TODAY thousands of business and government leaders are meeting at the Waldorf-Astoria in Manhattan. They are there for the World Economic Forum, which "serves as a platform for discussion, debate and action on the key issues on the global agenda," according to the WEF Web site (www.weforum.com). Students for Global Justice (SGJ) take a different view. Their Web site (www.studentsforglobaljustice.org) says, "At the New York WEF summit, the world's richest CEOs will collaborate with the world's most powerful politicians to set the global economic agenda."
Much has been made of the abusive measures taken by police in cities hosting international meetings dealing with global economic policy. Hopefully the New York City police will not react violently as their counterparts did in Seattle during the violent 1999 World Bank protests.
At the same time, hopefully the non-violent protestors will be activists for peace - not just peace in Palestine or Afghanistan, but peace in New York City, a place that surely deserves some. Those who call themselves peaceful have a responsibility to disassociate themselves from, and condemn, the actions of the violent fringe. While SGJ does not advocate violence in protesting, it and other nominally peaceful activists do not do enough to condemn and prevent violence.
Legitimate protestors have a good, selfish reason to draw a clear line between themselves and destructive "activists." Too often, the destruction overshadows their valid arguments. By waiting until after the windows have been smashed and the police officers have been assaulted to distinguish themselves from the perpetrators, serious activists have allowed the violent few to set the agenda and take over the movement.
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Similarly, religious moderates sometimes permit the extremists to become the face of their faith. Only when moderates totally censure violence can their arguments against the status quo be heard. Someone who says, "There's a reason why she caused that devastation" will be dismissed as just another militant unless he says, "but there's no excuse for the damage."
One can denounce an action while understanding and even commending the impulse behind it. After all, some of the policies of the institutions attacked by protestors arise from a sincere wish to do good. The World Bank does not fund dams in India to destroy the environment, but to make people's lives better. The Bank shares this motivation with those who protest against it. It is the Bank's method of executing their praiseworthy goal which activists find problematic, just as it is violent protestors' method of expressing their feelings which peaceful protestors should disown.
Yet many who call themselves peaceful refuse to condemn those who act violently. Yale anthropology professor David R. Graeber remarked, "A lot of people have said they think [violence and destruction] would be terribly inappropriate because it would be insensitive and disrespectful to people in the city and to protesters who come from the city" ("Hoping for Calm, Preparing for Strife at Economic Talks," New York Times, Jan. 25). This is rather equivocal language. Violence is not merely "inappropriate," in the way picking one's nose in public is inappropriate.
Dr. Graeber even tried to justify window-breaking as a strike against corporate power. His condoning would "never [extend to] a cafe of a small businessman. Starbucks? Sure. But never anyone who is actually going to be hurt by that." He added that he himself has never engaged in property destruction.
Good for him. However, Starbucks is a franchise business. Quite probably, some individual or family scraped together the money to buy the franchise. It is their livelihood, not to mention a source of income for the people they employ. When a demonstrator throws a brick through the window, the cost is borne by real people, not a faceless monolith.
Violence makes sympathizing and agreeing with activists more difficult. The world ought to have been able to mourn whole heartedly for the young protestor killed in Genoa, Italy last summer. Cut down at 23, Carlo Giuliani should not have been shot by police. But the police could justify the action as self-defense; Guiliani was about to hurl a fire extinguisher through the already-shattered window of a police car. When violence clashes with violence, it is hard to see who is right and who is wrong.
Everyone needs to read about injustice, to hear the voices of those hurt by globalization. But protestors also should be getting a message across to each other. "Keep the Peace with Police." "Create, Don't Destroy." "That Business Is Someone's Living." "Reclaim the Satyagraha!" (Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolent resistance).
The Man has superior powers when it comes to physical force, which is why activists like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. never attempted to fight authorities with fists or guns. They would have lost. Instead, they used the weapon that their opponent could not claim - moral superiority. If today's activists want to be successful, they must keep the sword of peace sharp against those who would dull it with violence. Only then can they make their cause a truly global effort.
(Pallavi Guniganti's column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at pguniganti@cavalierdaily.com.)
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