Independence Day 2019: Kids in Cages, Human Rights Abuses, Rebellion, & Change
Independence Day 2019, a good time to take stock of where the opposition to Trump is and what we need to do.
After Trump got elected, almost immediately “The Resistance” warned us that we were going to be subjected to gas-lighting. We were also told that if we didn’t pay attention and document every single lie, our inattention and Trump’s gas-lighting would lead to fascism. All we had to do to stop it was be aware, read “The Resistance” blogs, follow their social media, listen to their podcasts, and buy their books. Consume and follow, and we would save our democracy.
We were also told to participate in mass marches, the bigger the better. The idea was that if we merely showed up to support women and science, we would stop Trump. So, we marched and we marched. We marched in the hundreds of thousands. It felt good to be around so many like-minded people. It was important to see our numbers. A few tried to harness that power into political action and we had some gains. But, we also became addicted to the spectacle. We marched again and again and again.
And as we felt our power, the self-appointed leaders of “The Resistance” painted the portrait of the Genius Trump, the master manipulator, who in league with the Dark Lord Steve Bannon, was playing a game of four-dimensional chess. Watch them carefully, we were warned, otherwise we will be hook-winked into a dictatorship.
Month after month, despite ample evidence that Trump was over his head and Bannon was a fraud, the media monster grew. When Bannon was banished, other evil doers took his place. There was the Bondian black-gloved Steve Mnuchin, the Dark Elf Jeff Sessions, the Jabba-the-Hutt-esque liar Sarah Sanders, and the White House golem Stephen Miller — mediocre functionaries in real life, supervillains in “The Resistance” narrative.
And opposing Trump & his Legion of Doom? Dun-dun-DUHHHHHNNNN! We are “The Resistance”! As long as we followed our leaders and offered dissent in their prescribed ways, we would beat Trump and his evil henchmen, just like in the movies! The fight against Trump had been turned into a Marvel movie as scripted by Aaron Sorkin.
So, we marched, we posted a lot on social media. Most of what we posted was stuff that reinforced the Evil Genius Trump/Bannon/Resistance narrative. We highlighted every lie, as if every lie wasn’t easily identified as a lie or that Trump’s track record as a liar wasn’t already eastablished.
We turned to others to find lies for us and made them superheroes. Caped-crusader Bob Mueller will bring the dirt and, when he does, Trump will fall. And, if that doesn’t work, there will be more investigations and, hopefully, impeachment hearings. Eventually, the weight of all these lies will crush Trump like a bug.
With every highlighted lie, we thought we had a “Gotcha” moment. Our magical thinking was so persistent that John Oliver satirized it with a big red button, which he pounded on every time Trump was caught in a lie. A marching band would start to play and balloons and streamers would fall from the rafters. And then he’d be disappointed that nothing changed. Oliver’s critique was right-on, but it went over too many people’s heads. We had been gas-lit by the people warning us about Trump’s gas-lighting, lead to believe that our attention and a few marches was enough to stop Trump.
We had our moments, but they occurred when we ignored the self-appointed leaders of “The Resistance.” Upon taking office, Trump signed an executive order limiting travel to the United States by foreign nationals from a select group of majority Muslim countries, an order we know as the Muslim Ban. Immediately, a few thousand people took to the airports. Within days, Trump backed down, something he did not do in reaction to the Women’s March or the Science March or the Tax Day March, where hundreds of thousands of people took to the street. So, what made Trump back away after the airport actions and do nothing in response to the marches?
Simple: The airport actions disrupted business as usual. Flights were delayed, people were inconvenienced, and money was lost. We disobeyed, without tipping authorities to what we were going to do. We had no established leader that could call off the protests and sell us out.
Our boldness, unpredictability, and lack of formal leadership confused the powers-that-be. They had no idea what to expect next, but they imagined that it could be worse. More protests meant more travel delays. More delays, more angry travelers. More anger and maybe TSA agents would walk. A lot of money could be lost. And, the total shutdown of the American air travel so early on in his administration would cripple Trump forever.
We put a high price on the Muslim Ban. We threatened chaos and they folded…for a while. Had we stayed “in the streets”, we might have kneecapped the bastard back then before he started to do major damage. But, at the advice of “our leaders” in “The Resistance” we stepped back. We were told that our tactics would turn the country against us. No crime by Trump justified us being “uncivil.” We must let business operate as usual. That was the only acceptable way to make change. Please, pled the pundits, follow the path of Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
Funny, occupying airports and disrupting the dinner of a human rights violator are tactics totally in line with Gandhi and Martin Luther King, the leaders who we are told to emulate. However, when we follow the lead of these great men, we are shamed for being immature, unruly, and uncivil. We are accused of alienating potential allies in the business community or Trump supporters who might change sides if we only mellow out and respect their opinions. God forbid we take some inspiration from the Yellow Vest protesters or confront real Nazis. “Oh my!” if we put a hefty price on Trump’s actions. Someone might get mad at us. We might lose friends.
So, we back down. We conform to writing letters, speaking out, petitioning, and marching in a nice straight line, all good things, all things prescribed by parliamentarians and legislators. This is what respectable people do. As revered as they are today, when they were active, Gandhi or King were anything but respectable.
What did you learn in school about the Indian independence movement? If you were like me, not much, beyond a simplified biography of Mahatma Gandhi. We know Gandhi as the liberator of India, who, though satyagraha, used non-violence to free his people. If we had a good teacher, we also knew of Jawaharlal Nehru. Nehru was a opposition politician who became India’s first Prime Minister. Nehru favored a political solution to British imperial rule, and had to be convinced by Gandhi to support non-violence civil disobedience. These were the men who freed India, a moderate politician and a peace activist, or so we are told.
The reality is that Gandhi’s commitment to non-violence was inconsistent. During WWI, he encouraged Indians to enlist and support the British, hoping that, by fighting on the Brits behalf, he’d establish a quid pro quo and the limeys would look kindly towards Indian nationalism. He also thought that military training might come in useful, if his favored means for making change failed.
Nehru was also inconsistent in his strategy for liberation. Before he hooked up with Gandhi, Nehru wedded himself to a political solution, however, at times, when frustrated with the limits of non-violence, he gravitated towards a more militant stance. Though, ultimately, he supported satyagraha, Nehru never completely bought in.
There are also important figures who, outside of India, have been ignored. These are people who shatter the Gandhi myth and provide alternatives to Nehru’s moderate path. Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was a Hindu cultural and political nationalist who the Brits jailed for his advocacy of violent revolution. A patriot, Savakar was also a fierce critic of Gandhi, so much so that he was arrested for Gandhi’s assassination (later acquitted). Current Indian Prime Minister, the nationalist Narendra Modi looks at Savakar as hero (as does much of India).
There’s Subhas Chandra Bose. Gandhi threw Bose out of the Indian National Congress for his radicalism…and, no doubt, Bose was extreme. During WWII, he advocated an alliance between Indian nationalists and the Axis powers against the British and he took action on that idea. He rived the Indian National Army and fought at the side of the Japanese. He was killed in 1945, supporting the Japanese war effort.
The Indian Uprising of 1857, also called the Sepoy Mutiny, was a violent series of riots and attacks on the British. The Mutiny inspired the Bengal Renaissance, an intellectual, cultural, literary, scientific, and religious movement which, in turn, inspired Indian nationalists. The most prominent person to come out of the Renaissance was Rabindranath Tagore, who was often Gandhi’s adversary. Like many associated with the independence movement, Tagore had no fixed allegiance to non-violence. His poem, Chitto Jetha Bhayshunyo (Where The Mind Is Without Fear), printed below, was used for inspirations by nationalist politicians, pacifists, and militants.
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way;
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee;
Into ever-widening thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom,
My Father, let my country awake.
Four more names, all important, all unknown to most Americans: Bhagat Singh, Bagha Jatin, Sukhdev Thapar, and Shivaram Rajguru were all militant revolutionaries. A socialist and anarchist, Singh assassinated a British police superintendent. He followed that up with an attempt to blow up the Central Legislative Assembly. His execution at age 23 turned him into a martyr, a figure so powerful in death that he was praised by the politician Nehru. A bronze statue of Singh stands outside of the Indian parliament building, next to ones of Gandhi and Bose.
Bagha Jatin created secret societies, armed and trained revolutionaries, created a bomb factory, and blew shit up. He was a constant pain in the Brits’ ass, not so much for his participation in bombings, but for the revolutionary networks he created. He was killed by the British, but the networks he created survived and were essential to the independence struggle.
The Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) was one of the key revolutionary organizations during the struggle. The HSRA was founded by Sukhdev Thapar. Shivaram Rajguru was also a prominent member. Raiguru thought that Gandhi was a fraud and that the way to drive the British out of India was to kill cops, the more the better. Raiguru and Thapar were implicated in the assassination that Singh carried out. All three died on the scaffold together.
India was not freed by Gandhi and nonviolence. India was liberated by Gandhi, Nehru, Savarkar, Bose, Tagore, Singh, Jatin, Thapar, Rajguru, and many others. India was liberated through politics, non-violent civil disobedience, and revolutionary violence. When politics gave way to non-violence and non-violence became the dominant form of resistance to British rule, behind satyagraha there was a cocked fist. The British’s fear of chaos and disorder was intensified by their fear of violence. The British dealt with Gandhi because the alternative was worse. The Britsh Raj numbered only 20,000. The native Indian population was 30,000,000. Even with support of the British army and its allies, a violent India would have been a bloodbath for the British. Nehru needed Gandhi; Gandhi needed Savarkar; Savikar needed Bose, Tagore and Singh, Jatin, Thapar, and Rajguru; just as Savarkar, Bose, Tagore, Singh, Jatin, Thapar, Rajguru needed Nehru and Gandhi.
American history has whitewashed the story of Martin Luther King and non-violence civil disobedience. King’s non-violence was not embraced by all or most African Americans. King was opposed leaders such as Joseph H. Jackson, the president of the National Baptist Convention, who accused King of “substitute[ing] panic and anarchy in the place of law and order.” King was also challenged by Robert F. Williams, who believed that African Americans should arm themselves for self-defense, a suggestion taken up by the Black Panther Party. Stokely Carmichael grew tired of King’s moderation and kickstarted the Black Power Movement. We celebrate Malcolm X for his later, internationalist point of view, however, Malcom’s most provocative and effective message? The ballot or the bullet; Let us use peaceful means for change otherwise we will resort to violence. Jackson needed King, King needed Williams, Williams needed Carmichael, who needed Malcolm X. The Civil Rights Movement and America needed every single one of them (and many others).
Again, I am not advocating that we arm ourselves and start a revolution. That would be short-sighted, suicidal, and lead to our annihilation. Yes, we petition our elected officials, write letters, circulate petitions, vote, testify at meetings, and march. Sometimes those things work by themselves. But when we are dealing with an opponent who does not either does not care and allies who are quick to compromise, we need people on the street who are willing to physically confront corruption and atrocity.
Without the threat of disorder, we will wind up with lice-infested kids in cages, refugees forced to abate their thirst with toilet water, and a father and daughter lying face-down dead in muddy waters. When the government knows we will not push them hard, it ignores refugees dying in the desert from dehydration and feels empowered to jail those who provide these people water. Refugees find sanctuary in a church, after traveling thousands of miles to escape violence, and are fined $500,000 for their “crime.” Why? Because Trump, Miller, and the rest know they can do so without seeing a ripple in the status quo.
One march once or twice a year will not stop this. Voting postpones action until after an election is held. Elected officials left to themselves are prone to compromise. Those representative who are with us feel stranded. We petition the government but when the response is for them to double-down on the horror, then what?
How about we listen to Mario Savio. In Berkeley, on December 2, 1964, Savio gave a speech which energized the Free Speech Movement and galvanized opposition to the War on Southeast Asia. In it he said,
There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part! You can’t even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels … upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!
This is that time. The machine has gone beyond odious. Look at the picture of Valeria and Oscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez dead in a ditch. Hear the head of U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services compare refugees to a “family of rats,” blaming Ramirez for the death of him and his daughter. Are you sick at heart? Do you understand that moderation is not going to stop this?
We must stop business as usual. We must take heed of Mario Savio. Every gate of every detention/concentration camp must be blocked. Not one person should be allowed to enter any DHS, ICE, or Border Patrol office. Every office of every member of congress — ally or opposition — must be occupied. Every damn contractor that is making money off of this atrocity must be shut down.
I realize that some of us can’t physically put our asses on the line. We have families to attend to, we are dealing with illness or physical limitations, or we work two or three jobs and do not have any time. Or, we just don’t have confrontation in us, we are shy when it comes to civil disobedience or pushing the limits of non-violence. That is okay. We do what we can and hopefully that means supporting those on the street both in deed and in word.
However, what we cannot and must not do is condemn those on the streets, especially when these folks are under attack by the police and the right-wing. Taking to the street is not a casual thing. Few who are use the streets to confront power are seeking out violence. They hit the street because “acceptable” avenues to change have stalled. They use the street to bear witness and draw moral and ethical lines, lines that they insist not be crossed. “Treat refugees with decency and dignity. Fail to do that and we will shake these gates. Call them ‘whores’ and make them drink toilet water and we will tear down the gates. Let them die from lack of medical care and we will tear this camp down to the studs. Profit off these atrocities, we will put you out of business and take your ill-gotten gains.” What part of that rant disturbs you? Are you repulsed by treatment of innocent people or activists’ “uncivil” reaction to those crimes?
And, to those on the street: Lay off your potential allies on the inside. There are good people there and you need them. These camps do not close without the help of insiders. These camps do not stay closed without the work of insiders. Zero tolerance does not end without insiders shutting it down. Our system is not designed to take orders from the street. For better or worse, our actions and demands are mediated by others, those who have direct access to power. We have allies on the inside. Use them.
Realize that this is an inside/outside game. We need those on the street to see change in the halls of government; we need those on the inside to turn our dissent into political action. Elected officials such as Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and even Kamala Harris need thousands of us shaking the gates of the Homestead and Rio Grande Valley camps. Our power is their mandate. We are the threat that they can use to leverage change. Without us, when AOC meets Pelosi or Warren and Harris meet Schumer, they have nothing but the moral high ground. Moral high ground doesn’t change things. With us on the street, they have the moral high ground and power. Politics is power. Harness power is how change happens.
Today we celebrate the 4th of July, American Independence Day. On this day in 1776, the founders of this country, drew their final moral and ethical line. They issued the Declaration of Independence. After airing grievances, they “took to the streets”:
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
The founders wrote their letters, went to meetings, and petitioned the government. They even committed acts of civil disobedience. They “punched Nazis.” They were first ignored and then repressed for their dissent, so they named their “Brittish brethren” “Enemies in War.”
Our taking it to the streets is not a declaration of war, but a demand for decency and dignity. Our demands are modest, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” We are fighting to stop an atrocity. We don’t want to work two or three jobs to get by. We don’t want to worry about how we are going to pay to go to the doctor when we are sick. We would like not to die in poverty. We don’t want leaders trucking in racism, sexism, rape, and hate. We want good education and a fair justice system. We’d like to live on a livable planet. That all of these demands are being resisted (by both Republicans and some Democrats) is insane. Embrace the street, occupy the halls of power, use every means necessary. This is how change happens. This is the American way.
Have a happy Independence Day.
This essay originally appeared in the July 4, 2019 issue of Soriano’s Comment №60. Free Subscriptions available here. Become a patron here.
