photo top: Hilary Klein background photo: David Hanks

POST-ISSUE ACTIVISM
David Hanks
— HOW TO CHANGE THINGS —
The Brass Liberation Orchestra plays as residents shut down the San Francisco
Financial District, March 20, 2003.
do something (like buy
their product) is to
have them take action
in their head first.
Hence much of advertising
is designed to
help people imagine
themselves buying a
product—to normalize
a specific commercial
scenario. Strategies
that tell the future
can use some of the
same principles to
unify people around a
common goal and vision to literally self-organize a specific future through
building collective belief. DASW organizers challenged the mass media
narrative of normalized passivity by promoting an alternative story where
if Bush invaded Iraq, residents would rise up in a nonviolent insurrection
and shut down the financial district.
The future uprising was foretold with a series of foreshadowing events
ranging from a high-profile press conference to an open letter to city
residents to preemptive actions in the financial district, including a shut
down of the Pacific Stock Exchange in which eigthy people were arrested.
All of this outreach, organizing, and media work was successful in the goal
of promoting DASW’s website and the action meeting spot, including
getting it printed on the front page of newspapers and mentioned on major
radio and television stations.
Likewise, in creating a public image of the action, DASW focused on a
values-based critique that worked to mainstream the concepts of
noncooperation and civil disobedience. The DASW Web site and kick-off
press conference emphasized the diversity of participation by featuring
endorsements from leaders of a cross-section of Bay Area communities—
queer, labor, faith, people of color, veterans, seniors, even the former CEO
of the Pacific Stock Exchange. Without sacrificing the opportunity to put
out a systemic analysis, the organizing appealed to mainstream values—
democracy, sense of security, justice, belief in international law,
patriotism—and used them to leverage opposition to the invasion of Iraq.
As a result the streets were flooded with people from different walks of
life. The combination of effectively telling the future and articulating a
values-based analysis had reached a cross-section of American society
who had never engaged in direct action before.
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Twenty thousand people shut down large parts of San Francisco using nonviolent direct action the day after the war on Iraq begins.
Global Intifada affinity group shuts down San Francisco Financial District’s central artery—Market Street, March 20, 2003.
David Hanks
David Hanks