Robert Augman writes:

"Reflections on the Meaning of the RNC Protests"
Robert Augman

For those of us who participated in the protests against the Republican National Convention (RNC) this summer, reading the newspaper articles, watching the TV reports, or speaking with their audience was a schizophrenic experience. It seemed that what we took part in, and what was conveyed, were two entirely different things.

The mass media attempted to cover the protests. They reported numbers, transmitted images, and included statements from protesters. But the meaning was lost. Protestors were reduced to numbers, activity reduced to images, and dialogue reduced to sound bytes. In their best reporting, the protests were reduced to mere means toward affecting the upcoming elections. Nearly everything below the surface was ignored.
While popular dissent was mobilized against the Bush agenda, no simple, seemingly-corresponding proposal could be assumed: there was very little support for John Kerry (or for Ralph Nader for that matter). While this observation may be disappointing to political pragmatists opposing the current administration, it suggests that something qualitatively different is at work in American dissent today.

Contemporary dissent, particularly that of street protest, inherits the changes the "anti-globalization" movement made to dissent. In that movement, protest-as-usual went through a serious transformation. Internal qualities, rather than merely externalized views, became central to its meaning. The mass protest against the World Trade Organization's 1999 Ministerial in Seattle, Washington was a landmark far beyond its success in physically shutting down the meetings.

The WTO protest was a landmark because it turned protest inside out: it made the participants and their forms of organizing values in themselves. Democracy became a value of the movement not merely through its criticism of the undemocratic nature of the WTO, but through the lived experience of organizing protests in democratic assemblies. The criticism of capitalism became a value of the movement not merely through attacks on private property and calls for universal health care, but through the real-life experience of freely shared food, housing, and legal aid.

What the RNC protests share with the anti-globalization movement is the view of itself as more than a mere means toward reforms or better candidates. The lack of banners for Kerry or any Presidential candidate during the RNC protests, characterized the movement's unorthodox, uneasy, and somewhat disinterested orientation toward politics-as-usual. While mainstream analyses view the protests as a mere means for influencing elections, dissent views it the other way around.

For the movement, elections are a means to recover lost ground. This ground is not an end in itself, but a new place for further struggle. Dissent sees itself as the place of hope and possibility, and current political reality as a limit upon it.

The half a million person march only tells one story. But the RNC protests have many stories. In the week leading up to the major march, I went with fellow activists to the No-RNC Art Space to paint a banner. The space was a large building which activists rented for the month and transformed it into a place for making puppets, banners, and the like.
On arrival, we were welcomed with a tour of the space's free paint and cloth area and were encouraged to dig in. We painted our banner at the pace of conversation, and when dinner was ready, we were offered a free meal. Sitting in that environment we experienced the collective spirit that gets at the heart of the meaning of the protests.

The experience of the No-RNC Art Space was matched with the coordination of free housing, free legal aid, free media equipment, and free bicycles during the week of protests. This collective spirit represents radical views about how we want to relate to one another. While this radical politics signifies the meaning for many protesters, these experiments in non-capitalist relationships were absent from mainstream portrayals of the protests.

This cooperative and mutualistic dimension was complimented by another important quality of the protests: a democratic and participatory spirit. At St. Mark's Church, in the East Village, we held regular assemblies to collectively organize the logistics of protests and civil disobediences, and to strategize relations with the mass media and police. A wide variety of organizers came together, from New York to New Mexico, to share information, coordinate activities, and converse. The church was transformed into a hub of activity, a meeting place, a resting spot, a connecting point, a political identification in a city of mass commercialism. Protesters participated in lengthy and lively discussions all week long around local, national, and global political issues with fellow protestors and non-protestors alike. Despite divergences in political perspectives the space the church leant represented the need for space that all political communities depend upon. It was here, in radical democracy and participatory politics, that we found the meaning of the protests.

On Monday, August 30th, a loud and lively march, organized by the Still We Rise coalition, passed my friend and I as we waited to join from the sidewalk. Behind an energetic street band, a great pink banner came into view declaring "This is a Movement, not a Market!" The power of this movement is that it views itself not as something to be bought or appeased by politicians, not as a means for others' self-promotion, but possessing its own quality instead. This movement may see itself as one of the few existing places for a cooperative, participatory, and democratic culture. This is what was missed by surface-level reports.

The movement’s meaning lies within. Whether it will be recognized on a popular scale, and become influential in society, depends upon its ability to make its meaning intelligible in a political context where intelligence is often ruled out. It has to make its internal qualities of radical democracy and mutual aid external. For it to change the world, it must grapple with this reality.

[Robert Augman worked with the Free Society Collective during the RNC protests. FSC engages in a politics of resistance that simultaneously highlights a reconstructive vision. It works toward a free and ecological society premised on mutual aid, confederated direct democracy, and a liberatory culture. You can find information about FSC at their website www.freesocietycollective.org. You can also read the leaflet FSC distributed during the protests, titled “Don’t Just [Not] Vote, Get Political.” Rob can be reached at rob@riseup.net.]