Nonviolence Part II: Promoting Social Change

by Dave Bennion

Published January 08, 2009 @ 08:39PM PT

Matt Yglesias speculated yesterday that the Palestinian freedom movement would be more successful if it adopted the principles of nonviolence that the black civil rights movement and the (for the most part) ANC used so effectively.  I've heard Noah Feldman raise this point before with respect to Palestine.

This could easily be construed as concern trolling, but I think it's right.  I read Yglesias every day and I believe he recognizes the futility and injustice of the Israeli assault.

But rather than get into a debate over Israel/Palestine, I'll do with Yglesias's post what I tend to do with many things, which is apply it to the migrant rights frame.

When I think of Gandhi's nonviolent tactics, or of Bull Connor turning police dogs and firehoses against black Americans, I can't help but acknowledge the genius and power of nonviolent resistance.  By rejecting the violence applied against them, by asserting, through suffering, their right to be free of that violence, those activists obliterated the moral arguments that violent oppressors inevitably use to justify their actions.  The hideousness of the existing social order was exposed in a way that could no longer be ignored.

Whether Jesus had tectonic social change in mind when he said "turn the other cheek," that was the effect of his radically counter-intuitive approach.

I know I'm taking a risk in trying to interpret Chuck Palahniuk without adult supervision, but wasn't that how Brad Pitt defeated the small-time mobster in the bloody basement scene in Fight Club?  He soaked up all the man's rage with his face, and his attacker was left with nothing but his own fear and inadequacy.

How can the migrant rights movement apply the lessons of those earlier successful civil rights movements?  The massive peaceful marches of 2006 weren't enough-they were interpreted through nightly cable news as an assault, an invasion, an affront to U.S. citizens.  (It's not what they were, but that's how they were misinterpreted.)

Publicizing violence against immigrants-whether perpetrated by private citizens or by government agents-helps, but it's reactive, not proactive.  And in some cases, it furthers the government's goals of disseminating "defending the Fatherland" propaganda.

The objection to the comparison with South Africa, Palestine, and Jim Crow United States will be raised: the oppressed in those cases were citizens wronged by their own governments.  But for a DREAMer like Mo who's been here since the age of three and would face persecution or death if returned to his country of birth, this is a distinction without a difference.  And as the lines of citizenship are blurred by powerful forces, this objection loses salience.

Some people have thought about these issues, and acted.  Every May Day march by undocumented workers is an astonishing act of bravery in the face of mass raids and an abusive federal police force dedicated primarily to hunting down and jailing migrants.  DREAMers are coming out of the closet, refusing to be silent.  A friend of mine retraced the northward steps of the Guatemalans he grew up with.

Living in my country of citizenship, I have much less to lose than many people I know.  But this post represents a question: How can the global migrant rights movement adopt the strategies of nonviolence pioneered by other movements to reach its goals?