Effective activism will never be 'peaceful' & we should stop using that word
+ Sharing time/ space together makes us fight harder for each other
What does the word “peace” mean to you? What must someone do to be considered “peaceful” or “violent”? Are colonial, capitalist empires peaceful? Can people dismantle oppressive systems armed with cops & militaries by being peaceful? Is it possible to be an effective organizer if your actions don’t disrupt the status quo?
What does peace mean exactly? I want someone to define, describe, explain it to me in excruciating detail. Show me. Because all I hear echoing in my mind are the piercing screams of the Palestinian mother grasping the limp, lifeless body of her child(ren) or the father howling to the skies as he searches for his entire family buried under the rubble. I have never understood the word peace just like I have never understood the word nonviolence. But I do know that these terms are subjective and most people use the definitions that were established by capitalist/ colonial systems and states.
Is it fair to label protestors as peaceful vs unpeaceful or violent vs nonviolent when these empires are massacring entire communities & killing all of us slowly?
Over 40,000 Palestinians have been massacred in the last 7 months. Gaza has been leveled to the ground with bombs made from our money. There is a horrifying ground invasion of Rafah unfolding as I write this. When people glorify “peaceful protests”, what peace are we trying to protect or maintain exactly? Whose peace are we preserving? And whose death & genocide are we prolonging the more we aim to be “peaceful”?
Should someone be peaceful when a cops boot is on their neck? Should someone be peaceful when there is an Israeli sniper pointed at their head? Should someone be peaceful when their people are being exterminated in front of them? Should someone be peaceful when they are being starved by a colonizer in a concentration camp? Should the mother who lost all her 5 children at the same time, be peaceful? The father who lost his 30 family members when his house was bombed while he was away searching for food— should he be peaceful? Would you be peaceful?
What level of urgency or degree of politeness is acceptable when someone is attempting to play their role in stopping a genocide? The settler colonial zionist state is decapitating children, torturing elders, assaulting boys & men in front of their families, running over people with tanks reducing their bodies to an unrecognizable mush of flesh, massacring tens of thousands of Palestinians and thrusting their headless, limbless, mutilated bodies and the faces of their incapacitated, mortified barely surviving relatives on the news for the world to see. Should the human watching all that, across oceans, witnessing, shaken, angry, moved to do something about it — should they be peaceful?
Or is peace all a lie? What is peace in a world riddled with poverty, inequity, colonial genocide and capitalist exploitation? Where is peace in a world where capitalism deprives people of the right to live? What is peaceful when people do not have the right to food, water, shelter and care? Don’t get me wrong, I have found immense joy, serenity and contentment in community but this “peace” that oppressive systems claim to protect, THAT peace is merely the violent, genocidal status quo. The “peace” that these empires are desperate to maintain is a system where they have the power to oppress, exploit, control, manipulate, violently brutalize, subjugate, murder and/or maim the working class people of the world. Anyone who effectively threatens that power will be labeled “violent”.
No to “peace”, yes to liberation
What of the students who decided that it was time to escalate for Gaza by any means necessary including but not limited to the destruction of property? They are by the state’s definition “violent”. What of the students that disrupted classes, graduations, the university’s functions in an effort to catalyze change? They are by the state’s definition “unpeaceful”. What of the students that didn’t simply let militarized police beat and drag their friends away? They fought back. They resisted. They are being called “violent”. Are these the definitions we will unquestioningly adopt? These students are putting themselves on the line to fight for liberation.
When some protestors are commended for being peaceful, this inevitably demonizes others who are pushing the boundary further and holding the line. When “nonviolence” is a term used exclusively with a positive connotation, then the violence of oppressive systems is deemed acceptable while the violence of the oppressed who dare to rise up is demonized.
It’s time we stopped slapping the word “peaceful” in front of protests hoping that gives us some special moral high ground. I don’t care what our youth do to protest colonial genocide. I don’t need them to be peaceful. Our youth deserve to be treated with dignity. They deserve to have the right to live. They are actively fighting to build a better world. Peace is code for “not rocking the boat too much”. Peace is not disrupting the genocidal status quo. Peace is a performance afforded only to the privileged. Peace is doing nothing. We don’t want peace, we want liberation.
How do you think it makes the Palestinian resistance on the ground look when we selectively applaud “peaceful protestors”? They are fighting on the frontlines against allied brutal, colonial empires that are annihilating their people. They do not care to be peaceful because you cannot be peaceful when your throat is being slit. They have no choice. They have to fight back. It’s time we accepted that maybe this is our fight too. These empires are killing us slowly and I do not care for peace. Liberation is not a peaceful process but it is righteous fight. If you are truly, humbly, wholeheartedly fighting for collective liberation then your morality is in the sky. You don’t need to portray yourself as harmless.
I hope we strike fear in the empires core. I hope we terrify these empires. It is clear that they are scared because their end is near. There is nothing that scares them more than people building community and finally rising up together. I hope these violent, brutal capitalist/ colonial empires see us as dangerous because the day they see me as harmless and peaceful is the day I have sold my morals. To love your people is to fight for them by any means necessary. To love the land is to fight for it by any means necessary. The means must embody OUR values, not recreate oppression or embody the values of the oppressor.
There is a reason normalizing racists like Gandhi are selectively uplifted by the west while MLK Jr’s legacy is whitewashed and distorted to be one that is nonthreatening to the empire. There’s a reason people are led to believe that communities won their independence by marching “peaceful” when in reality, armed resistance is what truly shook their colonizers. The word peace has not served us. It has been used to criminalize, incarcerate, punish, demonize and kill us. Us constantly using that word defensively to qualify our actions shows a lack of conviction in our beliefs or a lack of deeper, practical understanding of how revolutions truly work. Are we willing to truly love, care for, protect and defend each other? Then we must not be naïve about what will be needed to do that. I hope that we are prepared not to be peaceful but to be a threat to these systems and compassionate to the people who are decimated by them the most.
As this communique states from Autonomous UCLA Students After Zionist Attacks on the Palestinian Solidarity Encampment:
“We have noticed a trend of the desire to appear peaceful for the media taking precedent over the right of protestors to self defense, mirroring the world’s response to Palestinians’ right to self defense in the face of blatant fascist attacks and eliminationist violence. We cannot allow our resistance movement to demand obedience over safety in the same way as western imperialist forces against the colonized…
NO FUCKING PEACE POLICE. Advocating for non-violence while we are actively under attack is bullshit. We are not here to recreate the outside world in this encampment. We are here because we know a different world is possible, and are actively working towards it.
Stressful situations lead to responses that are engrained in us, such as hierarchy and policing, but we can fight this. Think about in what ways we can work to dismantle the cops in our heads.
With these points being said, we want to stress the need to escalate for Gaza.”
Free Palestine. Long live the resistance. Globalize the intifada.
When we share time/space together, we're better equipped to fight together
Students across the United States (and in other countries) are taking major risks to pressure their universities to divest funds from the genocide and occupation of Palestine. From setting up unauthorized, commune-style encampments to occupying entire university buildings, students are pushing the boundaries of what many people in the west thought was possible. It is no coincidence that students have pulled off the most bold, risky, effective direct actions in many cities where even adult community organizers (with more privilege, access to resources & safety nets) have fallen short.
I was politicized most heavily as a student organizer at SJP UCLA a decade and some ago. We unabashedly put ourselves on the line and carried out bold maneuvers during a time when advocating for Palestinian liberation was not normalized nearly as much as it is now. I’ve spend years wondering why organizing in community as an adult worker is so much more difficult than it was when I was a student with far less privilege and a lot more to lose.
Why students? Why are they leading the way in taking such bold direct action? And what can we all learn from this?
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