Protesting Smarter, Not Harder

Alright. So the system is broken. Issues that have been piling up the closed door of the democratic system have boiled over. America isn't simply protesting, it's revolting. 

We need to keep the protests going. We need to make meaningful change. 

As Trevor Noah put it, the "social contract" has been broken with society, and the results are protesting, looting and passion in the streets. This is GOOD. We need to keep this going, and we can, now that we have nothing better to do, with the economy at a standstill. 

But we need to make sure that these protests count for something. That we make lasting change to the system, and for that to occur, this protest needs to be different, be more. If we're going to protest for change, we need to make sure that we're doing it right, so that we can take hold of the power that we need to make a lasting difference in this country. Collective protest is the most basic form of democracy, and if we do it right, can become the basis of legitimate government.

HEAVY DISCLAIMER: I am not in the situation on the ground (believe me I would be if I could but I'm not even in the country right now). I haven't experienced everything up front, I've just seen the footage, watched the news keenly and heard the stories from friends. I am just taking what I'm seeing and rationalizing it. 

It's also necessary for me to recognize my position and perspective as a young Cis-white male. The last thing I want to do right now is tell POC what they should be doing, because that is exactly the problem of racism in America. At the same time, I want to do everything I can to be an ally. I can't be there to protest right now, so instead I'm taking my position as a passenger stuck in the back seat to look around and analyze the situation critically so that hopefully we can make the maximum impact. I only say these things because I deeply, deeply care about the issues at hand, and that I want to do everything I can to stand by my brothers and sisters even when I cannot physically do so. Black Lives Matter. Equality matters. Democracy matters. 

I might be wrong in a lot of cases, though I'm doing my best to apply situational logic with the best knowledge I have at the moment, but know that I do it with the best of intentions. Much of this I believe may have already been pointed out by Black Lives Matter and other activists elsewhere on social media, so I want to amplify their message while suggesting ways in which we can make the message even more heard and transformed into real action. 

Members of the police are just as upset about George Floyd and everything leading up to his death as the protesters, and many of them have broken ranks to kneel with protesters. However, they still believe they have justifications to break up the protests and that their authority persists, in: 

1. Protecting people from COVID-19. Stopping people from gathering and spreading the disease to lead to unintended deaths elsewhere. 

2. Protecting property. People's property needs to be respected, especially those of small businesses who don't have the means to recover.

3. Protecting Peace. Making sure nobody gets hurt or caught in the crossfire (I know this is heavily ironic).

4. Protecting Social Order. The police still believe they are protecting a greater social order, and that even though it is flawed, some order is better than no order at all). 

The focus of the protests is to create change. We've questioned authority, and authority has failed to respond. We see this authority as being illegitimate, and so now we need to de-legitimize it, so that we can form a new, better social order that, ideally, through competition with, integration into and/or negotiation with the pre-existing status quo leads to change within (or in extreme cases outside) the system. A social order based in our modern American culture and values, in which every race is treated equally. 

In order to do this we need to first de-legitimize the police's justifications for breaking up the protests. That way, we can protest for longer and our concerns can't be ignored. Protesting disrupts the day to day so that people can't ignore the issues at hand. Then we need to make as clear as possible the things that we stand for, our common values, and the differences between the status quo and the new social order we want to create. Police see protests as a form of anarchy, and that they need to defend order. But if we create an alternative order then we de-legitimize their primal use of force, because any order that has to resort to a use of force is by definition weak and closer to anarchy. 

The police try to dehumanize protesters in the back of their mind to justify committing violence. But by showing them that we are humans, capable of the human qualities of order, communication, and coordination we can deter them. 

1. COVID-19: Show your respect for science and health

A big priority for the police right now is to make sure everyone is following the health guidelines in order to avoid a spike in COVID cases, which is why a lot of policing has happened unprovoked and the curfews have been put in place, as they believe they are justified in doing so. 

First and foremost, we need to show that we respect science, and the common authority of science. This is very much going to shape the form our protesting takes. Wear masks and gloves, ensure people cover up to avoid skin contact, carry hand-sanitizer in order to stay healthy and keep the spread of COVID to a minimum. Ensure people do as much as they can to follow health recommendations as closely as possible. COVID also disproportionately affects communities of color, so doing everything to avoid the spread is in line with the message. 

Additional factors I would consider: Commit to "physical distancing protests", even maintain social 6-feet physical distancing measures, focusing on coverage of an area rather that sticking close together. It's intuitive for people to stick in close groups and want to be as close as possible when showing their unity behind an issue, but it's counter-intuitive when COVID is a major motivator for the police. 

If the police force you to move or cluster up you can point to them breaking social distancing as their own internal disrespect for the law. Distancing might actually help avoid the police from being intimidated, and might make tear gas and other methods use to disperse protesters less effective too. Of course it also makes it harder to stop a police charge, but this leads into my 3rd point later. It also might make it easier to get out of the way of, say, cars charging into crowds (like a couple of cop cars did in NYC, or the truck in Minneapolis). At the same time, covering a large area will spread the police thin too. 

Another idea is to do a car protest. That would also maintain physical distancing and be VERY hard for the police to break up. It would have to be well organized to avoid accidents, and of course POC may not have as ready access to fuel or vehicles (as they disproportionately rely on public transport), however this leads into my 2nd and 4th points. 

2. Property and Small Businesses: Don't loot, help!

Looting, to paraphrase the way Trevor Noah so eloquently put it, is the purest form of demonstrating how the social contract has been broken, to fight back against a system that doesn't respect it by disrespecting the laws of the economy. 

Unfortunately, this does more harm than good. I can't think of how many times I've seen that video of a Black guy crying to Black protesters that they destroyed his business when he, too, was just trying to make it in the system. Looting and vandalizing small businesses, many of whom are minority owned, only hurts the very people you are trying to help, and often hurts valuable allies and make them skeptical of the cause. It doesn't help to destroy the lives of others. 

A common denominator of the pandemic and racial tensions are issues of economics: Small businesses not being able to repair or recover from the pandemic and little federal aid committed to helping them. This is an issue that spans across racial lines (and where there is much support to be garnered) but of course is exacerbated by economic racial inequality. Social media posts have fortunately have started highlighting black businesses in order not only to prevent their destruction and the hands of looters, but to help their businesses. 

This goes for most storefront properties. In the case of the CNN building in Atlanta, I can understand the frustration against the media who demonize and often lead the narratives that harms minorities by reflecting a bad image. I think in many ways it was a good reality check for the people working there, a sort of "oh shit this is real scenario." But demonizing the media is a slippery slope in a country that promotes freedom of speech above all else. If we're going to show that we're better than the police, it's important not only to not demonize media outlets that are factually reporting events and being supportive, but that we actually protect journalists from the same brutality that the police are using on them. For when an authority turns it's weapons on the truth, it beings to lose it's ability to function in reality. 

Fortunately a lot of protesters have gone out of their way to make sure small businesses don't get caught up in the vandalism, but it isn't enough. I understand that, in this economic environment, it might be hard to come by cash, but if you can, then support your local businesses, or at least ask before you vandalize. Empower the people already being hit the most. Maybe if they're already out of business they won't mind you taking whatever is left and using it to protest the government. 

Keep in mind that, inside and outside of the protests, people (especially POC) are struggling to get food, water, basic amenities to keep the protests going because of economic strife, and looting just makes it harder for people to get access to the things they need unless distributed efficiently and to those who need it when they need it. 

Isn't it telling that the whole reason the store manager, also a POC, called the cops on George Floyd in the first place was because he was using a counterfeit $20 bill, at a small business, a local food store? Maybe in better economic conditions the owner would have let Floyd go and taken the loss (because he was able too), or Floyd would have never tried to use a counterfeit bill. It is the most minuscule of crimes, exacerbated by the economic hardship felt by the majority of Americans, though minorities more than others. 

So while protesters, and especially those who have economic security can do what they should to support Black businesses as much as possible with the money that they have, mainstream businesses and larger companies that can take economic losses should do the opposite, and not just to exonerate looters but help get people what they need without having to pay any costs. Target has been a good example, forgiving looters and supporting the cause. But it's important that a system is put in place that ensures everyone gets what they need before they get what they want (the way capitalism is supposed to work). If we're going to create a truly equal society, we need to create an equal economy, starting with an equitable economy. If this won't happen due to malfunctioning democratic legislation (slow and infected with lobbying by corporate interests) then we need to show that it's possible and just do it anyway. 

Remember, at the end of the day, economic equality is not only good for a mainstream business as it allows more people to spend more at their stores and gives people better access to those stores, but showing support for the values of the Black Lives Matter movement and George Floyd protests will make people want to shop more at those stores in the future. In a perfectly competitive market, competitors differentiate themselves by espousing the values that they think will draw in the maximum number of customers. It's a win-win for everyone. 

3. Protecting Peace: Be as peaceful as possible and maintain that peace

This one is heavily ironic, especially as we see more and more police committing unsanctioned, unjustified violence. Representatives pepper-sprayed. Old men with canes knocked to the ground. Bystanders shot in the face. The list grows day by day. America's police, in equipment and training, is excessively militarized, and excessively violent.  We know this. 

Many Black leaders and figures have called for peaceful protests. This is a human struggle, we need to show them that we are human, and appeal to the humanity of everyone involved and not involved. We will not win a struggle against violence by committing violence. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. 

Hard as it is to see right now, policemen and policewomen are humans too. Many of them are questioning if what they are doing is right, and some are turning rank and joining the protests. On the other side they feel like they're being threatened, dehumanized by the protests and fight back because they too feel scared and under attack. This is what leads to so many lapses in their judgement, and to continue to be violent towards them will only fuel those fears. 

The problem is not the human being in front of you; it's what that human being has been taught and armed with. America's militarization of it's police was most likely not a decision made democratically within their policing departments, rather the gear showed up at the door and a system was designed to educate them to be hyper-aggressive and not punish them enough for extrajudicial behavior. It's by no means any kind of excuse for what's been done and who's lost their lives over the years. But being aggressive will only encourage them to be more violent. The target should be the system that educates them and controls them, and making that separation between the human and the system is super important. 

This is a battle of hearts and minds. In their minds, there is a string of justification for their actions saying that they know better than the protesters because they are police officers. They believe they have the authority of knowledge, and their is no sufficient questioning of that internal authority. They believe they are experts in justice. So it's important for us to make them question their own knowledge, sometimes literally, so they can realize why they are wrong. To do that, we have to make them as open-minded as possible. Violence engages people in fight or flight and makes them tunnel vision and deaf. 

For them to engage in critical analysis, their needs to be communications, conversations, along as many avenues of human expression as possible. So it's important that we provoke these conversations one way or another, and the only way to do that is peacefully. Art, music, dancing, avenues of the English language and the human body that we all share, to communicate. 

We need, to take a page out of the Extinction Rebellion protests, to channel that energy and anger into creativity and productivity. Instead of destroying storefronts, we need to build monuments. Instead of spraying cop cars, we need to paint murals on walls. We need to make things that will last. Now more than ever. To take the message and art fleeting from our screens and to manifest them in the world, where they can't be switched off or avoided, deleted or removed, at least easily. Make it so that removing them is a crime into itself. 

I think many if not most of the police officers believe their should be changes to the system. So it's important that we reason with them. Instead of our cries being able to be drowned as background noise, appealing to their humanity, so that they feel guilty when they fail in that duty. 

Finally, violence is not only a method of exclusion, it is the method of exclusion. People trying to remove or destroy something turn to violence in order to suppress what they fear. Peace is inherently inclusive, excluding only those who do not practice it. Therefore, it's important to be open-minded and accept the support from a range of peoples, while being careful to ensure their belief and motivation is genuine. Especially in the case of large organizations and businesses jumping on the support wagon, ensure they are not part of the problem; make sure you vet them thoroughly before accepting their support, or that they know how they can improve to disentangle themselves with institutional racism and help build a new system of institutional racial equity and equality. 

4. Protecting Order: Create better order, not chaos.

Most fundamentally a police officer believes they are protecting order. They identify everything before them as "chaos" and everything behind them as "order," and when protesters are out looting, destroying, and creating justified havoc, it's easy for the police to defend the order that's behind them, even when they know it's wrong, because order of any kind is better than chaos in their mind. 

So, to take a page out of the Hong Kong protesters book, the goal isn't to create anarchy, but to create an alternative social order, one where the values that aren't in the status quo are respected. This acts not only as a demonstration of consolidation and humanity, but a demonstration of the values that we wish to project. 

The protesters did this by organizing themselves coherently via social media. It may surprised you to hear, but Hong Kong only had 4 deaths and 1000 cases of Coronavirus, despite continuing to protest out in the street and having a very high population density. They did this while the government lagged behind on a Coronavirus response and botched it, initially banning essential workers from wearing facemasks. Meanwhile the protesters used apps to locate security cameras and keep track of police movements for locating hand-sanitizing stations and clusters of people. These maps could be updated by users, and so in many ways were democratic in nature in line with the protest's message of pro-democracy. While the government flailed, the citizens showed that they were capable of self-government, of being better, more competent human beings than the official government, and that democracy was a better system than the alternative. 

What we need to do now is the same, to show that we are not only humans, who respect the human qualities of logic, reason, and social coordination, but to show we are capable of creating an order better than the pre-existing one (for that is ultimately the goal, to create (a) better government). 

That means any values that aren't innate and consolidated in each person but will nevertheless aid the cause and it's legitimacy need to be effectively communicated, defended and exemplified. Fortunately many people are turning to Black Lives Matter and listening to the authority of Black People and POC who have been protesting this for years and who understand the intricacies of protesting in order to do it effectively. To be perfectly clear this entire article is informed by POC spreading awareness on social media and speaking up about how we can legitimize these protests. One of the most important things that allies can do is not just share important info and lessons from POC, but to create repositories of info for people to refer to when getting ready to protest or just being educated on the institutional injustices of our modern system. What's important is also to make this information available and accessible as possible too, so by putting it on as many forms of digital and physical media too and sharing it that way. This will not only spread the message as much as possible, but make it hard to avoid and ignore, and make it resilient against bad actors, such as White supremacists and anarchists, to disrupt the lines of communications and prevent people from getting the vital knowledge they need. 

There have also been several cases of fake protesters inciting violence in peaceful protests or escalating the protests, and fortunately people have been smart enough to take the initiative and call out people who are inciting violence and provoking the police, and even in some cases independently stem and even work with the police to stem violence. 

But in other cases it's a domino effect and before you know it one person has gotten a whole group to commit to something. There is a very real possibility of "insurgent" protesters who do what they can to incite violence and undermine the message and values of the mainstream protest. 

Probably the single strongest thing we can do to oppose and undermine the authority of the police is to police ourselves, to demonstrate that we don't need the police to "restore order", and that any attempts from them to do so actually harm it. The irony of the police using tear gas on largely ordered peaceful protests is that it creates chaos and makes it difficult for people to become ordered when their senses are stinging and they can't see. So it's important to use protection, like the COVID protection above, to also avoid the effects of tear gas creating disorder; to oppose and be resilient to the forces corrupting our institutions that try to sow disorder and chaos. 

We need to separate, reign in, or discourage people from being destructive, and instead tell them how or what they can do to protest productively and creatively. Protesters need to come up with a system of internal policing and internal guidelines for everyone to follow, which is why the knowledge distribution systems above need to be resilient and organized. 

It's important to create and defend a social organization in order to:

- Make the message and the values heard

- Protect protesters from police brutality

- Protect protests from insurgency and sabotage

- Protect protesters from COVID-19

- Ensure protesters are supplied with the basic necessities they need to keep going

To make meaningful change and systems of meaningful change

- Help support Black men and women, and organizations that promote racial equality

- Help people, especially POC who suffer disproportionately, from economic woes and COVID-19

- Make the protests sustainable to drive a long term impact

- Help promote businesses that are anti-racist and boycott those who are not

To build a new social order:

- Draft up laws in order to prevent racial inequality and draft up resolutions, amendments and even entirely new constitutions in which racial equality is fundamental 

- Draft up and promote legislation in order to fix democratic exploitations and new systems of democratic oversight

- Create networks and systems by which to educate people on the history of race relations and create a system by which to share, prioritize and defend the truth: bridge knowledge disparities in racial history

- Foster small and new businesses in order to build the barebones of an equitable economy

 

...and much more. 

Restating our values isn't enough if the systems of our everyday life don't change. We have to live by our values and be able to live by our values, and have a system that lives by those values. We start with systems of information, and we work our way out of systems of security and defense of those values. 

By creating an alternative social order and de-legitimizing the social order that the cops seek to defend, by making them question every aspect of it, we can break their ranks, we can separate the good from the bad, and we can convince them to do what they can to fight for change in the system that they are ultimately the controllers of. We can get cops to unionize and unite for changes in the racist system and create a better social order, for everyone. 

Finally, the George Floyd movement is not just about racial equality, though without question, it is the driving force and the priority. But it is about everything that drives racial inequality: economic injustice and inequality (reparations and neoliberal capitalism), education reform (from a Caucasian-centric syllabus), environmental protection (of which POC are disproportionately impacted), the list goes on. Values of other movements, such as the Extinction Rebellion, are interlinked with those of the George Floyd protests and Black Lives Matter movement, and should not only support one another but coordinate with one another, to create a movement and a social order so unprecedentedly strong that the status quo can not be restored or maintained. 

At the end of the day, our common values are stronger than those maintained by the system and endorsed by the current President of the United States. Society makes government, not the other way around. It's up to us now to ensure that those values are secured and defended, so that future generations can have better chances at survival, and to the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

So in summary: 

Follow health guidelines and respect the laws of science and truth: it could save lives.

Be creative, spread the truth as far and wide as many ways possible

Be peaceful, and maintain the peace against those who try to sabotage it

Don't hate, communicate, appeal to common humanity of policemen and women alike

Create a resilient communication and value reinforcement network to form an alternative social order, not chaos 

All in order to de-legitimize the justifications of authority for the police

Give as few justifications as possible for the police to crack down

Most importantly, listen to your Black brothers and sisters. Listen to your fellow Global Citizens asking for your aid. Taking my advice is an option. Taking their advice is a human duty.