There's a story in today's New York Times demonstrating yet again that direct action works:
From inside Mary Lee Ward’s small and sparsely furnished living room in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, it sounded Friday as if a block party was in full swing in the street below. Cars and trucks honked their horns as they passed and almost 200 voices could be heard cheering and chanting.
But this was no street party; it was not yet 9 a.m. and the crowd outside was there as a line of defense.
Ms. Ward — a tiny, soft-spoken 82-year-old — faced eviction by a city marshal on Friday morning, as the result of a subprime mortgage she took out in 1995. The lender, which filed for bankruptcy in 2007, had subsequently been investigated for predatory and discriminatory practices. And so neighbors, friends, housing advocates and supporters formed a thick human wall outside Ms. Ward’s small, gray house on Tompkins Avenue.
And it worked!
“The marshal will not be taking action today,” Ms. Robinson said over a bullhorn, as Ms. Ward stood by her side. Ms. Robinson vowed to negotiate with the deed holder to keep Ms. Ward in her home.
Ms Robinson is Ms. Ward's New York State Assemblywoman and a participant in the action.
Neighbors gathering to prevent an eviction is nothing new. It was commonplace in the Great Depression. Howard Zinn writes in A People's History:
All over the country, people organized spontaneously to stop evictions. In New York, in Chicago, in other cities--when word spread that someone was being evicted, a crowd would gather; the police would remove the furniture from the house, put it out in the street, and the crowd would bring the furniture back. The Communist party was active in organizing Workers Alliance groups in the cities. Mrs. Willye Jeffries, a black woman, told Studs Terkel about evictions:
A lot of 'em was put out. They'd call and have the bailiffs come and sit them out, and as soon as they'd leave, we would put 'em back where they came out. All we had to do was call Brother Hilton...Look, such and such a place, there's a family sittin' out there. Everybody passed through the neighborhood, was a member of the Workers Alliance, and one person would call. When that one person, came he'd have about fifty people with him. Take that stuff right on back up there. The men would connect those lights and go to the hardware and get gas pie, and connect that stove back. Put the furniture back just like you had it, so it don't look like you been out the door.
More recently, we remember the extraordinary action of the workers of Republic Windows (watch this video!), who seized their plant when it was about to be closed. The plant re-opened under new ownership with a union contract, and the former owner was charged with theft and money laundering.
In the summer of 2008, Zinn wrote an article for The Progressive in which he criticized the "election madness" sweeping the country. He reminded us that real change in achieved not by "two minutes in the voting booth," but by organizing and direct action:
Would I support one candidate against another? Yes, for two minutes—the amount of time it takes to pull the lever down in the voting booth.
But before and after those two minutes, our time, our energy, should be spent in educating, agitating, organizing our fellow citizens in the workplace, in the neighborhood, in the schools. Our objective should be to build, painstakingly, patiently but energetically, a movement that, when it reaches a certain critical mass, would shake whoever is in the White House, in Congress, into changing national policy on matters of war and social justice.
Let’s remember that even when there is a “better” candidate (yes, better Roosevelt than Hoover, better anyone than George Bush), that difference will not mean anything unless the power of the people asserts itself in ways that the occupant of the White House will find it dangerous to ignore.
The unprecedented policies of the New Deal—Social Security, unemployment insurance, job creation, minimum wage, subsidized housing—were not simply the result of FDR’s progressivism. The Roosevelt Administration, coming into office, faced a nation in turmoil. The last year of the Hoover Administration had experienced the rebellion of the Bonus Army—thousands of veterans of the First World War descending on Washington to demand help from Congress as their families were going hungry. There were disturbances of the unemployed in Detroit, Chicago, Boston, New York, Seattle.
In 1934, early in the Roosevelt Presidency, strikes broke out all over the country, including a general strike in Minneapolis, a general strike in San Francisco, hundreds of thousands on strike in the textile mills of the South. Unemployed councils formed all over the country. Desperate people were taking action on their own, defying the police to put back the furniture of evicted tenants, and creating self-help organizations with hundreds of thousands of members.
Without a national crisis—economic destitution and rebellion—it is not likely the Roosevelt Administration would have instituted the bold reforms that it did.
It's great to see the courageous Ms. Ward and her neighbors and comrades standing in solidarity to remind us how Zinn was right.
Kudos to Common Law, the organizer of the action.
Last minute Addendum:
Some may confuse "protest" with "direct action." If you're interested in the distinction, watch this Charlie Rose interview of Kossack David Graeber wherein Graeber does a superb job of explaining the distinction.