civil disobedience – RI Future

April 19, 2016April 19, 2016

I took a 10-hour bus trip to get arrested, and would do it again

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Riding down to Washington D.C. Friday on the overnight Greyhound bus, the idea of getting arrested loomed as a possibility. By Saturday morning, it was an inevitability.

More than 100 people from all over the country had gathered inside the Lutheran Church of the Reformation for a civil disobedience training just prior to joining thousands more to converge on the Capitol for a mass protest called Democracy Spring, the largest political protest in decades. There were folks from New Jersey, Tennessee, Georgia, and some who drove 24 hours straight from rural Texas just to be there for one day.

Their reasons for coming varied. Whether they were protesting against voter suppression, climate change inaction, racial inequality, or Citizens United, all were there because money is the driving force in American politics, democracy is a farce, and “We, the people” have no voice in our government.

The training facilitators explained the potential outcomes of the arrest process based on our chosen levels of disobedience. Most arrestees through the week had cooperated with the police and were detained only a few hours. Some resisted arrest by refusing to stand and had to be lifted by four officers and carried away to waiting transport vehicles. A dozen very brave activists chained themselves to scaffolding inside the Capitol Building, and are now facing higher charges. I participated in the sit-in on the steps of the Capitol building with about 200 others, where we remained past the officers’ final warning to disperse.

I would be lying if I said it was not rather nerve-wracking for me being on the trespass side of the police line and waiting to see what happens next, but this was no harrowing experience. It is not often one gets arrested non-violently and in the presence of thousands of cheering supporters. It was a privilege for me to be able to put myself in a position where I could be arrested with the expectation that I would not be detained for a significant period of time, seriously injured, or killed. There were so many who wanted to be on the other side of the police barricade with us but could not because of their legal history, medical issues, or other complications. With us was a wheelchair-bound Vietnam veteran who had been arrested over 20 times in similar acts of civil disobedience in his lifetime.

In Washington D.C., there is a special provision enacted by the Supreme Court for people arrested en masse during non-violent protests, allowing for them to pay a small fine and be released, avoiding a court date. As disagreeable as this form of legal extortion is to me, it was the sensible alternative for those who were far from home. After nine hours of combined detainment and wait time, a non-refundable missed return trip (never buy round-trip to a protest!), and a $50 fine, I was free to leave with no future obligations.

The Declaration of Independence asserts that the authority of a government is derived from the consent of the governed, and whenever any form of government becomes destructive, it is the right and duty of the people to alter or abolish it. The classic treatise on this topic is Henry David Thoreau’s “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience,” which states that when a person’s conscience and the laws clash, that person must follow his or her conscience. What I did was not an act of bravery by any means; it was a small act of conscience. And though perhaps mostly symbolic, the stress on personal conscience and on the need to act now is briefly sated.

I cannot tell you that we changed the world last week, but I can tell you that every single individual who chanted “A better world is possible” over the course of those eight days truly believed it in their hearts. We still have hope for our future. It was sad to leave a setting like this, where everyone supports one another and shares the same ideal of a just and equitable society. But we go our separate ways knowing that somewhere down the road we will meet again, because we are people who are no longer content to wait passively for an opportunity to vote for justice. Voting for justice is as ineffective as wishing for justice. This is not to say that we all have an obligation to devote our lives to fighting for justice, but we do have an obligation not to commit injustice and not to give injustice our practical support. What we need to do is actually be just.

“It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.” -Assata Shakur

March 17, 2015

Highway protests then and now

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black lives matter — Highway Protest, 2014

Many Rhode Islanders remember the day when 250 protesters, described by police as “mostly non-violent” but “certainly out of hand” moved towards the highway. The intentions of the protesters were unclear, but the leader of the rally spoke like a radical.

“We need a revolution,” he said

“The rally escalated to a march,” said Raymonde Wolstenholme, one of those arrested, “when someone with a bullhorn suggested that the group head for the highway, saying, ‘No one is seeing us here. Let’s go to 95, and maybe the governor will drive by and see us.’”

The police moved in and made seven arrests, charging them all with disorderly conduct. All were processed and released with a summons to be in District Court a couple weeks later. Due to the intercession of the mayor, who said, “These are normally law-abiding citizens… I do not feel it would serve any purpose to increase the difficulties and suffering of these people,” all charges were dropped.

The year was 1991.

Rhode Island was in the middle of the RISDIC crisis. The Rhode Island Share and Deposit Indemnity Corporation was a financial institution insurance program with a name that made it sound like a government institution, but in reality it was a private agency, and it was out of money. Thousands of people had their life savings frozen, perhaps lost. Many of the people affected were elderly, their hard earned retirement savings gone.

The new Governor, Bruce Sundlun, made some unpopular moves to rescue the life savings of the depositors, even as rumors mounted of elderly people losing their homes, forced to eat cat food to survive or even taking their own lives. To help get depositors their money back, Sundlun formed DEPCO, Depositors Economic Protection Corporation, and put Richard H. Gaskill in charge as Executive Director.

In September of 1991 Gaskill planned a $2,000 party that “was intended to bring DEPCO employees and employees from the closed Central and Rhode Island Central credit unions together in an informal atmosphere to meet and share ideas.” [Providence Journal; August 27, 1991] Depositors were outraged. Jack Kayrouz, head of Citizens for Depositors’ Rights Organization, representing those whose savings were at stake, described the party as “Arrogance.”

“This (party) tells us what kind of people are running our economy,” Kayrouz said. “They’re not made of flesh and blood. They’re made of precious metal. They’re immune to the suffering of the depositors, the taxpayers and the elderly. We need human beings in charge. We need a revolution.“

Citing “adverse publicity” the party was cancelled, but protesters gathered outside The Rhode Island Central Credit Union on Jefferson Boulevard in Warwick at 7pm anyway and blocked traffic for about two hours. That’s when “the rally escalated to a march,” the protesters headed towards the highway, and the police made seven arrests. From the Providence Journal:

Herbert Schoettle, 65, of Warwick was arrested for disorderly conduct after he put a chair in the middle of Jefferson Boulevard and sat down.

Others arrested on the same charge when they tried to enter the ramp onto 95 were: Thomas J. DeAngelis, 65, of Cranston, Ertha DeAngelis, 60, also of Cranston, Steven J. DiPalma, 37, of Coventry, Raymonde Wolstenholme, 68, of Burrillville, Donald Wolstenholme, 67, of Burrillville and Margaret H. Fitzgerald, 32, of Coventry.

“We never made it to the highway,” said Steven J. DiPalma, when I called him at his home, “As a matter of fact, you want to hear the stupidest thing? This is stupid. I wasn’t even picked up. My fiancé at the time [Margaret H. Fitzgerald] was. They grabbed her… they didn’t grab her… They just escorted her onto the bus. She wanted me to hold her pocketbook, and I didn’t want to hold her pocketbook, so I actually followed her onto the bus, but then I couldn’t get off the bus.”

“So you ended up getting arrested with her?” I asked, “That’s romantic.”

“Yeah, well, once you’re on the bus you’re on the bus.”

They were married shortly after, and are still together.

I asked what he thought of the Black Lives Matter protest in Providence last November that resulted in the highway being blocked and seven arrests.

“Personally I think it’s a stupid idea [to block the highway]. You can’t block a highway. First of all, there’s a lot of innocent drivers on the highway, just driving by. They don’t have any idea what’s going on. It’s a public safety issue.”

“But weren’t the people protesting with you intent on blocking the highway?” I asked, “That is why they were arrested.”

“I don’t think we were actually going to go block the highway, per se,” said DiPalma, “we were just going towards the highway, just to get media attention. That’s all we were trying to do. Get attention on the banking crisis of that time. We weren’t going to block a highway. We’re not suicidal!”

At the time of the arrests, Warwick Deputy Police Chief John J. Mulhearn said of the protestors, that, blocking traffic was “not the proper way to demonstrate. . . They cannot block major thoroughfares like that. It posed a dangerous situation for all involved.”

“This civil disobedience that you have is good,” says DiPalma today, “but it has to be within limits.”

I mentioned that I’m interested in this event because the treatment those arrested received then seems so different from the way those arrested in Providence are being treated today. I wanted to know if he thought there might be a racial component to the difference in treatment, but DiPalma didn’t see the difference as black versus white. To him it seemed to be about older versus younger defendants.

“The people in the crowd were mostly older people and middle aged people. We weren’t a young crowd of 20 year old people doing these things. We were just trying to get attention. We weren’t there to cause any harm to drivers.”

Ultimately the charges against DiPalma and the others were dropped. DiPalma’s brother, a recent law school graduate, represented him, but there was little to do once Warwick Mayor Charles Donovan asked that the charges be dropped. My brother, says DiPalma, “really just went with the flow. Nothing came of it.”

Now that he’s 61 years old, DiPalma isn’t the least bit ashamed of his actions back then, but he thinks he’s less likely to participate in a protest today. “If I had to do it again, at my age now, I don’t think I would be walking around on 95 or any place. I like to stay home and go to work.”

Speaking to Steven Krasner at the Providence Journal in 1991, Raymonde Walstenholme, who was 68 at the time of her arrest, said, “We’re not ashamed of what we did. We did nothing wrong.” [Providence Journal; August 28, 1991]

The two incidents, so similar yet so different, are difficult to compare, but some insights are possible. The protesters then were white, older and middle class. An economic crime had been committed against them, and the public, including politicians, were immediately moved to help. The protesters today are young, of color and hail from a variety of socio-economic backgrounds but tend towards lower middle class. The sympathies of the public and the politicians are not with them.

In fact, some politicians, riding a wave of public opprobriation, have gone so far as to seek increased penalties and even classify the conduct of such protests as felonies. The seven people arrested in 1991 would have had very different lives if such legislation and been enforced against them.

February 18, 2014February 18, 2014

Hotel workers resort to civil disobedience today

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Workers at the Renaissance Hotel in downtown Providence have held rallies, marches and protests in calling attention to the poor conditions they have to endure at the Procaccanti Group-owned hotel. Today they will try civil disobedience.

An action outside the hotel is planned for 5pm, right across the street from the State House.

“After months of picketings, numerous federal government citations against Renaissance management for mistreatment of its workers, and refusal from The Procaccianti Group to address the workers demands, workers have planned an escalation of their struggle with a civil disobedience in front of the Renaissance Hotel,” said this Facebook event post. “Come support the workers in their struggle for justice! Come join the picket to support those partaking in the civil disobedience! Come tell the community at-large to honor the workers’ boycott of the Renaissance Hotel until justice is won! Come tell The Procaccianti Group to respect its workers demands!”

For almost a year, Renaissance Hotel workers have been fighting for better working conditions.

“Workers say the Hotel has always treated them poorly, but that conditions further deteriorated since the Procaccianti Group, a national hotel management company, took over the hotel in December 2012,” according to a press release from last year. “The Hotel’s top management remains the same. Employees say they have had enough. They are demanding a voice on the job.”

In January, the National Labor Relations Board issued a complaint against the hotel and scheduled a fact finding hearing in March.

“The NLRB Complaint alleges multiple acts of interfering with, restraining and coercing employee organizing rights, including interrogation and illegal promises of benefits to induce workers to abandon union organizing,” according to the Joey Quits website earlier this year. “The NLRB Complaint cites The Procaccianti Group’s TPG Hospitality affiliate for maintaining illegal work rules nationwide, including rules restricting communications and prohibiting employees from speaking to the media and the public about their jobs.

November 13, 2013November 14, 2013

Thomas Whall, civil disobedience and freedom of conscience

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A young student in New England stands up against a long held tradition in a public school for reasons of religious liberty and freedom of conscience. His example leads to a student uprising that is a model of non-violent civil disobedience. The actions of the student(s) polarizes the community, gains national attention and is used as an example of the encroachment of strange ideas infiltrating the American way of life by conservatives (and some liberals).

I’m not talking about my niece, 16-year-old Jessica Ahlquist of Cranston West High School in Rhode Island, 2011, I’m taking about 10-year-old Thomas J. Whall of the Eliot School in Boston, Massachusetts, 1859. What Whall did in 1859 and the public reaction to it provides an interesting comparison not only to the prayer banner case, but also to the recent controversy over the demonstrators who shouted down Police Commissioner Ray Kelly in a polarizing example of civil disobedience.

John T. McGreevy gives an excellent distillation of what has come to be known as the Eliot School rebellion in his book, Catholicism and American Freedom: A History (2003). Most of the information for this post come from McGreevy’s book, but a quick and dirty article on Wikipedia also has most of the salient details.

On March 7, 1859, Thomas Whall refused to recite the ten commandments because he was a Catholic, forbidden by his religion and his conscience to read aloud from a Protestant King James Bible. It should be noted that in Massachusetts at that time, such readings were required by law. At first, Whall’s father, the school principal and some school committee members attempted to work out some sort of compromise, but a school committee member, Micah Dyer, formerly of the anti-Catholic and appropriately named Know-Nothing Party, “insisted on adherence to the letter of the law.”

Poor Thomas Whall was in a terrible pickle. A priest, Father Bernardine Wiget, had warned the boy and several hundred of his classmates that reading aloud from the King James Bible brought the children into the damnable realm of “infidelity and heresy.” When called upon to read from the wrong book, Wiget insisted that the children instead bless themselves and recite the Catholic Bible versions from memory. Wiget even threatened to read aloud from the pulpit the names of any boys who failed in their Catholic duties.

Emboldened, and perhaps more fearful of being named in church as a sinner than actually suffering eternal damnation, Whall stuck to his guns in school, and for his troubles an assistant principal, McLaurin F. Cooke, beat the boy’s hands with a rattan stick for thirty minutes, “until they were cut and bleeding.”

Such was Whall’s punishment for his civil disobedience. In solidarity, first 100 and then 300 boys were sent home from the school for refusing to follow their lessons. Some even ripped the offending Protestant passages from their schoolbooks in a fit of wanton public vandalism.

Whall and his father sued Cooke for “excessive force.” Cooke’s defense attorney asked, during the trial, “Who is this priest who comes here from a foreign land to instruct us in our laws?” and added, “the real objection is to the Bible itself, for, while that is read daily in our schools, America can never be Catholic.”

Whall became a hero to the Catholic community throughout the United States. Just as Jessica Ahlquist received a scholarship from grateful atheists and humanists from all over the world, so did Whall receive tributes, such as “…a goblet from the Cathedral schools of Covington, Kentucky, and gold medals from nativity in New York City and St. Mary’s in Alexandria, Virginia.”

Conservative Republican newspapers were less impressed, comparing Catholicism to the “monster institution of human slavery.” A leading Boston abolitionist claimed that if Protestant Christianity is removed from our nation’s schools, “…we shall convert the schools of the Puritans into heathen temples…” In other words, chaos, and a complete collapse of everything we in America hold dear.

Given that there are large differences between the situation Whall found himself in and the Ray Kelly talk at Brown University, was Whall’s civil disobedience the correct response? Should Whall have, as so many people have said concerning the protesters at Brown University, simply advocated for change within the rules established by the school and the government?

Further, given the hard won history of Catholic religious freedom in the United States why do so many conservative and Catholic commentators so strenuously argue, even today, against the righteousness of Jessica Ahlquist’s lawsuit? Bloggers Justin Katz and Travis Rowley and radio show shock jock John DePetro, all Catholics, have come out against both Jessica Ahlquist and the protesters at Brown. I am sure they will see no resemblance between three cases I am citing, but that’s my point: Is it intellectually and morally honest to pick and choose what instances of conscience and protest are good and proper based only on our pre-established prejudices?

DePetro and others love to spread the lie that Jessica Ahlquist only did what she did for the money, as if the scholarship money was the ultimate goal. Would these people be as willing to claim that Thomas Whall protested and endured punishment simply to receive golden goblets and medals? Such a charge is ridiculous, yet prejudices we should all be familiar with from our history still cloud the perceptions of some.

How easily those opposed, for political and religious reasons, forget the lessons of our past. Compare, for instance, the term “Catholic aggression” to the oft used “atheist agitator.”

“We are opposed to Romanism, but not to Romanists,” said Reverend Fuller back in 1857, intimating that good Catholics, like silent atheists and Humanists today, knew their place. The lie back then was that America was a Protestant country, with no room for Catholics or other religious minorities, unless they were silent and willing to settle for second class citizenship. A similar lie is being perpetrated today, that America is a Christian country.

It is not.

America was founded by white people, but we are not a nation of white people.

America was founded by men, but we are not a nation of men.

America was founded by Christians and deists, but we are not a nation of Christians and deists.

10-year-old Thomas Whall is a classic American hero. He practiced non-violent civil disobedience, and fought for freedom of conscience. His sacrifice and his victories went a small way towards making our country more true to its essential ideals and his efforts should be remembered by Catholics and non-Catholics alike, but more importantly, we should not be so quick to dismiss those who carry on the tradition of Thomas Whall today.

We need them now as much as we ever did.

May 23, 2013May 24, 2013

Teacher: Keep Gist and state will see civil disobedience

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“If you want mass civil disobedience from your teachers, go ahead and renew Gist’s contract,” said Brian Chidester, a teacher in the Bristol Warren school district during an impassioned speech at a teacher rally Monday. The state Board of Education begins debating the embattled education commissioner’s contract tonight.

Chidester said he is prepared to lead such an action, if the Board and Governor Chafee renew Gist’s contract. He cited the recent victory for Seattle teachers whose successful boycott of standardized tests led the district to allow high schools to choose whether or not to use the test.

Note that he got some pretty good applause.

He also posted to his blog an ‘Open Letter to Chafee and Mancuso: Dump Gist‘ which was was cross-posted to SocialistWorker.org.

January 24, 2013January 24, 2013

Environmental Disobedience

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For those of you trapped in caves, the weather has been getting unruly of late. 2012 was the latest in a long string of very hot years, the hottest on record in fact. It brought with it extreme drought, raging wildfires and Superstorm Sandy. The accumulated damage is still being tabulated but it will be in the hundreds of billions of dollars and countless lost lives. Climate scientists, conservative by nature and cowed by bombastic and well funded deniers, have finally grown so alarmed with the rapid progression of global warming that they are sticking their necks out and attributing the extreme weather to climate change.

Hallelujah! Now armed with overwhelming science and growing public support, it’s time for environmentalists (by which I mean everyone who would like to have a habitable planet) to get unruly, too. That appears to be the rationale behind my employer the Sierra Club’s recent decision to endorse civil disobedience for the first time in its 120 year history. As our national executive director Michael Brune says in his recent “From Walden to the White House” letter:

“For civil disobedience to be justified, something must be so wrong that it compels the strongest defensible protest. Such a protest, if rendered thoughtfully and peacefully, is in fact a profound act of patriotism. For Thoreau, the wrongs were slavery and the invasion of Mexico. For Martin Luther King, Jr., it was the brutal, institutionalized racism of the Jim Crow South. For us, it is the possibility that the United States might surrender any hope of stabilizing our planet’s climate…

We are watching a global crisis unfold before our eyes, and to stand aside and let it happen — even though we know how to stop it — would be unconscionable. As the president said on Monday, “to do so would betray our children and future generations.” It couldn’t be simpler: Either we leave at least two-thirds of the known fossil fuel reserves in the ground, or we destroy our planet as we know it. That’s our choice, if you can call it that.”

Fight, or resign ourselves to a climate that threatens civilization as we know it: it really isn’t much of a choice is it? Sierra Club and numerous other organizations have been using traditional grassroots and institutional advocacy for decades to fight climate change, and it hasn’t been enough. Others like Bill McKibben’s 35o.org and many individuals have already crossed the line of civil disobedience in the effort to save the planet. It’s about time we all stand as one and make it clear that our halfhearted and incremental progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions is unacceptable.

With that in mind, let’s do it. On February 17th, there is a massive climate action rally planned and you’re invited. This will be the biggest such rally ever held and should draw more than 25,000 people to the White House to tell President Obama among other things that the Keystone XL Pipeline must not be allowed to proceed.

A bus or buses will be going down to D.C., cars full of people too. Can you make it? You can pledge your attendance and find out more information on how to get down there by following this link.