Trigger warning: first two videos below show aggressive and violent action which some may find distressing.
By now many of you have probably seen the video of UC Davis students being pepper sprayed point-blank after staging an Occupation of the Quad at their University – to protest against tuition fee increases, and also in solidarity with UC Berkley students who were brutalised by police at their own occupy site.
At UC Davis, police were brought in on the order of UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi.
Assistant Professor Nathan Brown wrote an Open letter to UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi which is very powerful, describing the events, and demanding nothing less than her resignation for the brutality which these students were subject to on their own university grounds.
The next day, UC Davis students staged a silent shaming protest. Students lined the street as the Chancellor walked to her car after finishing work at night. The power in these student’s silence, the power in their simply being there, holding vigil, evidently shocked the Chancellor.
You can see a video of the silent shaming here. Note the presence built by a negation of sound, and the focus placed on the long walk of the Chancellor, slow, silent herself. Her face is stricken, her voice low and soft.
Yelling, slogan shouting etc. are externalisastions – and can be effective in certain contexts. The person or institution is subjected to that kind of action. Silence however, is unnerving because it demands the person or institution to internalise. There is no thing to react effectively to with aggression or scorn.
This is powerful stuff. Xeni Jardin wrote about her reaction to the silent protest and the events that preceded it on Boing Boing here and there is a very powerful eyewitness report here.
Dr. Gene Sharp’s famous book The Politics of NonViolent Action describes Silence as a method for NVDA – under Withdrawal and Renunciation. The book also lists 198 methods for non violent direct action, and how they are used used to thwart, denounce, change, oppose, challenge and resist governments or other oppressions.
Dr Gene Sharp was a nominated for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, which he lost to Barack Obama. A very interesting documentary of Dr Sharp’s work and its influence in activism particularly in America, was recently shown on SBS. You can watch it here.
Thoughts:
Governments, including Australia’s, are not monolithic or invulnerable, and they gain power through the participation and complicity of the people. A simple action to negate the power of the government, is to simply stop participating or complying with the expected actions or machinations the government demands.
The action, in its practice of solemnity and grief, is hard for people to resist as people experience this solemnity in other contexts. Silence is a strong socialised action. If people are keeping silence it is something which is socially respected. You can see that in the Chancellor’s response, defiance or anger would have seemed inappropriate or petulant. Silence creates a gravity you cannot dismiss.
Also see Susan Sontag: “The Aesthetics of Solitude” in Studies of Radical Will - some good notes are here.
So Occupy Sydney – when are we going to get silent?
Thanks to Frankie for talking this through with me.
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7 Responses to “The power of Silence as a form of non violent direct action”
Thank you this is great. Do you think we could benefit as a movement from having a silent march or sit in?
very much so. Traditional protest in Australia is often loud, based on movement (marches, raliies) and slogan shouting and engaging rhetoric. The idea of a silent sit-in or protest could be very powerful if deployed to the right target.
Imagine going to a talk by a particularly objectionable person or forum, and then instead of clapping, you stand and be silent, or, if invited to speak at a forum, you stand, say something small and powerful and then spend the rest of teh time in vigil.
Remember when that contestant on big brother a few years back was evicted, and instead of doing the usual eviction love fest with Gretel, he refused to speak instead placed tape over his mouth and held a ‘free the refugees sign’ – and Gretel and the producers had no idea what to do and their carefully scripted show just unravelled into anger and farce.
Its a tactic that requires effective and appropriate engagement.
I’m sure if we all put our heads together we can find an appropriate situation to apply this to. A council meeting? The Monday morning 9am rush of business men and women in Martin Place? Train stations? Kinda like a flash mob but of silent protesters… hmmm haha I like it!
Let me first say that the videos of police brutality in the USA were utterly disgusting. As someone who fought apartheid in South Africa, I know what living in a vicious police state is all about, I understand what it is like to live in a country where the police are the agents of state oppression. I know what it is like to live with the fear that those who act for the state outside the law know where you live and, apparently, judging by the occasional phone call, know your movements. However, you lot just look like an argument searching for a cause.
A council meeting? That would be the elected representatives of the people whose business you think it is appropriate for your tiny, unrepresentative minority to disrupt. “The Monday morning 9am rush of business men and women in Martin Place.” People just going about their daily lives you have the arrogance to presume that your hubris confers on you the right to inconvenience their lives for whatever misdemeanors you imagine them guilty of.
You live in a democracy, if you don’t like the system, fight it from within, if you lose then accept that your ideas have very little support. Working within the system was a luxury we did not have in South Africa.
hey, cool the aggression. I will not allow it on my posts. This is not the oppression olympics.
Also – you work in mining – interesting.
“cool the aggression” ???? More than a tad sensitive.
“Also – you work in mining – interesting.” Why?