As police begin to hose capsaicin onto protesters as casually as weekend gardeners spray Roundup on weeds, and outrage on the left mounts in response, we have to continuously remind ourselves that this is how we win.

While I’ve never suffered a facefull of pepper spray, never been hogtied in a stress-position with zip-ties, and never been subdued with a riot baton, I have inhaled my share of the regime’s tear gas, been handcuffed the old-fashioned way, and been marched off to be ‘detained’ in its holding pens. And each time, I’ve felt outraged about the injustice; I’ve found myself apoplectic over the hypocrisy of having the First Amendment rights of my brothers and sisters and me abused by putative public servants.

However…

I once stood listening to John Lewis speak to a group of high school students from Atlanta Public Schools and received an epiphany from that implaccable hero of the Civil Rights Movement as he answered a student’s anxious question about the Congressman’s feelings about being beaten by police while practicing non-violent protest.

Lewis explained that he did not choose non-violence in hopes of avoiding violence, he chose it as the most effective form of direct action. He then helped these students (and me) understand that the non-violence of the Civil Rights Movement was pacifistic not passive—it was action, and as action it aimed to cause a reaction. They knew the police would use violence; they knew the police would use phony reasons to jail protestors, they knew that the forces arrayed against them would respond with the tactics of fascists. That is precisely what they wanted the world to see.

What Lewis helped me belatedly understand on that day in 2002 was the strategic sophistication of  the civil rights movement’s direct action campaigns. Lewis and the SCLC wanted the American people to learn what black folks in America already knew from long experience: The structure of the system they sought to overthrow (in their case Jim Crow and segregation specifically, racism and social discrimination more broadly) was only cosmetically part of the American self-perception of democratic commitments; that beneath the thin patina of legitimacy and ‘rule of law’[1]lay the ugly brown shirts of power, privileged domination, paranoid authority, and ravening will to force.

As I now understand things, the whole point of a mass mobilization or a direct action campaign must be to push the regime to react; to invite the implicit authoritarianism underlying bourgeois and capitalist institutions.That is how and why Dr. King got himself arrested repeatedly. That is how and why John Lewis (who, by the way, was foolishly denied and opportunity to speak at Occupy Atlanta) got his skull cracked–repeatedly: To call witness both to the injustice and to the impulse to violence and fascism inherent in the system.

So we need to support the will of the Occupiers to keep pushing the regime to react. We need to stay focused and not become unnerved by the media’s depictions of lawlessness, chaos, and anarchy. It is neither surprising nor exceptional that corporate America’s media will use propaganda and disinformation to distort the public image of the movement.

And yes, certainly some of the actions of some Occupiers are counterproductive (maybe[2]), but we don’t have to add our voices of criticism to those of the reactionary forces calling attention to these anomalies–the halfwit tools in the grassroots right do well enough on their own as they distribute stories at the speed of light all around the boobosphere every time someone within half a mile of an Occupy site pees on a bush. Meanwhile the corporate media stands poised to divide the movement and sow seeds of discord; we’ve got to be smarter than to let ourselves fall prey to this well-worn tactic.

For those of us not on the ground at Occupation sites, our job now is to aggressively publicize every documented act of violence and anti-democratic ‘law enforcement’ perpetrated at the behest of and in service to the American corporate regime.

Call attention to media distortion but always keep in mind that they well know what we should all be aware of: this is the most potent uprising against the status quo we have seen since the heroes of the civil rights movement stood their ground in the 50s and 60s; this is the most vibrant and largest uprising against the corporate imperium any of us have seen in our lifetimes; they are scared.

We can win. We can change the world. Corporations have occupied our democracy long enough.

But if what we say about them is true, then change will not come without violent resistance from those who are served by the status quo (and those who believe they are or hope they will be).

If what we say about them is true, truncheons and brownshirted mayhem will be deployed. If our cause is as direly needed as we claim it to be, we should be ready to face it.

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

~ Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America in 1918 [3]

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[1] The cynical stance of entrenched bourgeois power is always thus: Sadly we have no choice but to countenance status quo arrangements of injustice [and indeed safeguard them] until the—unfortunately—slow process of [phonily legalistic proceduralist] ‘change’ and ‘reform’ can work its way through the proper channels—so sorry. The deferral of justice is unfortunate, but the democratic rule of law is…well…sticky.

[2] Don’t uncritically assume that everything can be accomplished through non-violent direct action; there is a dynamic interaction between non-violent protest and deliberate acts of provocation. More about which here.

[3] Okay. The actual quote is “First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you”; the quote is usually—and inaccurately attributed to Gandhi who apparently never said anything of the kind…

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• A Blueprint for Our Time, Our Cause, Our Victory (charlog.me)
• Pepper Spray Story From UC Davis Will Not Go Quietly Into The Night (themoderatevoice.com)
• How Occupy can heed lessons of civil rights movement (thegrio.com)