Letters

Violence and Property

I was not able to attend the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle (January- February 2000), so my perspective is limited, but in several of your articles there were references to anarchists who “rejected nonviolence” and engaged in property destruction.

It is saddening to me that your writers parrot the same mindless notion of equating property damage with violence as the mainstream capitalist media. As far as I am aware, nonviolence means not engaging in harmful acts toward living beings. The anarchist black bloc that engaged in property damage [in Seattle] only targeted the property of multinational corporations and made sure not to harm individuals. The Nonviolent Activist often publishes articles praising the property damage done by people such as the Berrigans and [other] Plowshares activists who physically attack military property. Do you not realize that the economic oppression by multinationals like Nike, Starbucks, Gap and Occidental Petroleum is as destructive as—if not more so than—the military apparatus of America? Is it that the people who engaged in property damage in Seattle are influenced more by Kropotkin than by our beloved Gandhi?

Physically damaging the property of institutions that are destroying our world and murdering our brothers and sisters must never be considered violence, but nonviolent self-defense. I do not necessarily believe that the property damage was a good idea, but it must be appreciated as a strategic question, not a moral one. Militant resistance to capitalist exploitation is necessary, and the place of the War Resisters League should be part of that resistance, not among the ranks of the liberal nay-sayers calling dogmatically for peace above justice.

I love your publication and I find WRL to be one of the most important organizations around today, but I felt I needed to write this. I’ll end with my all-time favorite quote by [peace agitator] A.J. Muste: “In a world built on violence, one must be a revolutionary before one can be a pacifist; in such a world, a non-revolutionary pacifist is a contradiction in terms, a monstrosity.”

—Geoffrey McNamara New Hampshire YouthPeace, Wilton, NH

Geov Parrish replies:
I was not one of the writers who used the phrase “rejected nonviolence,” and I happen to agree with Geoffrey that property destruction is not per se violent. However, in this case the use of the phrase happens to be correct. The anarchist communities from which the vandals emerged were vehemently opposed to the Direct Action Network’s four points in its nonviolence code, including the fourth that banned property destruction during the November 30 action. The attitude many of them have toward pacifism is contempt (phrases like “peace Nazi” are common in the ’zines), and it was the breakdown in communication between these camps prior to November 30 that led not only to property destruction, but violent confrontations between the vandals and other protesters and an essential sabotaging of one of the most effective nonviolent direct actions in our recent history.

Dissents on SOA

Jeremy Scahill describes the civil disobedience of SOA Watch’s action at Fort Benning’s main gate on November 21, 1999 (January-February 2000), as “supposed” and “alleged.” Yet that annual action was larger, more dramatic and more in-your-face than those of the several previous Novembers. The previous events at the gate certainly weren’t “supposed”—at least not for the “SOA 13” and the “SOA 25,” who collectively spent more than 15 years in prison.

Each year since 1994, SOA Watch vigil actions at Ft. Benning have involved increasing numbers of activists, both young and old, new and seasoned. Behind the statistics is the human reality that for many this was the first time they had ever demonstrated or risked arrest.

A major weakness of the U.S. peace and justice movement is that most of its supporters avoid arrest—especially that momentous first arrest. Well, for hundreds, if not thousands, the SOA campaign has helped erode such inhibition. I think of the SOA campaign as the ideal “starter” issue. As we “cross the line” into Benning, many of us are crossing a threshold in our lives.

Like Scahill, I admire those legendary anti-SOA actions of yore. But they involved few individuals. For all the guts and creativity, those actions had a severe limitation: They aren’t replicable. Many of us lack the physical prowess to climb trees … or the courage to risk being shot down from those trees.

Nor did such actions mobilize large numbers. Despite his heroism and his years in prison, Roy Bourgeois long remained, as you say, a voice crying in the wilderness. Fortunately something changed: That exclusive, hieratic strategy of the early days eventually spawned its complement—an inclusive, demotic strategy.

Beginning in 1995 the November action site switched from SOA headquarters deep in the base to Ft. Benning’s main gate. This allowed a liturgical scenario and extensive media coverage. It allowed an unlimited number of non-arrestees to assemble for witness and support. Many, maybe most, of these experienced an extraordinary sense of community and sense of righteous mission; non-arrestees one year became arrestees the next.

True, the new scenarios only entailed trespass or illegal re-entry, and not felonies. But this meant greater participation and more prison witness. That’s a key element in the growth and effectiveness of the SOA campaign.

—Ed Kinane, Syracuse, NY

Clearly Jeremy Scahill believes he has the corner on wisdom regarding what constitutes a real nonviolent action. Scahill scoffs at the November Ft. Benning event, but in his zeal to canonize Seattle as the “mother of all protests,” he fails to report basic facts: At what he mockingly calls the “alleged civil disobedience” at Ft. Benning, 65 people were arrested, 23 were charged and 10 go to trial in March. These 10 face six months in prison and a $5,000 fine.

I do not want to participate in Scahill’s destructive game of building up one movement at the expense of another. Seattle was amazing by any activists’ standards, and SOA Watch is on the planning committee for the Washington, DC, reprise in April and will join others in the streets to protest the IMF and World Bank. While the protestors in Seattle deserve honor and support for their action, so do the SOA 10, who will spend six months in federal prison for what Scahill calls their “alleged” activism. I do not understand or agree with Scahill’s dismissive attitude. Scahill ignored those who were arrested at Ft. Benning and inexplicably made no mention of key speakers at the event. He chose instead to accuse the vigil of being without substance or heart for the victims, a “Lollapalooza,” he calls it. Did he think it was a Lollapalooza when Rufina Amaya spoke with sorrow and passion as she described the day SOA graduates slaughtered her entire community in El Salvador? Was it a Lollapalooza when Colombian journalist Richard Velez told of being brutally beaten by troops commanded by an SOA grad? Did Scahill think he was at a folk sing when Mexican labor organizer Eduardo Diaz told about SOA union-busting in his country? Or when Adriana Portillo Bartow spoke about her children being disappeared by Guatemalan military? Or when Ita Ford’s niece and Ben Linder’s mother thanked those present for honoring their lost loved ones? Scahill’s cavalier characterization is an insult to those who spoke out of their pain and to the victims they remembered.

Like all long-standing efforts for change, the SOA movement must constantly evaluate the effectiveness of its work. The history of resistance teaches that it is both possible and prudent to employ a variety of nonviolent civil disobedience modes. It may be time to change tactics in the SOA campaign, and in early February, 100 activist leaders from around the country met for a two-day strategy meeting to discuss that and other topics. As we move forward, though, we bear in mind that nonviolent direct action is a tool, a tactic, not an end in itself. In his article Scahill forgets that key point and this as well: Our purpose is not to “out-radical” other movements or to guarantee an action that fulfills anyone’s macho fantasies. The goal is to close the School of Assassins.

—Carol Richardson Co-Director, SOA Watch Washington, DC

Jeremy Scahill will respond in the next issue.