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Small Protests Can Beat the Big Guys
Does the name Helen Steel ring a bell? She handed me a leaflet recently outlining an inspiring community sustainability initiative that she's involved in but I didn't realise who she was until a friend said "Remember McLibel? That's Helen." She was one of the two London anarchists who stood up in court to McDonald's, the world's mighty burger chain, inflicting the biggest moral and public relations defeat this global corporation has ever suffered.
Small, discreet, quite unobstrusive behind a heavy fringe, there's no self-promotion from Helen. She is just one of those citizens who, in a quietly determined way, refuses to bow the knee to powerful interests, or give up trying to stop something she sees as morally wrong.
I thought of Helen last week, looking at pictures of six Greenpeace climate-change campaigners as they emerged from court, cleared of causing criminal damage at the coal-fired Kingsnorth power station. The six - Huw Williams, Kevin Drake, Ben Stewart, Tim Hewke, Will Rose and Emily Hall - admitted trying to shut down the station by occupying the smokestack and painting "Gordon" on its lofty, landmark chimney, but defended themselves by saying that they were trying to prevent climate change causing greater damage to property around the world. They cited alarming facts, such as the small matter that Kingsnorth emits the same amount of carbon dioxide as the 30 least polluting countries in the world combined. The jury accepted their arguments as British juries often do. In recent years, miscellaneous court cases involving GM crops, nuclear power, chemical and arms companies have collapsed after protesters argued they had followed their consciences and tried to prevent a greater crime.
Such verdicts are anathema to corporations and government, but they suggest that the public at large has some sneaking admiration for people who take direct action, on the face of it cocking a snoot at the law, to draw attention to injustice or resist policies and decisions imposed from above that are out of kilter with public opinion. Such civil disobedience has a noble pedigree, from the CND protesters in the 1960s who took to canoes on the Holy Loch to the women's peace camp at Greenham Common in the 1980s through to Swampy's road protests of the 1990s and, more recently, the carnival revellers who occupied the site proposed for the third runway at Heathrow.
However much we are in sympathy with the cause, relatively few of us feel passionate enough or have the nerve to take on the likes of McDonald's or even a relative tiddler like E.on, the owner of Kingsnorth. Just supposing you were physically fit enough to scale a power station chimney stack, wouldn't you be daunted by the prospect of a night in the nick, a trial up against the best barristers that money can buy, or the very real threat of losing your job? Most seasoned campaigners, trade unionists, professional activists employed by NGOs, veterans of conference motions, council votes, demonstrations, petitions, rallies, vigils and all, baulk at putting themselves so much on the line, no matter how much they believe in the issue at stake.
Even the most engaged, active citizens throw in the towel when they have exhausted all lawful, established mechanisms for action. Seasoned campaigners become resigned to defeats, but then you get those surprising people - the retired Quaker accountant at the back row of the meeting, the previously apolitical housewife who has never been involved in any campaign to date - who are just so outraged at a decision or event, that they are prepared to go much further than the usual suspects, even if that means taking wire cutters to an MoD fence, or breaking into a nearby incinerator plant.
People like these are essential to the proper functioning of democracy. Not everyone is so tenacious. After the watershed of the Iraq war, many of us have retreated into defeatism and frustration. We feel alienated from the the ritualistic cut and thrust of party politics, let down by our elected representatives at all levels, local, national, global, so much so that we can't see the point of voting.
Whatever it is that bugs you - the sale of playing fields, dawn raids on asylum seekers, school or post office closures - there's that now pervasive feeling of done deals behind closed doors, the depressing thought that no amount of opposition at a personal or collective level is going to make one blind bit of difference to the outcome.
And this is where those prepared to contemplate direct action - the Helens, Huws, Kevins, Bens, Tims, Wills and Roses of the world - come in. They come up with creative stunts to keep vital issues in the public eye.
While interest groups like fuel protestors well and truly piss everyone off by blocking roads for hours, these activists keep the public on side using short, sweet action that often demonstrates a sense of humour, but is nevertheless as finely targeted as a cruise missile. They act as an important check on obsequious governments prone to rolling for vested interests, be that arms dealers, the global biotech lobby, Big Food or Big Pharma. Call them hotheads, if you like, but heavens, how we need them.
15 Comments so far
Show AllThat's the UK, this is Amerikkka.
Yah, we shoot horses ... and protestors.
"The jury accepted their arguments as British juries often do."
But American juries often don't. In fact, they seem to be completely at the mercy of the prosecution, despite the law, which makes them very independent. Anyone care to tell us why? Are Americans just patsies, or is there a trick in the law putting juries under the control of the court?
(American judges do have extraordinary control of the information placed before the jury, and the lawyers for both sides have far too much control of who goes on the jury. For starters.)
Oregoncharles
In American courts the defendants in cases like these are not allowed to talk about their reasons for committing their actions. So the jury isn't aware of why these brave people do what they do. Fascism is alive and well in our dying empire.
Hoa binh
I've come to believe citizens should demand jury trials rather than plea bargain. Except in florida of course.
The best I ever felt in my life is when I locked down to a saw mill gate in Humboldt county California in 2004. Although we lost many skirmishes and many trees were cut after brave tree sitters were extracted at 200 feet. just this year Pacific Lumber has closed it's doors in Humboldt county due to bankruptcy. A bankruptcy I'd like like to think direct action activists accelerated by costing the company thousands of dollars extra every time they cut an old growth tree.
The author makes a great point here. I find it awkward that people will fly to DC or to a convention to protest whereas they won't hold their representatives and senators accountable at local levels. Find people in your area and district and bring up discussions on the issues and then find ways to confront the house reps and senators as a team. The more people start locally in more districts across the country, the greater the chances are that eventually the corporate/religious/military elites will be forced to spend more money or back off knowing that they have a strong public opposition. And then we can have an truly independent congress that actually takes checks and balances seriously rather than giving the president all his toys.
HOOT OWL: Thank you for that heroism! I love trees! Especially the sacred old growth forests.
OREGON CHARLES: Good points about our legal system.
I subleted a place a few years ago near where I currently reside and the guy never locked his front door. I asked if he ever had any trouble with anyone coming onto his property. He said he did once, and the local sheriff told him to shoot the guy and leave him in the swamp where wild animals would take care of him. That's why I don't generally try to talk to the "representatives" in this part of the (Bible belt) country... Easy Rider could be filmed again today.
Helen and the other UK protestors mentioned here would NEVER get a break in our US newsmedia, they would be "tried" and found guilty in the court of "public opinion" long before they could argue their case.
On top of that, we've had admissions from our "best" US newspapers that they printed Pentagon propaganda, planting stories designed to advance the Iraq invasion. The counter-arguments decrying the invasion were drowned out [oh, maybe a few were thrown in here and there just to make it appear as though a true "debate" was taking place].
We are so massaged by a steady diet of corporate and government controlled propaganda here in the USA that you could never find jury members who would recognize protesting as a righteous activity.
Don't forget, under Bush & Co. and the Patriot Act, protesters are now defined as "terrorists".
And people on the street sneer at you when you try to hand them a leaflet.
If small protests can beat the big guys, it is past time for you to get out and protest our wars of aggression. What has happened to the peace movement? 80% of the people in the United States want the wars to end and our troops to be brought safely home----but both the major political parties are running candidates who want to EXPAND the wars.
Abraham Lincoln was elected when a third political party was formed. A powerful group of people opposed to slavery formed the Republican party and won the Presidential election. An anti war group could do the same!
If we could end the war and redirect those tax funds to our domestic programs our country could be revitalized. Wouldn't you prefer health care for all, good public education through the University level, and the creation of jobs that can't be 'out-sourced' by building a new energy system that will impede the Catastropic Climate Change? Think of what we could do with those trillions of our tax dollars that are now being spent to kill people.
Time to get out there with your cardboard sign that says END THE WARS! Then cast your vote for Nader.
Exactly, Penelope.
The jury aquittals for CD protest participants in the UK and Ireland - the Shannon Ploughshares actions, and this Greenpeace action, have little hope of happening here. The jury selection process in the US is a joke. What can you say about a system where in capital murder cases, only supporters of the death penalty are allowed on the jury!
Similarly, any jury members sympathetic to the activists cause is very unlikely because such protest actions get ignored by the media in the US - how many Americans have even heard of, say, Kathy Kelly or even Daniel Berrigan? Any sympahtetic juror left would likely be, like me, an acquaintnce of the accused activists - an immendaite disqualification!
Then there is the biased, right-wing judge presiding over the whole matter of jury selection.
The British and European community really needs to learn how broken our jury system is!
As for me, if I am selected for a jury in such cases, there is really only one right thing to do - lie! Risking a contempt of court charge is fine if it is in the cause of justice.
Before this completely slips from public consciousness, I'd like to again address the recently ended tree sit at UC Berkeley. At around 640 days it was the longest urban tree-sit in history, until the university came in about a week ago and destroyed the the Memorial grove, that not only was a living monument to WWI veterans, but also was discovered to be a Native American burial ground.
Now there is only desolation, a clearing for a athletic facility that could have been built elsewhere, and probably won't be built at the site anyhow, due to being directly on a fault line.
This was a relatively small protest, at a large school, and not just any school, but Berkeley, a symbol of protest, student activism, and progressive thought stemming from the radical student population that resided there in the 60s. Now, unfortunately, the student population is less inclined to offer any resistance the the big guys, being cowed into a frightful submission by thug-like tactics of a university police cadre. That is, those who care at all, as maybe one in one hundred offer even the most basic vocal support.
Just so my point may be clear, this is Berkeley California. These are our best and brightest, and they are cut off from any felt experience of the world they live in, and by and large do not have the entheogenic awareness the students of the 60s had, forever imprisoning them in world of bogus materialist ideologies, where green open spaces are being paved over in the name of cultural progress.
This is not an affirmation of doom, but a wake-up call to those who think that things are going swell on the frontlines of this battle; that more support needs to be given to help these causes (including bail funds) and a better realization that an emergence of a new psychedelic culture is the best medicine for cultural sleepwalkers.
"a better realization that an emergence of a new psychedelic culture is the best medicine for cultural sleepwalkers."
Sorry but I have to disagree with that statement, when I was in Humboldt doing radical environmental direct action I think one of the things that slowed us down the most was all the pot smoking.
IMO what we need is a clear minded secular hard left that is willing to do the hard work of large scale strategizing building a large and diverse populist movement and putting our physical bodies on the line to stop social injustice, war mongering, and environmental destruction. The more drugged out, zombied, and lost in soft focus "spiritual" mumbo jumbo we are the more likely we are to lose. :( Remember the old IWW which was IMO the last American leftist movement to successfully challenge and overcome malignant corporatism was exactly that secular, clear minded and hard headed. That doesn't mean BTW that you can't be joyful or sing songs, but it does IMO mean being very vigilant about self indulgent traps for the mind if we actually want to win against the corporate globalists.
Unfortunately, to protest you need to be slightly outside of the mainstream. More people would protest if they didn't fear a criminal record which relates directly to their employability. There is a cost to protesting and it is the dismissal of conscientious citizens from "regular" society by tagging them with a criminal record. Mainstream America does not understand conscientious objection, but it does understand the seeming import of somebody who is arrested for disorderly conduct, information gleaned from their background check. Sorry, Mr. _____, we're going to have to pass you up for this job.... Those who break this lock can make a great difference in the world.
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