Rage and Social Change

Dear Friends,

Recently I have been thinking about the question of whether there can be significant social change without rage.  This question is raised by the failure to even indict the police officers that killed Michael Brown and Eric Garner.

Before getting to my question, I am appalled at the lack of statistics on police brutality particularly when compared to the detailed statistics easily available on law enforcement officers deaths in the line of duty.  It was quick and easy for me to get information on every death of a law enforcement officer.  For example in 2013 there were a total of 107 officers that died in the line of duty.  Of that number less than 40 appeared to be the result of hostile action (1 - bomb, 30 - non accidental gun fire, 2 - stabbed and 5 - vehicular assault).  On the other hand there are no reliable statistics on the number of people killed by the police.  The reporting is voluntary and justified and non-justified are based on the view of the reporting police department.  FiveThirtyEight has done some work on the issue (here) and indicates that there could be as many as 1,000 cases of police killing civilians in the line of duty a year.  Of course many of those may be justifiable but as we have seen many are not.

The rage that has been generated by the failure to indict the police officers that killed Michael Brown and Eric Garner is completely understandable particularly in light of a history of police brutality in general and against people of color in particular.  Will this rage result in any real progress toward changing what is certainly a long standing problem with our policing and justice system?  Or to look at it another way, has there ever been any significant social change without rage?

The union movement in the United States was filled with rage caused by incredibly bad, dangerous working conditions and terrible wages.  The civil rights movement of the 1960s was fueled by rage at the continued institutionalized discrimination backed by government actions.  The women's suffrage movement was born out of rage against the legal and social inequality between men and women.  The anti-apartheid movement grew out of the rage of the black South Africans who had been suppressed and brutalized by the white government.  The anti-Vietnam war movement arose from the rage of the young people being forced into military service for an unjust war.  The movement for equal rights for the GLBT community was similarly fueled by the rage of that community and their supporters at the unfair treatment they received in all aspects of their lives.

I cannot think of any major social change that has occurred that was not fueled by rage.  When people say that something is unfair or unjust but are not enraged, it seems to be impossible to sustain a movement for change.  Consequently, the failure to address the problem with needed changes in the end either causes people to become enraged in many cases leading to the necessary change, or if the rage never happens the change never happens.

The next question is whether or not violent rage is necessary to cause change.  Police violence has been a part of all of the changes I mentioned above, even in cases where violence was not part of the rage.  The most striking example of that situation is the women's suffrage movement.  I do not believe that the suffragettes engaged in violence in their protests, but the police certainly did.  Accounts of police brutality toward the women arrested in nonviolent protests are now well document and better known.  Most of the police violence seems to have been done out of the view of the public.  Perhaps that is the reason that there was no corresponding violence by the protestors.

The early stages of gay rights protests were marred by violence, but the fight for marriage equality was remarkably free of violence by either the police or the protestors.  This dichotomy leads me to my thesis that the violence is primarily caused by the reaction of the police to the protests.  There are of course many cases of people looting and burning private property around protests but I think that much of that is being done not by the true protestors but by people taking advantage of the chaos.

The protests in Ferguson did not start out in a violent manner but certainly turned more violent when the police used military force to impose unnecessary restrictions on the protestors' rights to protest.  Where the police react calmly, the protests remain nonviolent.  Where the police react with force, violence ensues.

The police too often turn a situation from a nonviolent one into a violent one.  If you watch the video of the killing of Eric Garner, you are struck by the fact that Eric Garner was not being violent in any way, that the police outnumbered him and that there clearly was a nonviolent solution to the arrest.  Unfortunately, the police chose a violent one.

When the economic and political power of the establishment is challenged even by peaceful protestors, the establishment reacts with force.  Blue collar workers struggle for decent wages and working conditions was a challenge to the economic power of the establishment.  Blacks demanding an end to racial discrimination is a direct challenge to the power of a white establishment.  Women voting was a direct challenge to the male establishment's political control.  The Vietnam war protestors were directly challenging the military industrial complex.  The list goes on and on.  Even a peaceful challenge to established power results in a violent reaction by the establishment.

Nonviolence is the best approach.  How sad it is that the police (the agents of the establishment) seem unwilling or unable to choose nonviolence.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal