few out of many protesters (even tens of thousands). Rare in occurrence, rarely condoned by the public or onlookers (particularly the media). Usually met with equivalent or overwhelming force in response to authorities. At times in U.S. history lauded as the only way to get results, but little empirical evidence violence succeeds in goal attainment.

6.1 The Ferguson unrest

The following description and photograph is from Wikipedia. The Ferguson unrest, sometimes called the Ferguson Uprising involved protests and riots that began the day after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson on August 9, 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri. ...As the details of the original shooting emerged, police established curfews and deployed riot squads to maintain order. Along with peaceful protests, there was significant looting and violent unrest in the vicinity of the original shooting,as well as across the city.

6.2 Three Dead During Charlottesville White Nationalist Rally 

A Virginia State Police officer in riot gear keeps watch from the top of an armored vehicle after car plowed through a crowd of counter-demonstrators marching through the downtown shopping district August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia. The car plowed through the crowed following the shutdown of the Unite the Right rally by police after white nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the “alt-right” and counter-protesters clashed near Lee Park, where a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee is slated to be removed. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images). Article and photo from Fortune Magazine, 2018.

“An Inconvenient truth” - violence gets governments’ attention

To steal Al Gore’s famous expression, one can argue that the inconvenient truth is that violence works. The use of violence has its advocates in spite of our rejection for this form of protest. Given the rise of populist right-wing movements of people who feel ignored by the left-wing globalists, their use of violence is a guaranteed means of getting government’s attention. They consider the price of being arrested and subjected to incarceration as an acceptable consequence compared to being ignored. Public sentiment will drive the degree to which the protesters are considered righteous and legitimate in their claims of injustice.

The latest French violence by the “gilets jaunes (yellow vests) was described in The New Yorker article entitled “The Yellow Vests and Why There Are So Many Street Protests in France” described the violence in the following manner:

• “...the gilets jaunes, or yellow vests, in France, have been the subject of anxiety, controversy, and, at times, shameless political opportunism on all sides. They are a popular movement of no clear political view or ideology; they take their name from the yellow vests that drivers in France are required to keep in their cars, to be worn in the case of a breakdown. (They can be seen in the dark that way.) Their ostensible ignition point was a rise in fuel taxes, engineered by the government of President Emmanuel Macron, for, as it happens, impeccably green reasons: the plan was to wean France off fossil fuels by making them more expensive, and to encourage the use of renewable sources. This tax hike seemed to the group, which gathered followers mostly through social media, the last insult of metropolitan Paris to rural France, and they began protesting and blockading highways across the country. Last week, the protests reached Paris, where the gilets jaunes—or, by most reports, members of the largely rural group aided by extreme leftists and even more extreme rightists, both prepped for street battle—rioted on the Champs élysées, vandalized the Arc de Triomphe, and broke into stores, creating a crisis of a kind that has brought down or impeded the progress of French governments continuously throughout the postwar era.”

Violence works - “The dynamic of violent street demonstration resulting in government recoil—on Tuesday Macron’s government folded and suspended the fuel-tax hikes”.

When people believe that nonviolent forms of protest will not work, violence is their only recourse. Franz Fanon(author of “The Wretched of the Earth”) is often quoted by proponents of violence as saying “We revolt simply because, for many reasons, we can no longer breathe”.

Compared to the other forms of protest catalogued here, unfortunately, violence appears to be the most effective at getting media and government attention and action -”...Macron’s government folded and suspended the fuel-tax hikes”.

Photograph is from The New Yorker article.

3 Additional categories

As I was working through the categories and examples of various social actions of dissent and protest, it became apparent that several types of social actions were missing or could not be easily included in the author’s 6 categories. I have taken the liberty of adding several categories to supplement the authors’ 6 categories:

Category 7 - Social media platforms and campaigns

Social media platforms have become the new portal/platform for social actions of dissent and protest. 

• “Social media is the collective of online communications channels dedicated to community-based input, interaction, content-sharing and collaboration. Websites and applications dedicated to forums, microblogging, social networking, social bookmarking, social curation, and wikis are among the different types of social media”. (https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/social-media)

Social media platforms have provided the average citizen with a bully pulpit without having to leave their armchair/computer monitor. Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, email, Twitter, etc.—enable anyone with the technology to join an existing “protest’ or launch their own campaign with relative ease.

These social media platforms provide internet vehicle for individuals to engage with like-minded individuals and organizations progressive issues like immigration, income inequality, automation and AI, etc.

The Internet has given rise to what are called “Internet-mediated issue specialists,” which sometimes behave like an interest group, sometimes like a social movement, or sometimes aa a disruptor seeking to advance the cause of the alt-right, white supremacy and populism.

Category 8 - “Ridicule” is the most potent weapon of protest.

Although political satire expressed by political cartoonists and illustrators could be included in Ratiff andd Hall’s Category 1 of artistic forms of protest, I think it merits a separate category because Saul Asinsky (a social activist who worked with and taught community organizations how to challenge City Hall and get improvements in the quality of their lives) had a Rule #5 -“Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon”.

This rule was one of his Rules for Radicals:

1.  “Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.”
2. “Never go outside the expertise of your people.”
3. “Whenever possible go outside the expertise of the enemy.”
4. “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”
5. “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.”
6. “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.”
7. “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.”
8. “Keep the pressure on.”
9. “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.”
10. “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.”
11. “If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside”
12. “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.”
13. “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”

 “Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand” – Mark Twain (“No. 44, the Mysterious Stranger”)

The examples of political cartoons on the following pages are intended to illustrate the incredible ability of cartoon artists to make fun of, humiliate and depict the stupidity and irony of some political actor’s recent speech or actions in one drawing. These are from Politico.co’s weekly cartoon carousel.

Politico.com provides a weekly web page with their selection of the best of the nation’s cartoonists on the week in politics. As their page says “ Every week political cartoonists throughout the country and across the political spectrum apply their ink-stained skills to capture the foibles, memes, hypocrisies and other head-slapping events in the world of politics. The fruits of these labors are hundreds of cartoons that entertain and enrage readers of all political stripes.”

Category 9 - Economic Boycotts

The categories of social protest included so far, have been physical actions (marching, chanting, blockading, breaking things, etc.) by citizens. Boycotts are economic actions by citizens to withhold their purchase of goods and services to get the target to change their behaviour. As such, economic boycotts deserve a separate categorization in this “practice” of dissent.

 Wikipedia defines boycotts as:

• “A boycott is an act of voluntary and intentional abstention from using, buying, or dealing with a person, organization, or country as an expression of protest, usually for moral, social, political, or environmental reasons. The purpose of a boycott is to inflict some economic loss on the target, or to indicate a moral outrage, to try to compel the target to alter an objectionable behavior. Sometimes, a boycott can be a form of consumer activism, sometimes called moral purchasing. When a similar practice is legislated by a national government, it is known as a sanction.”

Category 7 - Social media platforms and campaigns

Typical types of protest include on-line petitions, letters of opposition or support, signed public statements, deputations, posting latest news items, images and videos related to the “cause”.

7.1 Blocking approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline

350.org’s (350.org is building the global grassroots climate movement that can hold our leaders accountable to science and justice.) blocked approval of the Keystone XL project—a $7 billion pipeline that would span nearly 2,000 miles and connect Canada’s oil sands to refineries near Houston, Texas, and the Gulf of Mexico. The effort to stop the pipeline included a civil disobedience campaign during which more than 1,700 activists were arrested in front of the White House, more than 10,000 activists surrounded Supporters sent more than 800,000 email to Senate offices. After years of protests, delays, and deliberations, President Obama rejected the permit to build the pipeline on November 2015.( “Technology and Evolving Models of Activism and Advocacy” by Luis E. Hestres and Jill E. Hopke published in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Climate Science, September, 2017.)

Part of 350.org’s success to date is due to its effective use of online tools to spur offline action, the results of which are documented and then disseminated via other online tools, thus creating a virtuous cycle of online-to-offline to-online-etc. climate activism. Photograph is from https://www.gettyimages.ca/photos/keystone-xl-pipeline-protest.

 7.2 Protesting mandatory vaccinations

One of the most dangerous protest movements, from a public health perspective, has been the growth of people protesting against vaccinations of children for such childhood diseases as chickenpox, measles, mumps, and rubella. In spite of the medical consensus regarding the efficacy of vaccinations, concerns over thimerosal (a mercury containing compound used as a preservative in vaccines) have led to a public “Green Our Vaccines” campaign, a movement to remove “toxins” from vaccines, for fear that these substances lead to autism.

The photograph is a screen shot from the website of the European Forum for Vaccine Vigilance who invites viewers to “Organize a protest against mandatory vaccination and medical tyranny in your country!” 

Category 8 - “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon”.

This category is primarily aimed at political cartoons as a form/type of social protest. 

Although one could include Saturday Night Live skits as an example of using ridicule to poke fun at some political actor’s latest gaff or actions, I have limited this category to just political cartoons. The beauty of these cartoons is that they require no explanation, just an awareness of what’s been happing on the political scene.

An inflatable caricature of Trump (usually known as the Trump Baby) was flown in protest

One of the most unique protests was the Trump Baby balloon with diaper, “small hands” and a cell phone. It was created and used to protest the President’s official visit to the UK in the summer of 2018.

• “One of the organisers, Max Wakefield described the balloon protest as being in response to “the rise of far-right politics that dehumanises people in order to get into power”, and saw it as an attempt to introduce some “good British humour” into the political discourse surrounding Trump’s visit. Wakefield cited the Trump administration’s family separation policy and Trump’s withdrawal of the United States from the Paris climate agreement as examples of the kind of policies which the protest was targeting. Leo Murray, who led the campaign, wrote in its crowdfunding statement.

• [When] Trump visits the UK on Friday the 13th of July this year, we want to make sure he knows that all of Britain is looking down on him and laughing at him. That’s why a group of us have chipped in and raised enough money to have a 6 meter high blimp made by a professional inflatables company, to be flown in the skies over Parliament Square during Trump’s visit.” ( Wikipedia website)

Category 9 - Economic Boycotts

This category was added because, with the advent of social media platforms, it has become a popular form of protest - consumer boycotts of specific companies and their goods and services, rent withholding from landlords, landlords refusal to rent, worker strikes and withholding services, refusal to pay fees, dues, and assessments, boycott of government-supported organizations, etc.

• “A boycott is typically a one-time affair intended to correct an outstanding single wrong. When extended for a long period of time, or as part of an overall program of awareness-raising or reforms to laws or regimes, a boycott is part of moral purchasing, and some prefer those economic or political terms.
• Most organized consumer boycotts today are focused on long-term change of buying habits, and so fit into part of a larger political program, with many techniques that require a longer structural commitment, e.g. reform to commodity markets, or government commitment to moral purchasing, e.g. the longstanding boycott of South African businesses to protest apartheid already alluded to. These stretch the meaning of a “boycott.”
• Boycotts are now much easier to successfully initiate due to the Internet. Examples include the gay and lesbian boycott of advertisers of the “Dr. Laura” talk show, gun owners’ similar boycott of advertisers of Rosie O’Donnell’s talk show and (later) magazine, and gun owners’ boycott of Smith & Wesson following that company’s March 2000 settlement with the Clinton administration. They may be initiated very easily using either Web sites (the Dr. Laura boycott), newsgroups (the Rosie O’Donnell boycotts), or even mailing lists. Internet-initiated boycotts “snowball” very quickly compared to other forms of organization.”

9.1 Public boycott of California grapes to compel growers to provide better pay

In 1965, Cesar Chavez and the National Farm Workers Assn. urged the public to boycott grapes to compel growers to provide better pay and working conditions. The boycott targeted nonunion grape businesses. The National Farm Workers Assn. joined the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to form United Farm Workers and increase attention on their boycott. Millions showed solidarity by not purchasing grapes until the UFW signed its first union contracts.

The following photograph (from aarp.org) shows César Chávez (c) talking with grape pickers about the United Farm Workers union on March 1, 1968

9.2 Boycott of Nike for employing child labour, poverty wages and harsh working conditions

The multi-billion dollar sportswear company Nike admitted yesterday that it “blew it” by employing children in Third World countries. Phtograph from oxfam.or.au and Oxfam’s campaign to get Nike to make changes for workers who make their products but who receive poverty wages and endure harsh working conditions.

“It’s true that the company’s sales fell after activist groups accused the brand of using child labor. “Because they’re dependent on cutting-edge styles, the loss of sales caused immediate, serious harm,” explains Judith Samuelson, executive director of the Aspen Institute’s business and society program.

But while the short-term hit to Nike’s profits was significant, the most impressive long-term impact came from the hit that the company took to its brand. Since the 90s, Nike has worked hard not only to rehabilitate its reputation, but to become a sustainability leader. “Today, Nike is very proactive,” Samuelson says. “They’re aware of the need to be on top of their supply chain.” (“Do boycotts really work?”, The Guardian, Jan, 2015)

9.3 Boycott of Chick-fil-A

Gay-rights supporters called for boycotts after the president of the chicken restaurant chain said he opposed same-sex marriage.

What was interesting and different about the Chick-fil-A case was that there was a countermovement. So that in addition to the support of same-sex marriage, that were calling for a boycott of Chick-fil-A, there were both customers of Chick-fil-A, but also members of the public, politicians and so forth that supported Chick-fil-A. (Supporters of the restaurant chain Chick-fil-A flocking to establishments all across the country for appreciation day,)

The photograph is from National Post artticle “Same-sex marriage foes flock to Chick-fil-A after calls from Santorum, Huckabee - Thousands across the U.S. heeded the call of two former GOP presidential candidates to eat at Chick-fil-A on Wednesday to show support for the chain”, Aug. 2012

Commentary - final thoughts

Having dragged you through the results of my research, I would like to offer the following comments regarding protesting the Provincial government’s decision to dismantle the ECO:

• This issue regarding the disposition of the ECO is as a colleague of mine says “is really inside baseball stuff” and not something that has instant/mega public appeal - compare it to the issues surrounding the legalization of “pot”, or the latest draft pick of the toronto Maple Leafs;
• The Provincial government was elected with a strong majority and as such is relatively immune to public protests. Unless the public protests are substantial, the government is unlikely to suffer any non-confidence votes by the Opposition;
• Once the ECO is dismantled and re-organized under the Provincial Auditor and the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks, the issue disappears from the public and media coverage;
• Apart from the therapeutic value of continuing to send letters of protest (i.e. “What did you do in the vietnam war, Daddy?”), there is little that can be done unless...
• We re-frame and re-package the ECO issue as an urgent climate change issue and translate the focus from a boring bureaucratic organizational perspective to promoting Dianne Saxe as the champion. Dianne was the driving force behind the ECO so we could build a campaign around her, given her credibility and magnetism. If we take the experiences of 350.org into consideration, we need to build a social media campaign that mobilizes and organizes the environmental communities into a coordinated coalition. It means getting serious about making the necessary change happen and devoting the time, energy and resources to a major initiative - not just more letters, e-mails and phone calls to Members of the Provincial Parliament.
• Or we can accept the inevitable demise of the ECO and quitely bemoan among ourselves the injustice of it all :-)

Posted by Robb Ogilvie