Protest tactics that don’t work.

The following is a Facebook Post of mine from December 14, 2020. I’m posting it again here with some of the pertinent comments because we need to be able to look back on the protests of the past year and do some truth and reconciliation. I am a big supporter of protests generally, even rowdy ones and direct action. I showed up for some protests this past year. I’ve had a lot of training in grassroots activism and direct action. I’d like our protests to be effective.

Six months ago (six months before last December) if a right wing gun toting Trump supporter had shot a young black male antifa activist, people would have surged the streets in support. Now… nothing…

Why?

Well the authentic rage of the initial George Floyd protests were accepted by a majority according to polling in the beginning. As it went on that has changed dramatically.

In Oly, like PDX, the protests went on night after night. Unlike PDX, there wasn’t federal troops and so the public didn’t understand why. Night marches were an interesting idea, done in the past, usually it is about being rowdy and getting away with it when the police and civilians are in less numbers. Conceivably it’s after work so more can attend. Still, although it seemed exciting for the participants, night marches put a lot of time and energy into an extremely ineffective tactic.

Night marches work best when there are even larger daytime rallies. It’s opportune then because the police have already had a big day. It keeps them on their toes and prevents them from raiding organizers of the big day time events at home. It also brings the pressure up for the power to concede to demands.

But on their own, they bring very little of the benefit while retaining all of the negatives. The main one being that people miss prime time viewership to inspire onlookers and capture earned media. When onlookers and media aren’t there it also makes it more likely for the police or other counter protesters to do bad things and get away with it. It can therefore cause more injuries, arrests, fear, paranoia and fatigue to the protesters while also conveying poor messages to the community.

Then there is vandalism which is also a tactic that when used effectively can grow a movement but can also clearly hurt one. Blatantly breaking windows while not even stealing stuff is a real funny sort of action. Were they trying to break in to hold the space? No. Were they sending a message? Maybe, but no physical message was delivered. So why do it? And that’s the important question, with the answer being as far as I can tell, they misunderstand the point of the tactic.

The same with graffiti. Graffiti can be powerful and inspiring or annoying, needlessly vulgar or just plain stupid. There are actual informal rules that graffiti artists use to maximize the power of their messaging. Things like what buildings are okay to tag, like evil corporate, abandoned buildings or any particular building or place you want to draw attention to. Like your message is enhanced by the location. ACAB scrawled on worker homes did not win support.

If Antifa had stayed home over the past 6 months, they would have more support today is the difficult conclusion I am making. BLM would have more support. White supremacists less. Because bad actions lead to negative results.

Another tactic was targeting city council members homes. It’s actually a legit tactic called bird dogging. It’s when you figure out who the important decision maker is regarding your cause and you learn everything you can about them and basically show up in their lives with your message, trying to get their neighbors, friends, family, religious and community leaders that are important to them to hear and then convey your messaging to them. It’s a little invasive but it’s just good old fashioned social pressure.

Mobbing their house, hitting it with graffiti is absolutely not effective use of this tactic. Since the bird dogging tactic was used poorly it had the opposite effect. City council members were seen as victims and they gained more support to standing against the cause of the activists. This was clear after the first time this happened. That it happened again and again just took it from bad to worse.

Now here is an utterly bizarre one. Dozens of people have been arrested in these protests but there isn’t really any sympathetic stories to share about that to build legal support. It’s like they aren’t even trying. Sure, in the past at some protests arrests are nearly staged events with the police as unwilling participants. Folks saw that as played out and I agree. But if there are arrests, there is absolutely nothing to gain by not trying to paint that into the most powerful story we can.

Then there are the victims of violence. So far two shot by Trump right wingers and I know neither of their names. I’ve heard rumors that more have been beaten up over the months but I haven’t got any examples to point at. This confounds me. I understand that it’s a misguided attempt at protecting their identity from attacks, but it really fails at doing so and hurts their chance at gaining real support while growing the movement.

Another point is that the protests are overwhelmingly reactionary in nature. In strategic terms the only reason to host reactionary actions is to grab attention and push a proactive agenda. To remain listlessly in a constant reactionary state guarantees to lose. Eventually people must seize the initiative to win anything at all.

And that is the final reason why Antifa has lost. They fought for nothing. They had no materialist or advantageous goals that would change for the better those who go without fundamental needs. If it was to spur insurrection it was a limited success that showed what little such outbursts could gain. In fact the gains on a whole were none. The costs on the other hand have been extensive.

And here we are in Oly today waiting for next weekend for another to get shot in a pointless battle. Of course the Trump supporters are misguided on the election fraud and there is reason to stand up for democracy. But the tactics can be better. The tactics MUST be better as well as strategy and vision. I hope some people take some of this to heart.

Follow up comments

From a commenter: It doesn’t seem like they have lost support to me. Maybe they just lost your support. Also are you volunteering yourself to try to lead a “better” more effective protest? I don’t know how that will fly, but good for you for having solutions.

My Response: How do explain that a right wing Trump gun toting moron shoots a black antifa protester and there is no organized response? Considering the reaction of Andre and Bryson being shot had 1200 within 24 hours on the streets?

Commenter: I think it might be 1 covid and 2. The protesters are armed. At least that’s why I stopped showing up.

Me: 99.99% of people are against Nazis. Antifa hasn’t furthered that cause which is as far as it can be. They’ve successfully confused the public in their actions as to who the good guys are. Dressing in black, armed, attacking people, breaking local business windows, arson, intimidation against city council members who are single moms, graffiti on personal property, slashing tires, yelling profanities, threatening journalists, not listening to elders, no clear messaging. This is a look that turns people away.

Over unrelenting months with no gains to show for the effort, people rightly wonder if these folks are indeed the good guys. The other side portrays themselves as peacekeepers, wear safety vest colors, carry US flags, say they support the Constitution, first and second amendment, say they aren’t racist, say they aren’t homophobic, show a mixed cadre. These are labeled the bad guys but after months the people start thinking these folks might not be as bad. This is not hard to understand. I’m not saying covid and weapons don’t have their effect but if we look online we don’t see a petition or a fundraiser to reflect any real support for the victims here. We don’t see resolutions coming from the city either. It should be a no brainer for Renata Rollins to draft a resolution condemning the Trump supporters shooting counter protesters. The city council could pass a law saying that discharging a gun in a political protest regardless of reason has an additional 10 year sentence or something like that. It might make the right wingers think twice.

Me: At this point I’ve been banned from Olympia protest facebook groups. These groups used to have thousands of people and then admins literally deleted people down to hundreds. Anyone who didn’t post got deleted. Then they started kicking people out who challenged any portion of their ideology. It’s a really troubling aspect of these folks. I wouldn’t mind this tendency as much if they delivered the goods. But the fact that they haven’t succeeded even remotely means that they have a model of organizing that is ineffective at achieving goals like social justice. Which seems about the entirety of their value system, a warped perspective on social justice, some of it admirable but most of it missing the point.

Different Commenter: What’s the strategy proposal? Personally I think BLM has been pretty successful at spurring a national ‘leaderless movement’, and their has been considerable # of policy changes nationally to local policing.Is there ways to instigate a ‘leaderless movement’ that has a shared theory of change? Or do social movements need more hierarchical decision making structures? Or both.

Me: Good points all the way down and I’m sure you could answer your own questions, which you have in part, as well as me. Which is also to say the answers are out there. I don’t know if there needs to be some grand theory of change, I’m not trying to say we need to throw the baby out with the bath water. I’d offer the suggestions that the people out there doing it, young people like you and I once were, just need some training.

I’d suggest that the biggest tip right now I could offer is the OODA loop. Which is training I learned from Backbone Campaign which they learned from the airforce for fighter jet training. When in a dogfight you follow the OODA loop, observe orient decide act then you do it again and the point is to do it faster and better than your opponent. So you observe the scene, you orient yourself in the scene, you decide what to do then you act then you observe again the new scene which reflects on the outcome of your actions. If you can do that faster with skilled observations, with proper orientation, competent decision making and strong action than you win.

This is a dynamic action oriented way to engage that allows for best praxis.

I feel one other issue that seems important is that they need to overcome their fear of declaring themselves publicly. Anonymous everything and everyone isn’t cutting it. It gives a false sense of security culture. It inhibits internal accountability. It actually allows for easier infiltration. It inhibits support and good media. It hurts community. The upsides frankly aren’t worthwhile compared to the downsides.

I work under the assumption that everything I do and say is potentially watched. That my ability to be anonymous is little and therefore I say what I say and do what I do realizing there is an audience. I try and do defensible actions and be morally upstanding.

If the movement encouraged people to stand up and be accountable than that would be a stronger movement. It probably means that people also need to stand up in defense of courage and forgiving of mistakes. It also means that people who spread rumors should be called on it as well as other agent like behavior.

Commenter: so continuing a rumor that the black bloc communique on tactics was instigated by a republican student group at at the university of Chicago to militarize street protest, and escalate riot policing is out of bounds?

Me: It’s a rumor but you stated as much and it also isn’t directed at an individual so it’s actually appropriate.

New thoughts.

Rereading my post from 7 months ago I would write it differently today. I wouldn’t be so harsh on Antifa as to say they fought for nothing, that was a lack of editing more than a change of opinion. Also because I was speaking to my friends who don’t need the clarification that antifa means anti-fascist and that is an idea rather than a group and we all should be anti-fascist. Being anti-fascist always seemed to me more about being against the corporate control of our government and the security state. Clearly the protesters were out there driven by passion, the same passion I feel, because another world is possible and it’s absolutely necessary and it needs to not wait. Plus they’re young. I feel like when I was young I had the help of many elders in my community to guide me and I looked to that more but now with social media the way it is that doesn’t seem the same.

How this relates to city council in my mind is that the city council should probably be out there more when there are protests at the council building. Some do show up for protests but if the city council made it a point to speak to protesters in front of city hall then it probably would have saved the windows at least and possibly prevented their homes being targeted which was not their fault but we can be pragmatic and try and get ahead of the violence and destruction. We humanize each other, build dialogue, de-escalate when necessary and use nonviolent communication to help protests maintain their positive powers to effect change.

The city could also organize a citizens committee to handle the majority of crowd control rather than rely on the police. The police are an antagonizing presence unfortunately in these situations. They do display more restraint from what I can tell but we can keep improving it. Sometimes I think about how much money is spent on police overtime to monitor these protests and I feel compelled to believe the city council would do well to figure out cheaper, safer and better responses.

The truth is that I could have been more there to do that as a private citizen as well. I accept that I didn’t do enough to support these causes I believe in, though at points I did try.