The Largest Incident Of Civil Resistance This Century Just Happened In The US: Here’s What You Need To Know
By Dylan Lazerow
Perched in the media RV for what was being planned as the largest incident of US mass civil disobedience this century, I began writing this piece. The day before, I had spoken with one full time marcher, who, with her 13 year old son, was walking the entire length of the 140 mile march from the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia to the Freedom Bell in Washington DC.
One marcher, who has a spinal injury so severe that a majority of people with his condition cannot walk distances longer than a mile — did 85 miles and told me after that he felt greater than he’s felt ever in his life, with a huge smile on his face.
As someone who got involved in Democracy Spring during its final push towards the march and subsequent, historic actions in DC, I was amazed by the range of people who came from across the country to march and participate in the week of sit ins.
This whole experience was surreal — I had studied the sit in and teach in movements of the sixties several years back in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan — and here I was taking part in historic sit ins with the most US Capitol arrests in history and the largest civil disobedience action this century.
Day after day, we took back the peoples’ house with mass sit-ins but it was the relationships I was able to build with the barebones staff, numerous volunteers, marchers, and the many folks who joined us for the sit-ins that were of the most significance. These are friends I’ll now have for the rest of my life regardless of when Congress takes action to establish free and fair elections and end the big money corruption of our political system.
What we have begun to do with this campaign is merge the decades-long issue of state sanctioned disenfranchisement of black and brown voters with money out of politics. In DC, for the day of the sit ins that centered black lives, we connected with BLM DC, Empower DC, Free DC and other groups focused on local DC issues like police brutality, public housing, and the fight for DC statehood.
Lots of people from around the country found family in a group of a few thousand that commonly believes that we can do better — that we ought not keep black voters out of the ballot box, that we ought to establish permanent protection for the 11 million undocumented people in this country, that we need to reign in our war machine that brings violence and devastation to much of the world, that we must reverse the work of the fossil fuel industry whose business it is to destroy our planet — that we deserve a Congress that does its job.
The truth is I liked being with people who had both had enough and were willing to do something about it. It felt good to get endorsements from Talib Kweli, Noam Chomsky, and Frances Fox Piven, to march and sit in and have casual conversation with Rosario Dawson, Gaby Hoffman, and Ben Cohen. Being joined by 1400+ people who were willing to be taken into police custody if their government did not do justice for its most stepped on and most marginalized people was transformational.
I’m looking forward to higher sacrifice and higher disruption actions that will bring light to the corporate purchasing of the political process in the US and the gutting of as well as the urgent need to restore the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And I am looking forward to further invasions of the rotunda, further US Capitol takeovers, and to initiate a wave of state capitol building shutdowns as we demand in this country a democracy for, by, and of the people. It is difficult and important to recall that democracy in this country was never set up to include the participation and protection of indigenous people, of black people, of women, of queer, of transgender and of gender nonconforming people, and so it is time for us to call out that reality and catch up to the year we are in. I am saying enough already. Join me in saying it — it is liberating. Enough!
Dylan Lazerow is currently National Field Organizer at Democracy Spring. He is also a Core Team Member at The Relational Center, Movement-Building Trainer at IfNotNow and Momentum, and Coach at IRIE Institute. His belief in revolutionary love and empowering young people to take control of their lives and the conditions in their communities informs his work as an anti-racist coach, artist, community organizer, and youth development specialist.
