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