Why Disruptive Protest Makes Sense

On Israel policy, it seems to be working

Image: Pro-Palestinian protest, Los Angeles 11/23.

Last week, pro-Palestinian protestors shut down the Golden Gate Bridge, demanding that the US stop arming Israel. The action caused hours of delays for morning commuters.

Pundits, politicians, and many on social media reacted to the protest with a collective, exasperated “WTF?” NBC political analyst Sahil Kapur summed up the objections succinctly: “Shutting down traffic and disrupting life in one of the most progressive and Gaza-sympathetic cities in the US accomplishes what, exactly, for this movement? What’s the strategy and what’s the goal here?”

I’m not an organizer or an activist; like Kapur I’m a scribbler and pundit who generally expresses my political values by scribbling and punditing, rather than by shutting down bridges. Nonetheless, I don’t think the strategy here is too complicated, if you think about it a little.

So in the piece that follows I’m going to try to answer Kapur’s questions and address some other common misconceptions about direct action and its methods.

Why Protest Local Officials?

City, state, and local governments have approximately zero official legal power to set foreign policy. The Mayor of San Francisco cannot stop weapons shipments to Israel. Why, then, stage a protest in San Francisco irritating the city’s commuters? Why push the Chicago City Council to endorse a ceasefire? Pressuring people who have no power to make statements with no effect seems like the definition of symbolic, useless protest.

The thing is, though, while local officials may have little formal power to affect Israel, they have a lot of informal influence within the party. Members of the Chicago City Council know members of the Illinois US House delegation; they talk to and work with Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth.

Trying to change a policy consensus is difficult in part because no one wants to be the first one to take a controversial position and become the target of all the institutions and advocates who made that position a consensus in the first place. Even when public opinion shifts, politician’s instincts are to keep their heads down and let someone else step outside to see if it’s sunny or raining boulders with “AIPAC” scrawled on the side.

Focusing on local officials in progressive cities is a good way to start to solve the collective action project. If you can get the Mayor of Chicago to call for a ceasefire, that gives some cover for other politicians in Chicago, local and national, to reconsider their positions. Showing strength and getting people on your side is one way in a democracy that you get more people on your side. A ceasefire resolution in Atlanta won’t block aid to Israel in itself. But it can signal to people in the Senate and the House who do have power that they have some leeway to reconsider whether current Israel policy is reasonable, effective, or popular.

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Why Annoy Your Neighbors?

The above explains why you might try to protest local officials and show them that their constituents want them to change direction. But, as Kaupr points out, disruptive tactics, like shutting down traffic, will annoy people rather than persuade them. So what good do they do? And why stage them in progressive bastions where you’re inconveniencing people who are likely to be on your side already?

The key here I think is that protests often aren’t meant to persuade so much as they’re meant to remind people that there is a problem. The protests aren’t trying to get new people on the right side. Rather they’re trying to inspire, nudge, and reactivate people who already mostly agree with them, but may have started focusing on other things.

In the last couple of weeks, for example, news of Gaza has somewhat given way to news about a possible Iran/Israel war. Gazans are still suffering horribly, but you hear about them less. Disruptive protest is dramatic and draws people’s attention, which means it gets on the news. People talk about it and are forced to remember at least briefly that bombs are still falling, and children are still starving to death, in Gaza.

All of which explains why progressive cities are a reasonable target for protest. If protestors are trying to reach people who are already sympathetic, then it makes sense to stage protests in places where people are sympathetic. And if your goal is to reach as many people as possible, it makes sense to protest in places where you have the strength and numbers to (say) disrupt a major bridge, so you can make national news.

Why Not Work in the System?

A lot of people are uncomfortable with direct action and wish that protestors would embrace other democratic tactics—ones that are less disruptive and which don’t involve blocking roads or getting arrested by the cops.

The truth, though, is that activists and organizers never embrace just one tactic, and they almost always work within the system as well as in the streets. Certainly, that’s been the case for the Pro-Palestinian movement since Israel’s invasion of Gaza.

Early on in the conflict, activists and organizers urged people to call their congressmembers and demand a ceasefire. The result was overwhelming; Democratic switchboards were jammed with pro-ceasefire calls 24-7, in an unprecedented onslaught which caught members and Senators completely by surprise.

During the primary season, pro-Palestinian activists again used non-disruptive tactics when they urged voters in Michigan and other key states to cast their ballots for “Uncommitted” rather than for Joe Biden. Primaries are designed to allow voters to air intra-party differences and to push for the party to embrace their preferred policies. As the incumbent president, Biden didn’t have any serious primary challengers, but the Uncommitted campaign has allowed those within the party to demand a change in direction on Israel.

Direct action doesn’t conflict with these tactics; it complements them. Again, protest is often less about persuasion and more about energizing and building the confidence of people who are on your side. If you’re calling your Congressman for the fifth time and getting that answering machine once again, you might feel encouraged if you see reports on protests scrolling down your feed. When you see someone getting arrested in the name of a ceasefire, you may think to yourself, “If that person is doing so much, I can at least go out and vote Uncommitted.”

But does it work?

Direct action and nonconfrontational protest, then, are intertwined; they inspire each other and build on each other. You can’t really judge one apart from the others. To figure out if direct action has been successful, you need to ask whether the ceasefire campaign as a whole has worked.

Israel has not agreed to a permanent ceasefire, so in that sense the activists have been unsuccessful. But the Democratic party has seen a stunning shift in its attitude towards Israel that would have been unimaginable just ten years ago. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a tireless Israel hawk her entire career, joined calls for Biden to condition Israel aid on humanitarian assurances. Centristy Senator and Biden ally Chris Coons has also said he wants to condition aid to Israel. The US allowed a Gaza ceasefire resolution to pass the UN.

Israel has to some degree pushed the US away through its own horrific acts—like its murder of seven humanitarian aid workers at the beginning of April. But every change requires pull as well as push. Activists have managed to organize months of sustained pressure to show politicians that the public supports Gaza, and, more, that substantial numbers of people care about the issue enough to call Congressmembers, to cast votes, and to march in the streets. That’s created a context in which, when Israel thoroughly discredits itself, substantial numbers of Democratic politicians are willing to consider whether we should continue to let them discredit us too.

This isn’t to say that every protest tactics is always justified or helpful. Threatening to murder city council members, for instance, seems pretty obviously counterproductive. Voting third party in the general election is likely to help elect Trump, which I think would harm everyone, including Gazans.

But while you can disagree with given actions or approaches, I think there’s a strong case that disruptive protest has helped to substantially change unquestioning Democratic support for Israel. And that suggests we need more protest, not less.