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Movements as Collective Challenges to Authority Structures
University of Notre Dame August 14-15, 2002
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View this Workgroup's Listserv ArchivesWorking Group 7: Direct Action Lynn Owens, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
Since the WTO protests in Seattle, there has been a renewed emphasis on the role of direct action in social protest. The direct action activists were very effective in shutting down and delaying the meetings, and made their presence felt through confrontations with the police. This direct action took many forms, including blocking off streets, using lockboxes to immobilize protestors, etc. Indeed, “Direct action gets the goods” has become one of the more prominent slogans of the militant wings of the anti-corporate globalization movement, and such direct action groups as the Direct Action Network and the Ruckus Society have risen to almost celebrity-like status. The tactics of Seattle and other anti-corporate globalization protests continue the recent tradition of the radical environmental and UK anti-roads movements of the 1990s. While this form of direct action has certainly been important, its rise in visibility threatens to overshadow an alternative understanding of direct action, one that focuses less on civil disobedience and more on building alternative institutions and practices.
The idea of direct action has long been closely linked to the anarchist ideology and movement, although it is not exclusive to it by any means. Anarchist Voltairine De Cleyre (1912) wrote: “Every person who ever had a plan to do anything, and went and did it, or who laid his plan before others, and won their co-operation to do it with him, without going to external authorities to please do the thing for them, was a direct actionist. All co-operative experiments are essentially direct action.” Thus, direct action has a much longer and broader history than most acknowledge. It has two related, but separate sides: militant civil disobedience and autonomous political activity. This later tendency warrants further exploration. It is the attempt to bypass traditional authority structures in an effort to empower the acting individuals and organizations, simultaneously changing the actors and the world around them. There are at least 2 discernable forms of this type of direct action: 1) the building of alternative institutions or practices and 2) acting as if the world had already been changed, that is it is a form civil disobedience for the sake of doing what one wants at the moment. Whereas the other type of direct action is a means to an end, this form can be seen as both the means and the end.
Numerous groups embody these forms of direct action. A good example of the first type is Food Not Bombs. Food Not Bombs (FNB) protests against militarism and poverty through providing free vegetarian meals, using otherwise wasted food collected from local restaurants and supermarkets. This form of protest, with active groups in over 100 cities worldwide, seeks to provide a valuable social service outside of the state's realm of authority. Two other protest groups typify the second form. Critical Mass (CM) and Reclaim the Streets (RTS) challenge the car-centric urban landscape by taking over the streets for mass bicycle rides and street parties, respectively. Squatting empty buildings is an, often less organized, example of this form of direct action, in which squatters takes their living situation into their own hands. Furthermore, squatted buildings can often be used as the basis for building alternative institutions and other practices, such as cultural centers, DIY media/pirate radio, infoshops, etc
Obviously, most social movement organizations have their own moments and locations of direct action and do-it-yourself mentality. What separates the aforementioned type of movements is the ultimate goal: political autonomy—they seek not necessarily to directly influence the government, but to replace or ignore it. Thus they seek to challenge authority structures in a very fundamental way, challenging not simply their decisions and rules, but their authority to make these decisions and rules in the first place. This is not to say that these groups do not interact with the state. Of course they do. Those in authority see them as a very significant threat. For example, Food Not Bombs in San Francisco has long been harassed by the police, with more than 1000 activists arrested since the 1980s. Same with Critical Mass and Reclaim the Streets events. Nevertheless, the movement-state interaction is almost always initiated by the state. The activists generally wish only to be left alone to do their own thing.
There are a lot of interesting issues that could be the topic for a discussion direct action. A few that come to mind are:
1. Particularly within certain wings of the anti-corporate globalization movement, there have recently arisen some heated discussions between those who support direct action and activists/protestors. Protests and demonstrations are critiqued for being too fixated on asking for someone else to make the changes demanded, rather than trying to make the changes themselves. That is, they are critiqued for privileging a negative program over a positive one. Furthermore, the “activist role” is criticized by some as a “self-imposed” form of isolation from the very people that are they should be connecting to. This can be seen in a lot of the critiques of the form of direct action that has sprouted up around the recent rise of global protests that many view as not being inclusive of many underprivileged populations.
2. Related to this tension is the question of now or later. That is, do we struggle in order to get some payoff in the indeterminate future, or do we do what we can to make the world today a better place. Making the question a bit murkier, is that it is not always clear which side better represents the now and later sides of the argument.
3. This is not to say that there is no interaction/relation between these forms of direct action and other “more conventional” kinds of activism. FNB emerged out of the anti-nuclear movement of the early 1980s and often supplies food at protests. Likewise, RTS grew out of the anti-roads movement in the UK, and both RTS and CM occur at many of the large scale protests against corporate globalization. What then is the relationship between all these forms of protest?
4. There is also the tension within the alternative institutions type of direct action between withdrawing into ones own community, such as intentional communities, or of reaching out to other groups. FNB is a good example of the latter, feeding all comers. CM bike rides and RTS street parties also try to included others, but as participants not recipients. Does direct action create radical ghettos or does it expand communities?
5. What was earlier referred to as Type 2 direct action: action for the sake of living as if the world were already the way you want it, carries with it its own potential for organizing problems. In my own experiences with CM and RTS have had difficulty sustaining interest over time because they can easily lose their political edge. For example, in the local CM, there was a big drop off in participation because there were no other goals for the group. Any efforts to attach any political goals were rebuffed, as they were seen as clouding the waters and potentially alienating potential supporters or participants. The need to remain pure was critical for many participants.
6. Why the importance of these “named tactics,” such as FNB, CM, and RTS? These tactics have been easily adaptable to many different locations and events across the world, but there is no larger organization to which anyone actually belongs.
Obviously there are a lot more issues at work here, some of which I hope will be brought up at the workshop.
References
De Cleyre, Voltairine. 1912. Direct Action. New York: Mother Earth