"Sacrifice...someone else."
I get it, I do.
I also remember that Saul Alinsky, the organizer demonized and feared by the right wing for decades, made it simple: The purpose of any action is to gain allies for your cause, and the real action in the response of the enemy.
So I see the logic. Break some windows, spray some paint and provoke a police response, because you know that the retaliation is going to come down on the folks who came peacefully. They'll get shot in the face with tear gas canisters, bashed with clubs, maced and dragged through the streets to jail. Images like that will generate sympathy and shift public opinion against the corporate monsters wrecking our society.
That's the enemy response you want.
And again, I get it. I get the masks, too. Who wants to get the crap beaten out of them and arrested? I sure don't. And if the peaceful protesters need to get woken up, why not give them a nudge, right? And if it makes the news, it's all worth it, right?
But there's the problem. The news is selective. And I'm not talking about FOX, here, I'm talking about it all.
News has to sell , so it has to grab John and Jane Q Public 's attention. And these days, it has about 10 seconds of air time or one paragraph of print to do it.
You'll get attention, all right. But not time. So the the story you hope for: "Clashes with Police Lead to Arrests of Occupy Wall
Street Peaceful Protesters Demonstrating Against Corporate Greed"
will be cut into this soundbite: "Police Fight Violent Protesters".
There will be no sympathetic images, and no mention of the goals of or reasons for the protest. That's the enemy response you will get.
Public opinion will not change in your favor, it will move against it. You will repel the allies you need to gain.
What shook up Bank of America more, losing a few windows, or seeing $60 billion move into credit unions in a month? I'm thinking it was the money, and that started moving because OWS was able to fill the soundbite with a simple message: "The banks are crooks."
And that happened because John and Jane Q. Public saw people they could identify with taking to the street to be heard. A common theme in all non-FOX reporting has been: "these are people from all walks of life". And that has moved public opinion. That is why the term "99 percent" had moved from the street to the news to popular culture in just two months.
But John and Jane do not, and will not, identify with what will be portrayed as mindless violence, not matter what the real aim is. It will gain us more enemies than allies.
Non-violence is a tactic. And it is the most effective tool possible for shifting public opinion in a society dominated by mass media.
Non-violent action may not be the most personally satisfying, I know. We all want to be Batman; we all want to grab the bad guys where it hurts most.
But this is about winning justice for all, not instant gratification for us. The crooks who put their own satisfaction ahead of their moral obligations are the one who got us into this mess in the first place.
And besides, we can get them where it hurts them the most: their wallets. Again, not by forcing them to pay for window replacements and new paint jobs, they make enough money to replace every window and ATM they own in the time it took you to read this sentence.
But OWS has exposed the corporate powers for what they are. They are frightened, because they are has made them feel the wrath of their customers, and they can see that for every one of the hundreds of thousands who voting with their wallets now, there are millions who will vote the same way in 2012.
We need to keep it that way. More brave people are going to get hurt before this is over. If we want their bravery to mean anything, we need to keep the focus on the pain they are willing to endure, instead of the damage others are willing to inflict.