{"id":22415,"date":"2020-02-21T14:23:44","date_gmt":"2020-02-21T19:23:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=22415"},"modified":"2020-02-21T14:26:15","modified_gmt":"2020-02-21T19:26:15","slug":"practical-lessons-from-classic-cases-of-civil-disobedience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=22415","title":{"rendered":"practical lessons from classic cases of civil disobedience"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I have been teaching two classic examples of civil disobedience or satyagraha<\/em>\u2014Gandhi\u2019s Salt March and the Montgomery Bus Boycott\u2014to very smart and committed undergraduates. The readings are listed below. As I reflect on our discussions, I\u2019m thinking about two lessons that may not be widely understood today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, the objective<\/em> is not the same as the target<\/em>. Your objective might be to dismantle white supremacy, but that is not a \u201ctarget\u201c because you can\u2019t directly affect it, especially if you are a group of Black citizens of Montgomery, AL in 1955. The bus company is<\/em> a target because 75% of its riders are African Americans, and you can bankrupt it by boycotting it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bus company was not the worst offender against racial equity, even among local institutions. For example, the city\u2019s chief law enforcement officer was a member of the White Citizens Council, which made the police a worse problem than the bus company. But the bus company was a better target because Black people had more leverage over it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pitfall is to choose the targets that you can affect even though affecting them doesn\u2019t trouble the worst offenders. I think a lot of left activism in the US since 2000 has targeted city governments and universities, leaving Wall Street unaffected. That is because left activists know how to target cities and colleges, but not how to target Wall Street. On the other hand, you do need targets that you can actually affect. The Montgomery bus boycott and the British colonial police force in India were good examples. They were vulnerable to direct action, and targeting them caused problems for higher authorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, a social movement<\/em> is not primarily a protest<\/em>. In fact, I am not sure that any act of \u201cprotest\u201d occurred during the whole Montgomery Bus Boycott, if that means a gathering in a public space to convey a message: a march or demonstration. The Great Salt March was (in fact) a march, but that was not what gave it power. Gandhi got many people arrested for making their own salt and thereby flooded British jails; the Montgomery Improvement Association boycotted a bus company. Both were accomplishments of organization more than expression, although both certainly conveyed meaning to their supporters, their targets, and third parties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Montgomery Bus Boycott, in particular, was a matter of getting thousands of Black workers to their jobs every day for many months without using the buses. A protest would have accomplished little. Building an alternative transportation system brought a company to its knees and conveyed a message of power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Readings<\/p>\n\n\n\n