Disrupting, Bullying, Intimidating, Being Unruly: Power & Civil Disobedience
It has been a devastating week in which the moral corruption of Republican Washington has been once again laid bare. Absolutely disgusting.
Believe survivors. Support women.” — Mayor Chris Taylor, facebook post, September 28, 2018“Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it.” ― Howard Zinn
“I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.” ― Martin Luther King Jr.
Mayor Christopher Taylor (with the hypocrisy of supporting women and survivors at Kavanaugh’s hearing but not in his own chambers), Chuck Warpehoski (with the hypocrisy of claiming the value of racial justice), and other council members have referred to community member disruptions of public meetings as bullying, intimidating, and disruptive. MLive reported that the crowd was “unruly”. A minority of Task Force members similarly claimed that community member interjections during meetings were adversarial, coercive, and enacting the same oppression as police. Community members, particularly white progressives, have frequently reinforced this narrative by telling activists to be quiet, wait our turn, remain civil, and be respectful.
Let me clarify — we do not disrupt to win Council’s approval. We know that we do not have it. We know that we cannot win it with polite responses because it is not our tone they oppose, despite what they say: it is our politics. They oppose the principles of anti-racism. They oppose our moral disagreement with the racist policies they enact. They use our tone and volume and timing and non-cooperation as an excuse to act against us. When they respond to our disruptions, we see and hear what they really value.
We disrupt Council meetings because what is happening is personal, visceral, painful — because it impacts our lives and the lives of those we love. Because we have the power and the will to say and do something in the presence of racism, so we must.
We disrupt because our elected and unelected officials routinely deny community members facing poverty and racialized violence the affirmation, agency, respect, or conditions to hear their experiences free of defensiveness — let alone implement the solutions they have proposed. Officials demand that we sit quietly and respectfully as they enact anti-Black policies that extend far beyond mere disrespect. Officials control when, how, and why people can speak and then say that we — the people they “represent” — refuse to cooperate. Officials do not acknowledge their own willful and intentional creation of conditions in which cooperation is neither possible nor desirable. Over and over they reinforce their own power and blame us for it.
So, we disrupt in order to publicly align ourselves with all people who are marginalized, whose voices officials attempt to silence, and whose needs have been dismissed by official policy.
We disrupt because officials routinely vote in direct contradiction to the overwhelming will of the people and then publicly shame people’s dissent.
We disrupt because in order to get any kind of meaningful response to calls or e-mails, one must be either a public official of some standing or have political leverage (such as the ability to produce massive public outcry) — and often even the latter produces silence.
We disrupt because in a city of 113,000+ people there are only ten spots for reserved public speaking time every other week. These spots must be reserved with the Clerk during business hours on a Monday and the subject must be related to something on the agenda; the agenda is determined exclusively by Council. If more than ten people call, the officials’ discretion determines who speaks and who does not. This is exclusionary.
We disrupt because reserved public speaking time happens only at the beginning of the meeting, before anyone is able to hear what council members think or how they will vote on a given subject. Therefore, no one can respond directly to what officials say or do or how they vote.
We disrupt because the only other time for the public to speak in a regular City Council meeting is at the end, which often comes at midnight. Public comment comes after final, binding decisions have already been made — I ask, then, what is the point? It seems, only that our anger, disappointment, and frustration toward officials will be expressed when no one is left watching.
We disrupt because public hearings with unlimited public comment happen only after an ordinance has been passed forward — Council does not allow a public hearing about topics of interest to the community prior to writing its own solutions. This prevents the public from participating in the solution-making process; forcing us to comment only on what Council approves.
We disrupt because City Council created a volunteer, multi-racial Task Force of community members to propose community oversight of police and despite overwhelming and nearly exclusive support for the Task Force’s ordinance, City Council voted against it. When we participate, our interests and needs are ignored and publicly discredited.
We disrupt because these specific conditions are undemocratic and refuse participatory community involvement. These conditions allow officials, if uninterrupted, to make false statements, to undermine the credibility and work of community members, to promote racist policies, to vote against the expressed desires of the community members they represent, and to undermine community voice by stating that it is “out of order” — where order is defined by the very people who benefit from it. We disrupt because disruption is one of a few powerful means by which we can declare that what is happening is racist — that it is wrong.
Mayor Taylor seems to believe survivors and support women only when they remain within the confines of what he has prescribed as appropriate conduct, or when that conduct is aimed at his own political enemies. Appropriate conduct conveniently allows his voice, and the voices of his mostly white, mostly wealthy peers, to retain absolute institutional power and authority.
City Council meetings are where democracy and anti-racist politics go to die.
So, yes — we disrupt.
But the bullies are the white men who make rules that reinforce their power.
Intimidation is two armed police officers standing behind us at every meeting.
Violence is council threatening anyone who steps out of line, raises their voice, or opposes their “order” with arrest.
Yes, we refuse to be ruled. Anything else is complicity.
