To Protest or Not to Protest?

By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!. Posted August 27, 2004.

Amy Goodman: Well, to discuss the issue of to protest or not to protest, we're joined by two veterans of protest. Todd Gitlin, Professor of Journalism and Sociology, Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, and Naomi Klein, award winning journalist and author of "Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate," as well as "No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies." We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Todd Gitlin, let's begin with you. Your thoughts about this next week?

Todd Gitlin: There's an urgent need, given the fact that we're in a national and, as well, global emergency, to defeat George Bush in the practical way that presidents can be defeated in the United States. And that is by doing everything possible to see that he's defeated on November 2. People who feel called upon to protest or to remember that their protest is taking place not on the streets of Manhattan, but it's taking place everywhere television and the internet reach. Nobody is running for president of Manhattan. To be contemptuous about the people's reactions elsewhere is to live in a cocoon of self-congratulation and not to be doing politics but to be doing performance pieces. If people protest, they should do so exactly as Mailer said, in a dignified way, in a way that does not recruit voters for George w. Bush.

Juan Gonzalez: Naomi Klein, your response and your perspective?

Naomi Klein: Well, I certainly agree with Todd that this is an emergency and the headlines that Amy read from Iraq make that very, very clear. Personally, I don't think we have the luxury of waiting until November to oppose the war. We also heard that the protests have nothing to do with the democrats. I would also disagree with that. I think they have a lot to do with the democrats. Precisely because the democrats have really sealed off the possibility of just expressing our opposition to the war by voting. This is not Spain. They are running on a hugely militaristic campaign. They're promising to continue the occupation, even expand the occupation of Iraq. So we need to be in the streets. The other thing I want to take issue with, with Todd, I actually think he's making an unstrategic, unpolitical argument, and that's because there is going to be some disorder in the streets. If it isn't going to be protesters, it's going to be police posing as protesters. We have seen this, we've talked about it on this show, it's happened in Miami and it will happen again. The only way that we can protect ourselves from that is numbers. It's masses of people in the street. I don't believe, with all respect to Professor Gitlin, that the black bloc is his natural constituency. I don't think that they're listening to his advice. I think the people that are listening are actually the liberals who are planning to go out and oppose the use of their city as the backdrop. I'd also like to disagree with Mr. Mailer that the republicans chose New York as a trap. I think they chose New York because they thought they were going to be on a roll. They chose New York because they thought they were going to be able to use the city's grief as a backdrop for their triumph in the war on terror. There's no moment for triumph. The problem is that Kerry is not willing to point that out because his advisers are telling him that he has to look equally tough. Which means we are the only people who can oppose this war on the streets. And that's why we're going to be there. These warnings actually aren't working. There's going to be massive numbers of people on the streets.

Juan Gonzalez: Tom, you have an article in the newest issue of The Nation, "No Bush, No Chicago '68," where you attempt to draw parallels between what happened in Chicago in 1968 and what could possibly happen next week here in New York. Now, I was a member of SDS in 1968, as you were a member of SDS, and I was in Chicago that year and know precisely what happened in terms of how the media turned that against the demonstrators and mobilized the public sentiment for the Republicans. But how do you answer these young people who are fed up and furious with what's going on in Iraq, when they see that a John Kerry doesn't have a much more different position on the situation in Iraq than President Bush? Where they see that both political parties are arguing more about a war that ended 30 years ago than they are talking about the current war that is eating away at the social fabric of our country.

Todd Gitlin: Well, first of all, Juan, let's clarify. The article in The Nation, I'm a co-author of it. The other co-author is John Passacantando, who is the Executive Director of Greenpeace USA. I say that not only to be accurate but also to underscore that the position that we're taking is not that protest is a bad idea. It is that there is an overwhelming imperative, and that imperative is to defeat the administration that stands in the way of any progress. Now, I don't – whether it's on Iraq or on the environment or on any other issue. My position is not that John Kerry is either Jesus Christ or the prophet Mohammad. My position is that John Kerry is the possibility of restarting politics. Right now, we have no possibility of politics because we have a one-party state. That state can be defeated, and to say that we don't have the luxury of waiting to November 2 is to say we don't have the luxury of the U.S. Constitution. I beg to differ. We have the luxury of the U.S. Constitution. We have the possibility of defeating this reactionary cabal, that I think it is not difficult to see, is an absolute refutation of the possibility of any constructive change for the foreseeable future. And that is an absolute imperative. This is – when I say this is an emergency, it is not to say that we must – and now I'm going to your direct question – to say this is an emergency is not to say that all we have are our passionate rages. I believe we understand the passionate rage to defeat George Bush, but we're living in a world of grownups here. There is a way to defeat George Bush. Standing on a street corner and either inaugurating or conspiring with the police to do some mayhem, to put on a performance piece that dramatizes the theatrics of rage, is the most self-indulgent thing I can imagine. And I think we ought to be very, very careful before we listen to the advice of those who four years ago assured us that we didn't have the luxury of waiting to defeat American corporations. We had to do it right now, by voting for Ralph Nader.

Amy Goodman is the host of the nationally syndicated radio news program Democracy Now.

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