Protest Is Not Politics Clarke Denounces Mud-Slinging Rants

Author: Steve Clarke

After reading last week's tirade about energy policy in "Avant-Garde Politics," I was left wondering what about the column was actually "avant-garde" or even "political." By consulting the almighty Oxford English Dictionary, I learned that the "avant-garde" is the forward guard, those few individuals that are supposed to show the rest of us the path to a better tomorrow. Based on this definition, I found it completely impossible to detect anything "avant-garde" in the so-called politics of "Avant-Garde Politics." Instead, what I found when I read "Avant-Garde Politics" was the same brand of youthful protest that has been plastered across this campus in the form of posters that attack American capitalism. These posters bore slogans like "economics is a refuge for the unimaginative and tyrants." The group that distributed the posters is known only by their symbol, which looks like a plus sign with dot over it. This unpronounceable sign left me wondering if the group was formerly known as Prince. However, I have no doubt in my mind that both the column falsely dubbed "Avant-Garde Politics" and the posters across our campus are not examples of true political action on the part of Middlebury students. Instead, what they represent are thoughts expressed through protest that should be expressed through politics.

Protest, which can come in the form of a simple poster or a bold march, is, in any form, a political tool with a limited application. In order to demonstrate its limits I will have to draw on the experience of men more versed in protest than I am. Following the dramatic protests that led to the signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Bayard Rustin, a leader in the civil rights movement, recognized the need for the civil rights movement to move "from protest to politics." It seems that Rustin recognized the same problem that Herbert Storing, a noted political philosopher, defined some years later when writing about Martin Luther King: "civil disobedience is the resort — always a theoretically and practically weak resort — of the subject of the law, exercised because the subject cannot or will not take up the rights and duties of the citizen." In essence, protest is an appeal to those that have political power to change the status quo. It is not, however, an attempt to use political power in order to effect a change in the law. Protest is not politics.

What separates the rhetoric of protest from the rhetoric of politics is that protest does little more than raise awareness about issues. Protest rarely ever provides its target audience with reasoned arguments regarding the issue at hand and it almost never proposes practical solutions. One needs to look no farther than the mindless violence of Seattle's World Trade Organization protests to find proof of this fact. Even our own dear "Avant-Garde Politics" suffers from these same shortcomings. For example, if we are to follow the lead of "Avant-Garde Politics" there are only a few simple things we must do in order to change energy policy in America. We must first "abolish the ridiculous Electoral College" and then "abolish executive privilege" in order to make up for the failures of our "paternalistic" founding fathers who were only "halfhearted on democracy." Though these recommendations have little to do with energy policies, the generalized grievances they relate to, namely Bush's election and Cheney's stonewalling, are the closest thing to evidence that "Avant-Garde Politics" provides its reader. Instead of providing alternative policies for America to pursue, or a wealth of evidence as to why Bush's policy is a failure, "Avant-Garde Politics" merely tries to back up its assertions by taking pot shots at America as a whole.

Though such bold attacks may sound impressive, they do little to actually inform proponents of Bush's policies about why they should think differently. Bush's policies are not merely supported by "big business." The hard working blue collar Americans of both the Teamsters and the United Auto Workers Union are staunch supporters of Bush's energy plan. I doubt any family man in either union would be persuaded to risk his job and support more environmentally conscious legislation if all opponents of Bush's plans can provide are hackneyed attacks on America.

Similarly, what did the group that goes by an unpronounceable symbol hope to accomplish by boldly telling the students of Middlebury that "economics is a refuge for the unimaginative and tyrants"? Though the group's daring disdain for all conventions of grammatical construction impressed me, I had trouble discerning the poster's message. I only became more puzzled when I read the group's banner outside of Proctor that declared, "you are all collateral damage." Perhaps I have simply missed a recent trend in politics, but threatening your target audience is generally not the best way to win them over to your side. Such inflammatory and vaguely threatening rhetoric serves only to alienate people from one's cause and to marginalize it. In the end, I was left thinking that a great new slogan for a poster campaign would be "protest is a refuge for the unimaginative and teenage."

As a card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and as a free speech advocate, I know what it is to pursue a cause that is both righteous and unpopular. As a high school student I campaigned against school dress codes in the wake of Columbine. This was no small task at a time when a students were being accused of being members of satanic cults and were being suspended from schools across the country for wearing everything from Marilyn Manson T-shirts to shirts that said only "vegan." Working as an advocate for free speech in such an environment taught me that no matter how just your cause is, affecting a change in the status quo is difficult. One cannot simply declare that everybody who thinks differently is evil and wrong in his or her thinking. Change can only be brought about if one is able to avoid marginalization, avoid creating alienation and transform a minority viewpoint into a majority viewpoint. This is a tall task that requires one to be more than a mere nattering nabob of negativism content with simple mud slinging. It takes reasoned political debate, one thing I hope to see more of on this campus in the future.