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The Jaws of Victory

By Brian Dominick at Nov 20, 2011

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There's an 8-minute video making the rounds of the left corner of social media networks, and even seeping into the mainstream. The popular version of it is titled "Police Pepper Spray Peaceful UC Davis Students". As advertised, the first few minutes show a remarkably gratuitous (and severe) pepper spraying of students who are passively sitting on the ground, followed by their arrests. It's a particularly brutal incident, but nothing we haven't seen before, really. Cops do bad things to peaceful protesters. If you didn't know that, here's more proof.

The first five or ten times I saw this video posted by friends on Facebook and Google+ pages, I didn't even bother looking. As a street medic with tons of hours logged watching police brutalize nonviolent demonstrators, this kind of protest porn doesn't even arouse my interest. I'm sick of watching "our side" get its collective ass kicked over and over.

Finally, I saw a version of the video posted that noted something special happens at the end, so I watched the whole clip. By minute six, my jaw was on the ground. And not because of how bad the pepper spraying was. I almost don't want to spoil this for you, so if you want to watch the video now, here it is; check it out then scroll down.



After the police carry off the handful of protesters who endured this horrific pepper spraying, something very typical starts happening. The rest of the protesters begin to chant "Shame on you!" at police. I've heard this chant, or its shorter version, "Shame! Shame! Shame!", more times than you can imagine. What I've never quite seen is it evolving the way it did in this incident. On the UC Davis campus two days ago, the egregious treatment of fellow student activists turned the observing audience into a hive-minded, nonviolent mob. Without any apparent coordination or instruction, what appears to be a crowd of a couple hundred slowly envelopes on three sides a squad of police brandishing pepper-ball guns and more capsicum canisters. At a tortoise's pace, the concerted crowd pushes the entire gaggle of cops off campus. Then the protesters celebrate, deservedly.

We should all be celebrating. This is a truly awesome event. Having spent 20 years attending demonstrations, including as a street medic at some of the most drastic clashes and standoffs between police and protesters in the days of global justice movement, I can attest that this is a highly unusual occurrence in North America. It reminded me of the tactic Zapatistas used to use to drive the Mexican army out of the autonomous communities, or even to occupy military bases! (That's from back when occupy meant you actually took over something of value to your opponent.)

Further, it is a testament to the power of nonviolent counter-aggression. I choose that term carefully. The action of the protesters in the video is clearly aggressive -- they push the cops backward by advancing against them -- but it is a response to an initial aggression. It's not pacifism in the fundamentalist sense, but it is nonviolent, it is intuitively democratic, and it is awesome. Pacifists and nonviolence fetishists often claim it's "authoritarian" to force one's will on another, even if it's a collective will. But they'd be hard-pressed, I imagine, to make a case that what happened in this scenario is wrong, even though it's just as coercive in this sense as had the act been carried out violently.

At the same time, I defy any Black Bloc participant to show me a better example of routing police violently. Now, I've seen violent dispersal of cops by protesters before, and I've even celebrated it in the right circumstances, such as when it opens a passage for nonviolent activists to access a target, or when it protects vulnerable or wounded fellow activists from police violence or arrest. But at least as often as not, routing attempts fail, leading to ugly clashes that give the cops and their corporate media stenographers an allegedly plausible excuse for the crackdown.

The optimal street tactic -- when we need to be in the streets, which I think is far rarer than most protest-oriented activists want to admit -- is aggressive or counter-aggressive nonviolence. We need a movement made up of people willing to face off police in overwhelming numbers without raising so much as a fist against them, using intimidation and mass shaming to push them onto their heels.

But what will it take to get activists to stop spectacularizing defeat by posting such videos on the Internet with complaints about how badly the cops treat us? When will we stop sniveling about and focusing on an initial defeat in the shadow of victory? Publicizing that police treat protesters badly has a purpose, but it's pretty marginal at this point. It's not news to the kind of people our movements really need to attract: not sheltered students and yuppie food-coop shoppers but working class and poor folks who are no more shocked by video of police violence than I am.

Showing the world that nonviolent direct action can address the matter better than civil suits, petitions, molotov cocktails, and YouTube exposures is so valuable to promoting the cause, only the Left could fuck it up when handed the perfect propaganda piece. Here we have on display an amazing tactic -- one that can and should be repeated nationwide even before the chemical weapons and batons get used! -- but what gets focused on is the initial defeat.

Shame! Shame! Shame! indeed.

Update: This story only gets better. Look at how the students forced their chancellor to leave campus in shame! (Scroll down to second video.)

Comment On This Blog Post  See All Comments (5)

72

Also agree

By Podur, Justin at Nov 25, 2011 16:42 PM
I had the exact same instincts as you did, but Tarek sent it to me over a chat and said "you really need to watch it to the end", and so I watched it and had the same reaction you did. It was quite remarkable.

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Cubby_alison_at_patterson_park

bravo!

By Romano, Alison at Nov 22, 2011 12:04 PM
nice. thanks for posting. made my day.

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Stephen_oct_2010

Courageous and Inspiring

By Roblin, Stephen at Nov 22, 2011 00:32 AM
Thank you Brian for sharing the video and your thoughts. The students show of courage is very much inspiring.

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Sitrin

fantastic!

By Sitrin, Marina at Nov 21, 2011 15:21 PM
Thanks for the full explanation. I too did not watch the entire thing, and had the almost exact same response. Fabulous! Lots can be learned and shared here!
Marina

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Antti

Excellent

By Jauhiainen, Antti at Nov 20, 2011 19:06 PM
Very, very important analysis, one which is important everywhere right now. Focusing on the stuff that helps us win is of crucial importance, and this lesson - and victory! - from UC Davis should and must not be forgotten.

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Comment_reply
As13jan09jm-58-2

Passive aggressive?

By JAMES, MICHAEL at Nov 22, 2011 13:15 PM
In an interview on Democracy Now (21 NOV 2011), one of the demonstrators at UC Davis who was pepper sprayed, said the protesters "encircled" the police.  I am not in any way
condoning the violent and clear over-reaction of the police, and erring on the side of caution to give the benefit of the doubt to both sides (not having been an actual on-the-ground eye witness myself - having only seen the Youtube video that is embedded in Brian's blog),
I wish to bring up the idea that the students, by "encircling" the police, may have baited a very nervous and volatile if not paranoid element into the fight or flight response and brought down on themselves un-necessary mayhem.  This I believe, is in line with Brian Dominick's comment: "when we need to be in the streets, which I think is far rarer than most protest-oriented activists want to admit..."
Undoubtedly, there is need to reclaim public space, but please let us heed the 
words of Randall Amster in his recent ZNet article: ‘Welcome Home: Building an Inclusive Movement for the 99 Percent’ from 18 November 2011:  “the aim should be to create processes based on the best practices of restorative justice, peacekeeping, and personal healing in order to promote points of contact and ongoing dialogue among all who find their way to the movement....we would do well to begin learning these skills straight away....”  I am suggesting that these best practices also include the most careful planning and meticulous skill building for occupying public space with riot-ready police so that paramount safety is continuous.

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5243

Re: Passive aggressive?

By Dominick, Brian at Nov 22, 2011 15:33 PM
Michael, I don't know the details of what happened either, with certainty. I'm definitely going to check out the DemNow interview. But the encircling that I'm talking about happened AFTER the pepper spraying, as you can see in the video. If some happened before, that clearly isn't what led to the pepper spraying, because you can see the cops attack protesters who were certainly not encircling or threatening them. But in any case, getting pepper sprayed or beaten is a risk the mob in this video was clearly willing to take. If the cops freaked out, it would have gotten uglier... but I don't think that's a reason NOT to do what was done here. I think what was done here is kind of purely gorgeous, without mitigation. I say that about very little in life.

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