The growth of the student protest movement has sparked a series of debates about strategy and tactics, and those debates have gotten more intense in the wake of the March 4 Day of Action. Activists and their critics have legitimate disagreements about methods and goals, and those disagreements are now being aired in public with growing frequency.
I’m going to be talking a bit about those disagreements soon, but first I want to clear away some of the strawmen that have popped up recently. If there’s going to be a debate, and there should be, let it be in good faith.
I read an essay this morning that suffers from all of the weaknesses that I’ve got in mind. In an opinion piece in the online journal Politics Daily, Muskingum College senior Joshua Chaney argues that March 4 represented a missed opportunity because “participants’ messages were mixed, their disruptions turned away other students and members of the public, and their voices often fell on the wrong ears.” That’s a legitimate argument, but unfortunately Chaney gets the specifics of it completely wrong.
Here are four things to bear in mind when writing, talking, or thinking about contemporary student protest:
1. Mixed messages come with the territory.
Chaney complains of the March 4 protesters’ “lack of a common voice and purpose,” calling for “clearer messaging.” That’s all fine nad dandy, but it avoids the central question: clearer messaging from whom?
The contemporary American student movement isn’t an organization or a political party. Nobody was screening March 4 actions and giving out credentials. There was no seal of approval. This was a grassroots event. Nobody had the power to impose a common agenda on the events, because the events weren’t coordinated or conceived by a central body. Anybody could mount an action on March 4, and just about everybody did. That’s how social movements roll.
“Student activists are now taking divergent paths in determining what steps are next,” Chaney says. Well, of course they are. They weren’t all on one path to begin with. That diversity is a reflection of the vigor and vitality of the movement.
2. A rally and a lobby day are two different things.
Chaney quotes a Berkeley first-year as saying that students should be talking to legislators in Sacramento rather than “waving [their] hands” at a campus protest. I’m a big fan of lobbying. Huge fan. But I also recognize that state legislators read the papers and watch television, and I’m having a hard time remembering the last time that a sit-down with an assemblymember’s staff made the evening news or attracted the attention of a student on her way to class.
Mass action gets noticed, and getting noticed is part of getting results.
It’s also important to note that many protesters last Thursday weren’t particularly interested in swaying legislators. Some were working to reform campus-specific policies. Some were looking to build student power in their institutions. Some, for that matter, were trying to bring on the revolution and overthrow capitalism entirely.
Before you tell people that protesting won’t get them what they want, make sure you know what they want.
3. The disruptions of March 4 were actually really mild.
Chaney opens with a vivid account of the campus climate of the late 1960s. Eight bombings in a year at Berkeley. A riot that sent nearly fifty cops to the hospital. Hundreds of weapons confiscated from student protesters.
This “style of protest,” he says, “was alive in various forms” on March 4.
Really? Come on.
There were more than a hundred actions on March 4, and Chaney finds evidence of disruptive activity at just four of them. At Davis and in the Bay area, students blocked traffic, or tried to. At Santa Cruz, students barred cars from campus. And at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, fifteen activists were arrested “for obstructing justice and disorderly conduct.” That’s it. That’s all he’s got.
In colonial days, armed students regularly burned buildings and terrorized professors. In the early years of the American republic universities often had to be shut down because student unrest threatened life and property. Campus riots hospitalized untold numbers of activists, police, and bystanders in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Student violence didn’t begin with the sixties — it’s been a recurring theme of campus life for hundreds of years.
But there was virtually no student violence last Thursday. Throughout the country, even on campuses where activists had clashed with police in the recent past, activists conducted themselves with care and restraint. I am aware of only two serious injuries on the day — a student who was hit by a car that was running the blockade at UC Santa Cruz, and a high schooler who fell off the highway overpass in Oakland. That’s all.
If you’re going to criticize the student activists of March 4 as being out of control, then no grassroots movement will ever meet your standards for restraint and decorum.
4. Mass action works.
The student protests of the 1960s that Chaney decries provided the impetus for profound changes in the American university, and in society more broadly. In the late sixties and early seventies students across the country achieved huge victories in their efforts to secure a real role in campus governance. They forced the creation of ethnic and gender studies departments on hundreds of campuses. They ended the draft. With the adoption of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1971, they even gained the right to vote. They didn’t win everything they were fighting for, but they won a hell of a lot.
Was it rioting and bombing that won those victories? Mostly it wasn’t. The vast majority of student agitation then, as now, was peaceful and disciplined. But that movement, far messier and far rowdier than today’s, transformed the country.
5 comments
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March 10, 2010 at 3:12 pm
dettman
Great. Correct on all counts. Most critiques are either entirely ahistorical or make unfavorable comparisons between present-day activism and mythologized versions of the Free Speech and Civil Rights movements. Also, don’t forget the specter of the “professional protestor” a.k.a. “outside agitator” that the media likes to blame everything on.
March 11, 2010 at 4:09 pm
Richard Estes
Excellent post, one that I used as a springboard to further analysis over at my blog, American Leftist.
March 12, 2010 at 4:53 pm
James Logan
I’ve taken a liking to this site, as I feel it gives me a connection to future generations. With that in mind(and keeping in mind I don’t always follow up on responses but will do better about that, I have a few questions:
1) Mixed messages come with the territory.
The writer states that they weren’t of all one voice in the first place…and that’s what confuses me. Sure, students are affected differently by budget cuts…I assume that’s because different programs get cut, affecting students. My problem is, wasn’t this movement all about the budget cuts that are affecting all sorts of programs and classes? If I’ve got that wrong, please correct me.
If I’m right, then, it seems your forgetting the message: Cutting education is hurting students(and from my viewpoint, the future of the nation). Its an important message. If the problem is education cuts, you have your banner to fly…now, you have to find a direction for the force. Protesting IS part of that. However, its not the only part, and in my estimation not the most important either.
2) A rally and a lobby are two different things.
Yes they are two different things…but lobby gets you closer to my point: Interaction with the legislators who are cutting the budgets in the first place. Closer, but not quite there…yet.
The next quote is close to my experience with a local school board:
“I’m having a hard time remembering the last time that a sit-down with an assembly member’s staff made the evening news or attracted the attention of a student on her way to class. Mass action gets noticed, and getting noticed is part of getting results.”
I’ve experienced a hybrid of the two sentences: student/parent ‘rally’ in support of teachers fired 1 day before tenure. No changes were made based on that rally. We did get noticed, with no results…
Now what you are doing IS good; you have the attention of the nation, even if peripherally. However, there is yet another step needed…(which’ll be my conclusion)
“It’s also important to note that many protesters last Thursday weren’t particularly interested in swaying legislators. Some were working to reform campus-specific policies. Some were looking to build student power in their institutions. Some, for that matter, were trying to bring on the revolution and overthrow capitalism entirely.
Before you tell people that protesting won’t get them what they want, make sure you know what they want.”
This is probably where the perception comes from that there are groups moving in different directions. Not that they shouldn’t move to seek there own interests are addressed, but, its still important to recognize that they are all under the same banner: Cut education results in gut education.
If all ‘groups’ only focus on their issues, you lose the steam. United we stand, divided we fall. You can still petition those administration officials on campus…but the overall goal is to resolve the critical funding that seems to have put the educational system in the state it is at this moment.
3) The disruptions of March 4 were actually really mild.
I agree, as I hadn’t seen many reports about related violence, but honestly I wasn’t really looking either.
In essence, I think this is a red-herring. You have engaged the enemy, educational cuts, some what blindly; it in turn was not expecting you to step up to the plate…of COURSE they’ll focus on violent incidence…it sells TV spots, and it puts your cause in a negative light. I don’t think there is anything to worry about…however, having students dress up black clad, with bandana’s over their faces…well, lets just say that isn’t going to endear you to the audience I really think you should be playing to.
4) Mass action works.
The truth is, in this instance, it CAN work. The problem? The audience.
My take: The Audience.
The people you should be playing to, or at least be addressing, aren’t just in the administration, but, in political office. They are the ones, reducing taxes, then calling for ‘austerity’ budgets and using that as an excuse to gut education. As far as I’m concerned, this is purely a Conservative Republican/Conservative Democrat ploy. And if I’m right, then you are playing to the wrong crowd. In fact, even if you taylored your message to these politicians, it wouldn’t change things…(honestly, if they think its ok to cut the taxes to cut the budget to cut education, do you really think a protest is going to change their minds?)
The answer is, that right to vote you speak of, is something I’m NOT hearing about being discussed AND November elections are coming. In fact many local elections are already being held…
The mass protest worked because it translated the message to the voting public. I know its a bit simplified, but, really the problem is with elected officials who feel that its ok to cut taxes, but DEMAND that everyone pay their share, as they dip into the city/state coffers for themselves.
Students need to start exercising their voting rights, start paying attention to the issues that are in the elections, make sure their issues are in the elections and vote for the candidates that support those issues…
I’ve been seeing the cycle for YEARS now:
Republicans continue to slash budgets(and conserva/dems), then turn around and use that to justify cuts in education. I’m sorry but that’s how I see it, AND if you don’t agree that’s fine…but if you think that both sides are to blame, you need to go back, do the homework, watch the voting patterns of those in power and start choosing the right candidates.
Whew…(takes a breath).
You guys are our future and we depend on you…I’m just trying to help…
March 12, 2010 at 4:53 pm
James Logan
Apparently, I don’t know the diff between a question and statements…sorry bout that….
March 15, 2010 at 12:07 pm
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