The liberal news media in the US continually
reports on this or that European country going autocratic or being threatened
by blocs of voters supporting autocracy. More sporadic, though, is their
coverage of political ferment and expressive dissent in the many places in the
world that are already autocratic (albeit with paper democracies). One of those
places is Peru. Reading a
Reuters article last weekend about a particular direct action
organized by a group named “Gen Z,” I was struck again by the chasm between the
language used by the liberal media (and, therefore, in liberal public
discourse) and the reality of events they are either purporting or honestly
trying to describe. To its credit, the Reuters article cites information that
can provide at least some context for interpreting the impoverished language
used for description: that Peru’s president has a 2.5% approval rating and its
congress a 3% approval rating, and that the “protest” as they call it is just
the latest event in an ongoing struggle (not a word that the article
uses) against an oppressive government (and no, they did not of course use the
O-word).
"There's been a low, simmering
level of discontent in Peru and it's been that way for actually quite some
time," said Jo-Marie Burt, a visiting professor at Princeton University's
program in Latin American studies who has researched Peruvian politics for
decades.
The discontent, Burt said, has been
fueled by corruption scandals, economic insecurity, rising crime and anger over a lack of
accountability over dozens of protesters who
were killed by security forces when Boluarte assumed power in late 2022 after former
President Pedro Castillo was removed from office and
arrested. [quotes from the
Reuters article]
Searching on “protests” in Peru, I found reports
from other news organizations on a massive transportation workers strike,
including video footage featuring scenes of violence. For me, interpreting such
videos is difficult; my experience of street actions has all been in the US,
where peaceful protest is the rule and most violence is perpetrated by the
police rather than by participants in the action. Visual news media finds
peaceful activity boring and of no visual value, and so they inevitably seek
out scenes that show or even simply imply violence, no matter its relevance or
significance, and duly declare the action to have been a riot or a “violent
protest.” (Anyone remember the Subway sandwich incident that got thrown out of
court?) Riots, in the US, tend to be police rioting, not civilians. The late
anthropologist and veteran political activist David Graeber has an excellent
essay anatomizing the power dynamics of political street action in his
posthumous collection The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World. I
recommend it for anyone interested in reading between the lines of mainstream
media coverage.
So. One of the things bothering me about
the coverage (which in the case of this Reuters article is as “objective” as it
ever gets) is the inadequacy of talking about “protests” when street actions
(what half a century ago were called “demonstrations”) are constant and ongoing
and the political conditions in which they occur are extreme, such as in the
case of Peru. “Protest” is a word that implies weakness and reflects an
attitude that considers it as something like a tantrum. Street action is taken
in order to amplify political speech that is either going unheard or is being
drowned out by money (which according to the US Supreme Court is a form of
protected “speech”). Putting one’s body into the street in the face of possible
state violence requires powerful determination and willingness to risk one’s physical,
social, and economic well-being. (Yeah, there are a few people who love
risk-taking, but it’s not characteristic of most activists.)
“Protest,” to be clear, is a belittling description
for an important form of public speech. But it’s in common parlance, so we tend
to use it without thinking. (As I mentioned above, “demonstration” used to be
common parlance.) Our discourse, I believe, needs to recognize that resistance
against oppressive policies and actions, a form of struggle against the status
quo, is not simply “protest.” Rather, it’s an assertion of public speech that
is not being heard by the people who are running things and so requires
amplification.
So now, to the US. Contrary to the
perceptions of the New Yorker political round table folks who recently
lamented the lack of “protest,” every day there are “protests” all over this
country, a response to the regime that is constant and ongoing. Such
demonstrations are being made all over the US, not just in “blue” cities like
Seattle, Chicago, and NYC. A ferry ride away from Seattle, across the Salish
Sea in rural Kitsap County, for instance, at least three small-town
organizations have had weekly Pro-Palestine demonstrations since January 2024
and other groups have mounted at least three anti-fascist, anti-regime actions
a week for the last several months.
Such public demonstrations of resistance are
necessary because the current regime is forcing deadly, impoverishing, antisocial
policies on us that the majority are seriously, deeply opposed to. Interestingly, mainstream Time magazine offered an alternative to the dismissiveness of
“protest” (and thus makes it headline more powerful): “The Growing Resistance to Mass
Deportation. “Resistance,” yes, says all that “protest” cannot. Sometimes
semantics are more important than we are aware of in the moment of speech.
I’d like to conclude with Nisi Shawl’s
manifesto for resistance, recently posted on Bluesky.
“Strategies
and Qualities of Unstrained Resistance”
by Nisi
Shawl
Transparency - We will be surveilled and
infiltrated. Let them know we know and
that there’s nothing to hide. I realized
this fifty years ago, when I found out the government had a file on me.
Withdrawal - Rather than confrontation: maybe
a general strike or evacuation or self-imposed lockdown is in order.
Fullness - Or maybe the opposite is called
for: peaceful occupation. Thousands of
visitors and tourists.
Art - This has consistently been favored
via divination. Any forays into shared or public space or time should be framed
as art.
Kindness - We need to pay attention to one
another’s needs and do our best to meet them: food, medicines, labor, supplies,
knowledge.
Entanglement - We want to recognize our
kinship with those deployed against us.
We greet their highest selves with our highest selves.
