Ineffective "Protest" 101
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[Update: I see now that jawbone beat me to this in quick hits]
A group of "progressives" got together and donated tens of thousands of dollars to Obama's campaign so they could get inside a fundraiser and sing him this song (emphasis added):
Dear Mr. President we honor you today sir
Each of us brought you $5,000
It takes a lot of Benjamins to run a campaign
I paid my dues, where's our change?
We'll vote for you in 2012, yes that's true
Look at the Republicans - what else can we do
Even though we don't know if we'll retain our liberties
In what you seem content to call a free society
Yes it's true that Terry Jones is legally free
To burn a people's holy book in shameful effigy
But at another location in this country
Alone in a 6x12 cell sits Bradley
23 hours a day is night
The 5th and 8th Amendments say this kind of thing ain't right
We paid our dues, where's our change?
So not only did they donate money to his campaign, they also pledged to vote for him in the middle of the "protest". That'll show him!
But never forget it's the Tea Partiers who are stupid!
* I read in another article the total donation was $76,000. I don't have a problem, in theory, of buying one's way in so that the protest can be done. I do have a problem with buying one's way in, pledging to vote for Obama no matter what, and then calling that some sort of protest. Also, the limited imagination - what else can we do? - is breathtaking.
** Also note that what you essentially have here is a group of people each capable of raising $5000 heckling the president over the treatment of one prisoner. Not that protesting Manning's treatment isn't worthwhile, it is, but that it isn't likely to resonate with the millions of people screwed by Obama's economic policies, of which there is no mention. But then again, I strongly suspect these are some of the same "progressives" that threw working class Americans under the bus in 2008.
*** Exhibit 1,000,0005 that the Democratic Party is a roach motel for lefty energy.
(via Franklin in comments at The Distant Ocean)
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Comments
Better title, please
If anyone has a better title, I'd appreciate the suggestion.
Thanks for saying all BDBlue
I'm a little bit baffled, too. "Ineffective" seems a bit off, since these are obviously "effective" people in their own lives -- they can donate $5000, after all. My thought is that they're salving their tender consciences, and it's effective at that, but that's hard to turn into a headilne.
I imagine this sort of thing will continue, as a sort of copycat behavior to the real protests (and notice how this got the coverage that uncut did not, quelle surprise). If they do, the formula of Annals of_______ "protest" might work. Still not sure what the "_____" is, though. It's like wankery, but not wankery. It's also like truthiness but not, and kabuki, but not.
Annals of infantile "protest"? (I know, I know, infantilization....) Annals of unviolent protest? Annals of non-v____ protest? Annals of non-viable protest?
And thanks for saying what you said on Manning. I see all the tactical advantages from the standpoint of people like Hamsher -- it's a good story, and the issues of executive power are real -- but in a Shock Doctrine economy, millions are tortured, So Manning is rather like one of those celebrity endangered species that people drive home from fundraisers in their SUVs...
And Manning, IMO, is related to the economic clusterfuck
For the shock doctrine to work, the populace has to be scared. The primary way we do that is through job insecurity and our crappy healthcare system (which makes people even more dependent on keeping their crappy jobs). But as the cramdown of the lower/middle classes continues, they will need more and more authoritarian means of control. Plus, Manning's alleged sin is in giving away embarrassing secrets of the Empire, which this time was military, but the next time might be economic.
So, yes, while I think protesting for civil liberties is key and salute people like Greenwald who spend so much time and effort doing it and doing it well, Manning has the ability to become an "easy" protest to salve consciences of "progressives" even as they vow to vote for the guy who continues to bomb the hell out of Muslim countries with killer robots and has helped Big Money steal trillions of dollars from ordinary Americans.
Perhaps Annals of "progressive" "protest"?
i dunno...
they covered a lot of ground - hope&change, civil rights, liberty, constitutional law, torture, how much $$ it costs to be heard by the president for even a few moments - in what is really no more than a sonnet. not bad.
but the actual "lyrics" here aren't all that important. the important things are that 1. obama got forced to see and hear some people protesting his actions to his face, and 2. that action got some media attention. it's a tactic that some other groups - and individuals - with other agendas could adopt, provided they have enough $$$$$$$ of course.
as for the question what is effective protest? sometimes ya gotta just keep trying different stuff.
For me the tell that they aren't really trying to be effective
is the pledge to essentially vote for Obama no matter what. What purpose is there to put that in there other than to assure people that they aren't so "crazy" or so "left" that they'd actually consider not voting for the Nobel Peace Laureate? Without that, I'd have written a very different post. But what those lines tell me is that these people may be sincere in their concern for Manning, but they are not serious about challenging the system and it is the system that is causing Manning's ill treatment in the first place. Basically, they're appalled by Manning's treatment, but not enough to withhold a vote from Obama (a vote that he won't even need because they're in California). To me, it's just symbolic of why Obama is not only willing, but gleeful about kicking progressives and liberals in the teeth. He knows that most of them won't do anything that actually has any effect on what's important to him - retaining power.
I will also note that I'm quite certain that had Manning been held during Bush's term, his treatment would be used by these same people as a reason why they could never vote for Bush and why people who did were horrible (and used to try to convince those people not to vote for Bush).
the very rich really are different from you and me
including the way they speak to their peers on the power and money spectrum.
the whole "song" is rich [haha] in politely restrained irony. will that irony break through the armor that mental/moral/philosophical armor that obama has erected around his thoughts. who knows?
Agreed n/t
.
Annals of impotent protest
It's actually worse than impotence, it's self-cancelling. It's like auto-bondage, like watching somebody tie themselves up.
Cheap grace
They give him the money and they say they'll vote for him. And IIRC Obama's response -- and I know this will surprise you -- was dismissive and snarky. He's such an asshole.
Obama's response
Reminds me a lot of "likeable enough".
Sometimes I wonder if he's as snarky as he sounds. Maybe (like me and many in my family) he has the kind of limited social perceptions that are now often labeled as mild Asperger's syndrome. It can have the same effect.
Prophylactic: of course it's quite clear he had no intention of responding in any serious way. I'm just engaging in idle speculation, not justification. If he were the deeply serious, luminously intelligent person he has often been made out to be, he would have engaged the issue, with facts, policy, and politics ready to hand.
I thought it was great
it was a very expensive insult and to the President's face, that is why they were impossible to ignore. Unlike the unCut protests or solidarity protests, it is simply impossible to ignore anything that happens in the presence of the President.
Even though they promised to vote for him, what comes thru is that a group of people were sufficiently outraged by the treatment of Bradley Manning to take it right to the President.
I see this as effective and building the movement. Of course I have written off 2012 except at the local level. For me the important elections are this years recall in Wisconsin and repeal in Ohio. I don't think we will have a chance to elect a progressive President until 2016, and then only if we work hard to build emergent parties.
"Nominal Allies"
Since I don't know these folks, I can't be sure, but I suspect they are only our nominal allies. They will say they believe the same things we do - like opposing the treatment of Manning. And they'll even be telling the truth. But I don't believe there is any way they will support any emerging parties. They clearly don't want to be associated with the "crazy left" (the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that's what the pledge to vote for Obama is about, they aren't some dead-end Naderites). They just want their leader to know they are upset so they can hopefully change his mind. They don't want to actually challenge him.
Which is not to say that there was absolutely no good that came from this. Anything that makes Obama uncomfortable, has some positive in it. Just that, IMO, these folks are not serious about changing the system and so, in the end, they will continue to support it with their money and their votes.
maybe I have been doing too much Reformation reading
but one of the things that comes thru is that people take many paths to opposition and that breaks do not come easily.
The Scottish Covenanters did not want to kill Charles I, they were only opposing the English book of common prayer, they wanted to make a covenant with Charles I. But in the end their actions lead to Charles I being killed. (note to secret service, I am NOT advocating killing anyone for anything)
My point is that these are our allies and we need to recognize that if we are to play a role to create a coalition to bring down the kleptocracy. The Bradley Manning case is incredibly important and they have really put it on the map. Now Bradley Manning is being discussed by publications that previously ignored the case and a lot more people know about him.
It is all good. Sometimes I think that lefty blogosphere is too much like the Dutch Calvinists in the 80 years war; too concerned with our own divisions.
I realize that FireDogLake is the most annoying sorority on campus. And I don't like the role they played is suppressing debate on Medicare for All, but here they have done a splendid thing.
Dang!
And here I thought Corrente was the most annoying...
* * *
I understand the argument. Why should I believe that, when push comes to shove, which on Manning it hasn't, FDL won't do exactly the same thing they did on Medicare for All? Fool me once...
They trivialized their putative concerns
Rotten policy gets Obama their money and vote. Perhaps they should put him in... the comfy chair!
1000+ to both of you
How 'bout "Annals of Faux-Protest 101"? It doesn't quite capture the direction of the faux -- making themselves feel better while still not breaking ranks with the tribe ('cuz that's scary and uncomfortable). But then, it's a headline.
Anyway, the Manning protests have always bothered me, and both of you have hit on why. Only a few, like Greenwald, have been on this issue all along. Most seem to be hopping on now for the headline (for them) value.
When it was Bush employing torture, illegal detention & other unitary exec tools, all the protest and rage was aimed directly at him. But with Manning, much of the anger seems directed at his jailers and not Obama personally, even now. I haven't been paying as much attention as I probably should, but this little ditty is the first I've seen (again, except for GG) that directly calls Obama to account, if a little jingle can be said to call anyone to account.
The opportunity cost is the biggest thing. Manning could be pointed to as a symbol of a much larger, more pervasive and more serious violation of democratic principles, but instead he's the ticket to media time for career progressives focused on him alone.
Cognitive dissonance sing-along
"Experience can clash with expectations, as, for example, with buyer's remorse following the purchase of an expensive item. In a state of dissonance, people may feel surprise, dread, guilt, anger, or embarrassment. People are biased to think of their choices as correct, despite any contrary evidence."
They are reaffirming their poor choice by putting a down payment towards Obama 2.0.
Windows into people's souls
I agree with DCblogger on this. While I wouldn't give Obama a penny and I will not vote for him, I think dismissing people who got media attention with protest because you can divine that they don't really care about the issues, they're coming late to the party because now they can get media attention, they're faux progressives, whatever, is not productive for truth and justice.
Bradley Manning is a human being suffering torture at the hands of our government. I write my little Amnesty International letters every month asking for justice for a political prisoner somewhere in the world, because imagining being in such a situation fills me with horror. I know that the majority of the letters are tossed out or even the subject of some laughter. However, if it makes a difference to one person during my life, the hours that I would have preferred to be doing something else will have been justified a hundred times over. Just take a minute and imagine it. There is no sneering, no assignment of motives that can take away the value of any progress towards relieving a suffering human being.
And the whole issue of why this person rather than the millions of others? I find that a legitimate objection if you're providing a service to one person (like free medical care to the cute kid) while denying it to the others (by advocating defunding of Medicaid and opposing a national health service). Otherwise, work for the one, work for the millions, as it seems to you most likely to produce good results.
thanks for saying this
so much better than I did
But are they working for one or millions?
My objection is that the Manning case has been seized upon as a cause celebre, and most of the furor operates as if there are no millions, just the one. So while yes, it's better to work for one rather than work for none, it's still problematic to stop at one.
Manning is really more like the cute kid in your example. He's white, he's associated with prog hero Assange, and he's an American. He's relatable. A failure to give two bits about other victims isn't as bad as actually denying them a service, but it's only one step away in effect. Everyone can only do what they can do. But saying, in effect, "I have limited resources, I can only put my energy into one so I pick the cute kid and forget the rest" isn't that much better than actively denying the non-cute kids the service.
On the simultaneous kowtow-protest song, not all activism is good. Activism which just enables the very things you're protesting -- not good. No need to divine any motives or judge the purity of intentions involved. We can measure the actions. While a mild protest accompanied by continued support is better than slavering, unquestioning fan worship, better doesn't necessarily mean good. (and it certainly doesn't put you above criticism!) Esp. not if you're effectively still hanging out in the roach motel.
Different furors
I can't get really worked up over this. The demonstrators aren't the ones torturing Manning so I don't feel called upon to judge and to condemn their actions. The different viewpoints are kind of interesting, and I suppose we're going to find each other rather incoherent, so please take my comments as just explaining my thinking process.
Perhaps I'm overly sensitive, but the objections to the kowtow-protestors (great description, by the way) do strike me as divining motives and judging purity of intentions. "A failure to give two bits about other victims"? They're in it because Assange is a prog hero? Finding Assange a hero implies caring about the bigger picture. "I have limited resources, I can only put my energy into one so I pick the cute kid and forget the rest." Might any of them have been thinking, "I have limited resources, I can only put my energy into one so I pick the one who has received enough attention to put pressure on Obama. That way, I can be effective by adding to the pressure"? Yes, I wish we had a movement that would address the brutality of American prisons generally (thank you, Jim Webb, for your prison reform bill back in 2009), but efforts in that direction have not produced the promising furor of the Manning case.
A certain amount of our disagreement also comes from a different take on what's factual. My objection is that the Manning case has been seized upon as a cause celebre, and most of the furor operates as if there are no millions, just the one. I'm not sure who's seizing and how furor is operating, but for God's sake, some of us have been trying to call attention at least since the first Abu Ghraib pictures. Again, it may be personal, but this hits me the way Digby dismissing Correntians and the like by saying, "The ground hasn't been tilled for single payer." The fact that she had paid no attention to the issue doesn't mean we had just started working on it. So yeah, the Manning case is a cause celebre -- we're agreed on that fact. I just haven't been in the milieu where the work surrounding it operates as though there are no other sufferers. Is it a fact that Assange is a prog hero? I'd say that's controversial. I like what WikiLeaks does, so maybe it's true, but my sense is that a lot of "progs" want to disassociate themselves from him.
And part of the disagreement is value judgment. I already stated that I welcome work for one victim. I condemn supporting the victimization of others. I find there to be a very big difference between working to alleviate the suffering of one, appealing or not, and supporting the infliction of suffering. To me, that's not a small difference. And on the Activism which just enables the very things you're protesting -- not good. issue -- again, probably personal, but it comes across to me as very like the lectures against the DFHs who weren't respectable enough to protest the war. We need to get rid of Cindy Shaheen and Michael Moore, and all the others who just give respectable progressives a bad image. Protest the way we want, or you're helping George Bush. We can measure the actions and we know you're hurting the anti-war cause.
I get very, very angry at continued support of Obama, but I can't see that this protest did any harm, and it may have done some good.
not having a crystal ball
I can't say with 100% certainty that no good whatsoever would come out of this protest. But the likelihood seems extremely small when the protest consists of "we object to X but we'll vote for you and give you large amounts* of money anyway." Why on earth would that be effective with any politician, still less Obama, who has a history of ignoring anyone not in his real base (corp vampire squid)? The ditty here was not such a work of art that they could not have come up lines other than a promise to vote for him regardless.
You seem to be saying that any protest of Obama is beyond criticism or reproach, simply because it IS a protest (or appears to be). By that standard, the deathhold on the public option whatever was laudable as well (and the Tea Partier are awesome, since they protest Obama far more than anyone else). When would protest of Obama be criticizable?
* large amounts for the <99%ers, obviously $5k a hit is a pittance compared to the bucks Obama rakes in from his real base.
When protest of Obama would be criticizable
- when it calls him a liberal
- when it calls for him to be more bipartisan
- when it objects to his inadequate deference to Wall Street, the military, and the religious right (make sure pregnancy punishes those sluts!)
- when it portrays him as a zulu witchdoctor (don't justify the idea that the only people who don't like Obama are racists)
. . . .
I could go on for quite a while.
My list would add...
... when it includes and/or encourages support for Obama's reluction.
The shallow-end problem is, IMHO, the biggest inhibitor to rallying left/liberal/progressives to support real change.
IOW
any protest of Obama which has even a shade of accuracy surrounding it, is above criticism from anyone else?
Bah, I say. Then the PO fight becomes above criticism, and many other Obama-enabling career progressive kabuki. (kabukis?)
Greg Mitchell links to info on woman paying for protest singers-
Naomi Pitcairn paid for the tickets to the Obama fundraiser so the protest song could be sung--in his Holiday Weekend WikiLeaks Blogging, Days 146-149, Friday-Sunday, April 22-24.
Pitcairn, an heir to the Pittsburgh Plate Glass fortune, is a very strong Obama supporter and big donor, according to SF Gate.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...
Even for protesting, the rich get better access, eh?
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...
At 11:55 Saturday, there's a link to a post about a guy's experience trying to interview Manning at his new prison. He misunderstood the day of a planned rally, drove from St. Louis to Leavenworth, KS, only to realize he was off by 6 weeks -- and decided he might as well try to see if he could get into see Manning. Nothing dramatic. Just a thorough search. But interesting to hear the comments from the military guards.