civil disobedience

International Symbol of Protest

Margret Atwood’s handmaids have become a global symbol of protest:

When US vice-president Mike Pence visited Philadelphia on 23 July, he was greeted by a now familiar sight: a wall of women dressed in scarlet cloaks, with oversize white bonnets obscuring their faces.

The outfit worn by Margaret Atwood’s handmaids in her 1985 dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale and its recent TV adaptation has been in evidence from Argentina to the US, the UK and Ireland, and has emerged as one of the most powerful current feminist symbols of protest, in a subversive inversion of its association with the oppression of women.

Margret Atwood says to The Guardian

“The handmaid’s costume has been adopted by women in many countries as a symbol of protest about various issues having to do with the requisitioning of women’s bodies by the state,” she told the Guardian.

“It has even been used on posters in the context of the Trump-Putin relationship, with Trump as the handmaid. Because it’s a visual symbol, women can use it without fear of being arrested for causing a disturbance, as they would be for shouting in places like legislatures.

This is an interesting example of how popular media are creating a symbol of protest that can be readily understood as such across the world.

Posted on by Mathias Klang

Teaching New Media & Activism this term

So the term has already started and teaching is on! Since I am fortunate enough to teach topics that excite me I am always energized by the beginning of term. This is good since it masks my stress at getting everything together in time before the first day of class. The latter is more of a goal than a reality but for the most part it seems to go pretty well.

This term I am teaching New Media Society and my activism course, Communication and Social Mobilization, the links are to the syllabi. Check them out and feel free to send me feedback as I am always trying to update my courses in almost every way.

Posted on by Mathias Klang

Democracy & Protest

This semester I’m teaching one of my favorite courses on social movements! Teaching is always a tricky thing but it gets easier when what you say in the classroom can be connected with the world around the students. So teaching people about activism and social movements in the current political climate is going to be awesome!

Last weekend was the Women’s March which gathered huge amounts of people all over the world – even in Antartica! The main event was, naturally, in Washington but the sister marches were well attended. While the big marches are spectacular and easy enough to join I am always impressed by the smaller marches. You are very visible in a small march. Think about the town of Onley (Virginia) it has a population of 516 and still 50 people marched! Thats impressive!

Here are some pictures from the Philadelphia march

Donated signs for the oral history project

When introverts march…

March Like a Girl

Tweet Women as Equals


One of the goals of my course is to teach how a group of people with similar ideas form into a more permanent body and become a social movement. The Women’s March is an excellent example of how emotions like anger and concern can become a protest – and there is an ongoing discussion about what happens next. Will this become a movement?

Like I said – teaching is so much more interesting with relevant examples all around us.

Posted on by Mathias Klang

A decade of Web 2.0

I am a big fan of the online journal First Monday so its always a thrill when I have an article published with them. This time it’s even more fun since it’s a special issue A decade of Web 2.0 — Reflections, critical perspectives, and beyond

In 2008, First Monday published a special issue entitled “Critical perspectives on Web 2.0” — bringing together a diverse group of scholars to “expose, explore and explain the ideological meanings and the social, political, and ethical implications of Web 2.0” This special issue examines many concerns that have evolved over time with the greater use and abuse of the Web and its incredible integration into global society.

The list of articles is really cool

Our article on the Domestication of Online Activism has been a long time in the writing process so I am very happy that it’s finally out!

Posted on by Mathias Klang

Teaching UC Davis about the Streisand Effect

Remember this?

Thats right. Its 2011, a campus police officer at UC Davis casually pepper spraying peaceful non-threatening protesters. This is an act of pure sadism. There is no threat to the helmeted, armed police. So why the exaggerated use of force? But don’t take my word for it.

Here is what’s on Wikipedia

Sometime around 4:00 pm, two officers, one of whom is named John Pike, began spraying Defense Technology 56895 MK-9 Stream, 1.3% Red Band military-grade pepper spray at “point-blank range” in the faces of the unarmed seated students. The pepper spray used, according to various websites, has a recommended minimum distance of six feet.[48] Bystanders recorded the incident with cell phone cameras, while members of the crowd chanted “Shame on you” and “Let them go” at the police officers.[49] Eleven protesters received medical treatment; two were hospitalized.[50][51][52]

And here is an analysis of the situation and the report of the event.

Its totally embarrassing for UC Davis. Police brutality, harming the students you claim to educate, arming campus police as paramilitaries, overreacting to peaceful protest etc etc.

Thankfully the internet reacts. There were huge amounts of articles but also memes. Don’t forget the memes.

and graffiti

Turns out that the university was not too pleased. They paid of the bad cop instead of punishing him. Be that as it may. But now we find out that:

“The University of California at Davis shelled out some $175,000 to consultants to clean up the school’s online reputation following a 2011 incident in which campus police pepper-sprayed student protesters,according to documents cited by the Sacramento Bee.” (Washington Post)

Charming use of money. Lets make sure that UC Davis learns all about the Streisand Effect

The Streisand effect is the phenomenon whereby an attempt to hide, remove, or censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely, usually facilitated by the Internet.
Lets make sure that the images that prove the callous nature of that police officer, that police department, and that university are not easily forgotten.
Posted on by Mathias Klang

Humor as Disobedience

The class today was on the use of humor in political protest. Last week we discussed the fundamentals of civil disobedience and this week the students presented different examples of the uses of humor.

So the basics of disobedience are usually described as having different components to differentiate them from “just” lawlessness. For example H. A. Bedau argued in Civil Disobedience in Focus that in order for disobedience to be legitimate it should be

“committed openly…non-violently…and conscientiously…within the framework of the rule of law…with the intention of frustrating or protesting some law, policy or decision…of the government.”

As the examples of humor show, they fail many of these components and do not pass as civil disobedience. In most cases they are either not breaking any rule, regulation, policy, or social norm and in other cases they are not protesting the ruling authority or government.

However, the examples demonstrate the complexity of society by realizing that it is not only the government that regulates and that disobedience need not only be the breaking of rules.

The presentations today included The Pink Chaddi Campaign where Indian women sent pink underwear to the leader of an orthodox Hindu group to protest it’s misogynistic worldview. The De Grote Donor Show ashocking critique of popular culture intended to raise awareness about organ donation. The John Howard Ladies Auxiliary Club, a group of performance actors who adopted characters parodying 1950s Australian housewives and claimed to be the Prime Minister’s fan club. They would use his own conservatism against him in their parodies.

In The Snatchel Project the goal is: “Let’s make a uterus or VJJ* for each male rep in congress! If they have their own, they can leave ours alone!”. Participants knit or crochet female reproductive organs and send them to legislators. The Barbie Liberation Organization hacked talking Barbie and G.I. Joe dolls and switched their recorded messages. This would make Barbie say “vengeance is mine” while G.I. Joe would exclaim that “The beach is the place for summer.” The goal was to show that gender stereotypes are just that – stereotypes.

The sheer variation of these activist campaigns ensured that we had interesting and lively discussions ranging from fears connected with organ donation to misogyny in Australia. A lively class indeed.

An interesting aspect of looking at these studies was to refer them back to the theories. Where they political actions since they were aimed at non-political players? Where they disobedience when they were not breaking any rules? What we could see was that the activists (even if they may not all have defined themselves as such) set about non-conforming to social norms and protesting the message of a dominant player.

Posted on by Mathias Klang

Disobedience Technology: Notes on a lecture

This lecture had the goal of introducing theories and methodologies behind civil disobedience in order to give the class the tools to identify legitimate acts of civil disobedience compared to lawlessness.

We began with the example of Socrates whose principled stand was that the law must be obeyed. In Plato’s text Crito we find Socrates in jail awaiting execution. His friends argue that he should escape.

But Socrates argues that the Laws exist as one entity, to break one would be to break them all. He cannot chose to obey the rules that suit him and disregard those which he doesn’t approve of.

The citizen is bound to the Laws like a child is bound to a parent, and so to go against the Laws would be like striking a parent. Rather than simply break the Laws and escape, Socrates should try to persuade the Laws to let him go. These Laws present the citizen’s duty to them in the form of a kind of social contract. By choosing to live in Athens, a citizen is implicitly endorsing the Laws, and is willing to abide by them. (Wikipedia)

This principled stand cost Socrates his life. However, most proponents of civil disobedience argue that there must be a way of following some rules while disobeying others. This disobedience must find legitimacy in other sources.

Greek mythology dealt with this issue in the story of Antigone where at one stage after a battle King Creon decreed that the dead were not to be buried. Antigone defied the law and buried her brother. She knew of the law and defied it knowingly arguing that she was bound by a superior divine law.

Continuing on this theme we looked at some of the classics of disobedience. Thoreau’s arguments that we are sometimes obliged to defy the government, Gandhi’s belief that we have a duty to disobey the unjust leader (and the example of the salt march), and Martin Luther King’s words that an unjust law is against God’s law.

“For years now I have heard the word ‘Wait!’…We must come to see…that ‘justice too long delayed is justice denied.’…One may well ask, ‘How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?’ The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust…One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” (King Letter from Birmingham Jail)

These positions all argue that there is a higher moral authority that would make it legitimate to disobey rules. Indeed, King underscores that disobedience in such cases is a moral responsibility.

The argument against disobedience remains in the area of the social contract and the question about who could legitimately argue for the rules to be held or broken? In his Theory of Justice, John Rawles agreed that that there are situations where laws should not be followed and attempts to prevent “simple” lawlessness by stressing that disobedience is:

…a public, nonviolent, conscientious yet political act contrary to the law usually done with the aim of bringing about a change in the law or policies of the government.

H. A. Bedau argued in Civil Disobedience in Focus that in order for disobedience to be legitimate it should be

“committed openly…non-violently…and conscientiously…within the framework of the rule of law…with the intention of frustrating or protesting some law, policy or decision…of the government.”

While Peter Singer stressed

…if the aim of disobedience is to present a case to the public, then only such disobedience as is necessary to present this case is justified…if disobedience for publicity purposes is to be compatible with fair compromise, it must be non-violent.

These positions can be summed up with the idea that certain acts of disobedience are necessary in order to bring a minority position to the attention of the majority. However, in order to maintain its legitimacy, acts of disobedience must be carried out openly, non-violently, purposely, aimed at a specific rule or policy, by people prepared to accept the consequences.

Despite this, there are still critiques aimed at groups that attempt to disrupt via acts of civil disobedience. Often the arguments against disobedience are:

  • CD is not defensible in a democracy as the social contract is established and maintained by the people for the people.
  • CD is illegitimate as it subverts the equality embedded in the democratic process itself.
  • CD can only be acceptable if ALL other (democratic) methods have been exhausted

These critiques are easily enough met if we look at the American civil rights movement. The activists chose not to entrust the democratic process since the process is an endless one and does not necessarily promote change, but can be used to re-enforce established ideas. As King writes: ‘justice too long delayed is justice denied.’ The outlook for social change, brought about from within the system was bleak. By challenging the rules it became more and more clear to the majority that the rules were harmful and needed to be changed.

We then spoke of moving disobedience online. Discussing the ways in which technology can be used to support activism. At the same time our technology use has also created a system in which our activism has been trivialised and subverted. Social media is efficiently used to promote and spread information about injustice. However, social media is also used to trivialize political acts. We click on LIKE icons, re-Tweet links, and share videos but what does it all mean?

Is this Postman‘s dystopia (Amusing ourselves to Death) in action?

The slides

Posted on by Mathias Klang

Weapons of War don’t Protect & Serve

The police exist to ensure that society works – anyone who has been subjected to American films and television is aware that their motto is “to protect and serve”. In order to protect and serve in all kinds of situations the police require a great deal of equipment. Most of this equipment is, as you would expect, uniforms, cars, communications etc. But recently in the US some of this equipment has been growing increasingly militarized.

As American armies go to war they need to be supplied with equipment to meet their needs. This is the need of combat soldiers fighting an enemy in a hostile environment. This is really a no-brainer and should be easy to understand whether the wars are supported or not.

In order to supply the army their is an increase in weapons production and purchasing. The problems begin when the army has a surplus of equipment it needs to dispose of. In the US, one method of disposal seems to be supplying the police with this surplus or excess material. On paper this may seem like a good idea. However, there is a problem. The equipment is not designed for those who “protect and serve” and therefore there is a challenge when the technology of violence is brought home and supplied to those who protect and serve.

The ACLU published “War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing.” in June.  Its central point: “the United States today has become excessively militarized, mainly through federal programs that create incentives for state and local police to use unnecessarily aggressive weapons and tactics designed for the battlefield.”

This technology, and the training it requires, goes against the goal to protect and serve the public and is replaced by an ethos of aggressiveness. The report states:

Our analysis shows that the militarization of American policing is evident in the training that police officers receive, which encourages them to adopt a “warrior” mentality and think of the people they are supposed to serve as enemies…

Once the police forces have invested in the equipment and the training it is almost inevitable that these will deployed. Even in situations where it is not merited. This is not a case of the police being violent individuals but rather the case of them being drilled in the use of the wrong technology. They have been focused on the use of technologies of violence and death and any attempt to curb civil unrest with these mechanisms is naturally seen as repression.

When dealing with football (soccer) hooligans the European police have learned through experience that excessive shows of militarized police treating the fans as thugs would have the inevitable effect of turning the crowd towards aggressive reactions. What the police have learned is to talk to the crowd (not at the crowd), to build up links and liaison, to break down the us/them barriers. This has drastically reduced the level of violence.

By showing up in military gear the police are inherently threatening. They are treating citizens as enemies and pointing weapons of war at them. This does not calm the crowd. In the best case scenario this will repress the crowd, but it will not reflect the way in which a democratic discourse should occur and it will also brand the police as symbol of violent repression.

Images Of Ferguson Police In Riot Gear Confronting An Unarmed Man Go Viral Scott Olson / Getty Images

 

Posted on by Mathias Klang

Police, Evidence and Facebook

One of the things I presented at IR13 was in a 10-minute panel presentation on the regulation of Internet by spaces such as Facebook. I wanted to use this all to brief time to enter into the discussion of a problem of police, policing, procedural rules and technological affordances – easy right?

This is going to be a paper soon but I need to get some of the ideas out so that I remember the order they are in and so that people who know better can tell me how horribly wrong, ignorant and uniformed I am about the rules of evidence in different jurisdictions.

So the central argument is that computers have been used for a long time in police work and we have created safeguards to ensure that these computers and databases are not abused. In order to prevent abuse most countries have rules dictating when the police can search databases for information about someone.

Additionally, many countries have more or less developed rules surrounding undercover work, surveillance work and the problem of what to do with excess information (i.e. information gained through surveillance but not relating to the investigation that warranted the surveillance). As you can tell I need to do more reading here. These will all be in the article but here I want to focus on a weakness in the rules of evidence, which may be presented to the courts. This weakness, I argue, may act as an encouragement to certain police officers to abuse their authority.

Facebook comes along and many government bodies (not limited to the police) are beginning to use it as an investigative tool. The anecdotal evidence I have gathered suggests no limitations within the police to using Facebook to get better photos of suspects, finding suspects by “trawling” Facebook and even going undercover to become friends with suspects.

Now here is an interesting difference between Anglo-American law and Swedish Law (I need to check if this applies to most/all civil code countries): The Anglo-American system is much better at regulating this are in favor of individual rights. Courts routinely decide whether or not information gathered is admissible. If a police officer in America gathers information illicitly it may not be part of the proceedings.

In Swedish law all information is admissible. The courts are deemed competent to handle the information and decide upon its value. If a police officer gathers information illicitly in Sweden it is still admissible in court but he may face disciplinary actions by his employer.

So here’s the thing: If an officer decides he doesn’t like the look of me. He has no right to check me up. But there is no limitation to going online.

He may then find out that some of my friends have criminal records (I have several activist friends with police records) or find politically incorrect, borderline illegal status updates I wrote while drunk (I have written drunk statements on Facebook).

This evidence may be enough to enable him to argue probable cause for a further investigation – or at least (and here is the crux of my argument) ensure that he will not be disciplined harshly in any future hearing (should such a hearing arise).

The way the rules are written Facebook provides a tool that can be used to legitimize abuse of police power. And the ways the rules are written in Swedish law are much more open to such abuse.

Here are the slides I used for the presentation

Posted on by mklang