When civil disobedience gets crushed
What are we at risk of losing in our rush to disapprove of civil disobedience?
For those of you who follow my work it will not have gone unnoticed that I’ve spent the last few years documenting how peaceful protesters in the UK are being silenced, criminalised and given gobsmackingly long sentences for nonviolent civil disobedience. Today, my attention has been drawn to what is happening in the US in that regard. Spoiler alert: it is the same direction of travel as in the UK.
Last week, Timothy Martin, was convicted of two felony charges of conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States and damage to federal property. He faces up to five years in prison on each count. His crime? He put washable finger paint on the protective case of a Degas’s Little Dancer in the National Gallery.
This action is similar in characteristic to the UK Just Stop Oil climate activists who threw soup on the glass of Van Gogh’s sunflowers. That action left a lot of people bemused and spawned much outrage. Before the soup action, Just Stop Oil had been targeting oil and gas terminals, but those actions weren’t getting any meaningful press. It was only when two women threw soup on the painting that the media started to pay attention. I can only imagine that Timothy Martin’s action was motivated by the same frustration. He had to do something “outside of the box” to get his cause into the headlines. That neither Van Gogh’s Sunflowers or Degas’s Little Dancer were damaged is testament to the fact that these protesters are not completely unhinged. Their actions were carefully planned for maximum media exposure but to avoid any actual damage to these precious works of art.
Let us not forget that 100 years ago Mary Richardson, a suffragette took a meat chopper to the Rokeby Venus while it hung in the National Gallery. A little bit of washable finger paint and some soup is mild in comparison. Mary Richardson received a 6 month prison sentence for her crime. The soup throwers are currently serving sentences of 2 years and 20 months respectively. Recently, there was an appeal against their sentence length: they were unsuccessful. This does not bode well for Timothy Martin.
Civil disobedience is a fundamental pillar of a well functioning democracy. “If you cannot show dissent in a democracy, you no longer live in a democracy” is the line from Sean, one of the featured participants in my documentary The Line We Crossed. As UN Rapporteur, Michel Forst, confirmed to me in my interview with him, civil disobedience is a right that is protected under human rights conventions. The fact that civil disobedence is protected by an international covenant is an indicator that it is an important right, and one we might want to protect. I may be wrong about this, but my impression is that a lot of people are unaware that civil disobedience is a human right. When people take part in civil disobedience, they do so knowing there may be consequences. One of the golden rules of taking part in nonviolent civil disobedience as a protest tactic is that you do it publicly and that you own it. This is why, once the action has been taken, the action takers tend not to run away. There is a clear attempt by the US and UK to crack down on civil disobedience. Crushing civil disobedience by putting in place harsh anti-protest laws, removing legal defences for protesters and handing out draconian sentences is authoritarianism 101.
Sometimes we don’t realise how important something is until we’ve lost it.
I have to confess that when I first heard about the soup throwers I was as bemused as the rest of us. It’s only through my own personal journey of documenting protest actions and civil disobedience that I’ve come to understand it. And on that journey I’ve come to understand why it is important to hold back on any moral condemnation of acts of nonviolent civil disobedience. Through observing the clamping down on protesters taking part in civil disobedience, I’ve started to appreciate its value and why it is a right we need to preserve. Sometimes we don’t realise how important something is until we’ve lost it.
As macro world events take over it is easy to feel helpless to make change. Taking part in direct action gives people a sense of agency. So many of the activists I have followed have said to me that they “can’t just sit back and let this happen”, and this is what drives them to civil disobedience. Without human agency you are essentially reacting to life rather than living it. A lack of agency can lead to a sense of helplessness and hopelessness. When a state crushes dissent we lose agency.
While voting is an important part of the democratic process, it is only something we as citizens can do typically every few years. Using your democratic rights is something you should be able to do every day. Petitioning your government representative is of course something we can all do, but who amongst us has ever actually seen any material change from doing that? Some with access to the legal system and money can challenge those in power through the courts, but that is not an option for most people. Journalists and people with public platforms can use their pens and voices to call out injustice. Those routes are not available to all. Taking part in sit-ins or marching on the streets in protest is something everyone can do, or at least they used to be able to do. For Mahmoud Khalil that turned out not to be the case. In the US they have turned to an obscure law to deport him, despite his status as a green card holder.
The US and UK public and media were all for celebrating the right to protest when the Arab Spring was taking place, but they seem less keen to support it when it happens at home.
Nonviolent civil disobedience is like an art. It’s a human expression. Like art, not every act of nonviolent civil disobediance is going to appeal to everyone, but I now see it as an important form of artistic expression. I read today about Greenpeace activists who poured a blood red dye into a pond outside the US embassy in London to draw attention to the US sale of lethal weapons to Israel. The dye is biodegradable and so won’t cause any long term damage, but the red water is a powerful statement. As a result, Will McCallum, Co-Executive Director of Greenpeace UK, has been was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to cause criminal damage. This is a charge that carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.
Taking part in civil disobedience is not for everyone, and I am not suggesting that everyone should go out and commit an act of civil disobedience. There are consequences for doing it. But I am saying it is an important right that we must protect. Next time we find ourselves huffing and puffing in moral outrage because someone has committed a nonviolent act of civil disobedience that we don’t understand or we disagree with, perhaps we should take a moment instead to reflect on the statement it is making and think of the value and power of human agency.
My feature documentary about the crushing of protest rights will be released in cinemas and across community centres in the UK from 23rd June onwards. If you would like to use some of your human agency to petition your local screen to show it, you can do so by taking a minute to fill out this form.