On March 8th Dare to Struggle held a protest against Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett speaking in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Our goal in announcing this protest was to disrupt the event and make it so she couldn’t speak, and to organize people to fight against the American nightmare. Amy Coney Barrett has taken away women’s right to abortion in large swathes of the US. Her Supreme Court decisions have led to the death of women across the country, and she shouldn’t get to peddle her book or spew her anti-woman bronze-age worldview in New Mexico or anywhere else.
The protest had a turnout of about 75 people, and the largest organized presence there was Indivisible Santa Fe, a part of the nationwide Indivisible movement. At the protest while we were trying to get people to get loud so we could disrupt things, Indivisible stood dead silent. When we tried to get people to take the street to stop traffic and disrupt business as usual, Indivisible stood dead still. Members didn’t even want to use chalk to write abortion-rights messages on the street. Their immobility and silence deadened the energy of the entire event. After some time they went into the building across the street from Amy Coney Barrett’s lecture to hold their signs from the rooftop, even further from confrontation than before. They were as lively as scarecrows. Why were they so ineffective?
According to Indivisible’s national strategy guide, the US is on the verge of fascist takeover, and one of the lessons from the history of fighting fascism is “Nonviolence is harder for authoritarians to justify suppressing without risking backlash.” All throughout the document are references to “helping mushy Democrats find their spines.”
In this light, Indivisible’s actions make sense. In their view, people shouldn’t be trying to force the oppressors to grant concessions; people should be helping spineless Democrats find their spines. Indivisible thinks that Democrats never codified women’s reproductive rights because Democrats didn’t have spines.They might think that Obama deported more immigrants than than any president in US history because he, Obama, who was the head of the US military, didn’t have a spine. In reality, Democrats don’t give a damn about us, they don’t give a damn about women who have died from losing access to abortion, and they certainly don’t give a damn about immigrants.
Honestly, what is the difference between being deported under Democrat Obama and “fascist” Trump? Between being murdered by cops under a Democrat mayor and a “fascist” mayor? Or between being evicted and made homeless in a Democrat run city or a “fascist” run city? What is the difference between being bombed by a “democratic” USA or a “fascist” USA? People should be organized to fight against the crimes of this system, no matter which party presides over them.
In Indivisible’s view, we have to appeal to the spineless Democrat politicians, so we must be nonviolent. We have to win over the spineless by becoming spineless ourselves. But Democrat politicians aren’t spineless. Democrat politicians, side by side with Republicans, have killed millions of people worldwide, and waged a relentless war on poor people in the US for decades. They aren’t spineless: they’re evil. We shouldn’t be telling people to support and defend a system that makes us choose between two flavors of evil, we should be organizing people to fight it.
People who join and support Indivisible are being mislead, and we can plainly see that at any of the No Kings protests that Indivisible runs. No Kings is designed to be a type of big lawn party and ceremonial walk. Indivisible wants attendees to show each other their signs and listen to lame speeches from killer-cop-defending District Atorneys; walk in a big circle; drive home; post about it; and finally vote for more “mushy Democrats”.
But the point of protesting isn’t to celebrate in a park, or to walk in a circle around some city blocks. The point of protesting certainly isn’t to win over the ruling class. If you want things to change, the point of protesting should be to unite people in fighting against the ruling class and against their oppression. By reinforcing the tired lie that we only have power through official institutions, Indivisible is pulling people out of the struggle for meaningful change. The power of the masses isn’t to pressure spineless politicians into taking us back to a comfortable past. If they can organize themselves, the power of the masses is to push us forward into a better future.
Dare to Struggle 