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jenny_islanderI continue with my read-through of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder.
I warn you, first of all, that this may seem at first glance like more harrumphing about young people these days. But, as always, keep in mind that Snyder is a pragmatist. He describes what works, regardless of what button it may push. I will quote his first two paragraphs in full.
"Lesson 13: Practice corporeal politics. Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them.
"For resistance to succeed, two boundaries must be crossed. First, ideas about change must engage people of various backgrounds who do not agree about everything. Second, people must find themselves in places that are not their homes, and among groups who were not previously their friends. Protest can be organized through social media, but nothing is real that does not end on the streets. If tyrants feel no consequences for their actions in the three-dimensional world, nothing will change."
Whoof. As someone who can't stand up for longer than five minutes without sitting down for an hour afterward to recuperate from the pain, I feel deeply ambivalent about this.
However, Snyder is right. So if you can't get out there, find a group that is getting out there and do what you can to help.
I add a warning that Snyder does not: If somebody in the group wants you to agree with something that was illegal before tyranny, such as vandalism, back away, warn the group, and block them; that's probably a cop.
Back to the book: Snyder fills most of this chapter with an outline of what he calls "the one example of successful resistance to communism." He means Solidarity. I am trying to keep my posts shorter because one of the sites I post at automatically makes longer posts disappear and there is no appeal, so I strongly suggest that you look up Solidarity for yourself. Snyder's points are simple: Solidarity was supported by people who disagreed about a lot of things; and it was supported by public action.
He also notes that after the crackdown on Solidarity, the movement regained power, not through a thrilling tale in which valiant people broke into a government office and proclaimed freedom in a day--but because Solidarity did not give up, continued to maintain its cross-group ties, continued to fight in every public venue that it could, and became ubiquitous. Eight years later, tyranny was faced with the choice of exhausting its resources in an attempt at mass repression, or compromising with Solidarity. Solidarity demanded elections, and got them, and won. And that was the beginning of the Revolutions of 1989.
Remember, also, that getting eight hundred thousand people into the streets is one way to do it; finding five people on your neighborhood social media page who are just as angry as you are about the latest thing the school board is doing, agreeing to disagree about everything else, further agreeing to stay on topic, and attending the next school board meeting together is another. Both of them matter. In the words of William Meek Widener, with whom I disagree about a hell of a lot: Do what you can, with what you’ve got, where you are.
I warn you, first of all, that this may seem at first glance like more harrumphing about young people these days. But, as always, keep in mind that Snyder is a pragmatist. He describes what works, regardless of what button it may push. I will quote his first two paragraphs in full.
"Lesson 13: Practice corporeal politics. Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them.
"For resistance to succeed, two boundaries must be crossed. First, ideas about change must engage people of various backgrounds who do not agree about everything. Second, people must find themselves in places that are not their homes, and among groups who were not previously their friends. Protest can be organized through social media, but nothing is real that does not end on the streets. If tyrants feel no consequences for their actions in the three-dimensional world, nothing will change."
Whoof. As someone who can't stand up for longer than five minutes without sitting down for an hour afterward to recuperate from the pain, I feel deeply ambivalent about this.
However, Snyder is right. So if you can't get out there, find a group that is getting out there and do what you can to help.
I add a warning that Snyder does not: If somebody in the group wants you to agree with something that was illegal before tyranny, such as vandalism, back away, warn the group, and block them; that's probably a cop.
Back to the book: Snyder fills most of this chapter with an outline of what he calls "the one example of successful resistance to communism." He means Solidarity. I am trying to keep my posts shorter because one of the sites I post at automatically makes longer posts disappear and there is no appeal, so I strongly suggest that you look up Solidarity for yourself. Snyder's points are simple: Solidarity was supported by people who disagreed about a lot of things; and it was supported by public action.
He also notes that after the crackdown on Solidarity, the movement regained power, not through a thrilling tale in which valiant people broke into a government office and proclaimed freedom in a day--but because Solidarity did not give up, continued to maintain its cross-group ties, continued to fight in every public venue that it could, and became ubiquitous. Eight years later, tyranny was faced with the choice of exhausting its resources in an attempt at mass repression, or compromising with Solidarity. Solidarity demanded elections, and got them, and won. And that was the beginning of the Revolutions of 1989.
Remember, also, that getting eight hundred thousand people into the streets is one way to do it; finding five people on your neighborhood social media page who are just as angry as you are about the latest thing the school board is doing, agreeing to disagree about everything else, further agreeing to stay on topic, and attending the next school board meeting together is another. Both of them matter. In the words of William Meek Widener, with whom I disagree about a hell of a lot: Do what you can, with what you’ve got, where you are.
