A Case for Shut It Down as the New Occupy As occupying public spaces was to the Occupy movement, “Shutting It Down” is to the new wave of protest around police brutality and systemic racism. “If We Don’t Get It, Shut It Down” has long been a favorite chant of the labor movement, but for the rapidly growing movement saying #BlackLivesMatter, it’s also become a tactical mandate. In the world of protests, “shutting it down” might seem self-evident. Disruption is the point: As Martin Luther King, Jr., famously wrote in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.” Over the last several weeks, demonstrators have created particular kinds of tension. Actions have not targeted particular organizations — like the Jewish peace group If Not Now did when it targeted prominent Jewish American institutions recently — or sites of production, as the environmental movement has done in the past. Instead, Shutting It Down has meant quite literally shutting down “business as usual.” The “target” is an American public that has been overwhelmingly complicit in the criminalization of black and brown life. The message is clear: Business as usual cannot continue because, for many, “business as usual” has represented a daily threat. Last Monday, students at dozens of campuses nationwide walked out of class to hold die-ins, either at high-traffic campus locations or in the surrounding area. Activists in Washington, D.C, New York and Philadelphia held hundreds-strong die-ins in their cities’ major train stations. Organizers in Boston and Oakland even shut down the cities’ public transit systems. Expanding on an earlier call to boycott Black Friday in advance of the holiday shopping season, similar actions have targeted major shopping centers, city Christmas tree lighting ceremonies, even the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. (more at link)wagingnonviolence.org/2014/12/shutitdown-new-occupy/
Posted on: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 23:39:43 +0000
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