*Annals of Activism*: How to Stop a Power Grab As democracy hangs in the balance, activists are drawing lessons from the study of civil resistance. by Andrew Marantz, New Yorker, Nov. 23 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/11/23/how-to-stop-a-power-grab
. . . In the past fifteen years, there has been a marked global increase in what international-relations scholars call “democratic backsliding,” with more authoritarians and authoritarian-style leaders consolidating power. “There’s no one moment when a country crosses from a democracy into an autocracy,” Chenoweth told me in October. “The norms and institutions can grow weaker over years, or decades, without people noticing. But there are sometimes decisive moments of contestation and confusion, and would-be authoritarians can stoke and exploit that confusion.” . . . . . . “Civil resistance repeatedly shows up in undemocratic moments and contexts,” Romanow, of Momentum, told me. “It’s not a coincidence that Black Americans have led when it came to bringing civil-resistance tactics into American organizing, because Black Americans have not been living in a democracy for four hundred years.” Romanow and I were speaking in late October. “Many people now rightly think that, if things go off the rails during or after this election, the institutions alone might not necessarily save us,” she continued. “Once you realize that, you can go pretty quickly from despair to exhilaration: the institutions can’t save us, but maybe we can save ourselves.” . . . . . . Although civil-resistance campaigns in the past decade have continued to succeed more often than the armed ones, the success rate of all maximalist campaigns is dropping, as regimes become more proficient at surveilling and subduing rebellions. “I really blame the Internet,” Chenoweth said recently on a podcast. Although the Internet is good at “getting people to the streets quickly, in large numbers,” its costs to movements may outweigh its benefits. Also, momentum can be difficult to sustain without the more painstaking work of person-to-person organizing. . . . . . . Chenoweth told me, “If I had to pick one characteristic that correlates with a movement’s success, it’s the extent to which everyone in society—children, disabled people, grandmas—feels that they can either actively or passively participate.” . . . According to the Crowd Counting data, 97.7 per cent of Black Lives Matter protests this past summer were free of violence, with no injuries reported by protesters, police, or bystanders. “These figures should correct the narrative that the protests were overtaken by rioting,” Chenoweth and Pressman wrote in a recent Washington Post article. Of course, in a world that includes social media and Rupert Murdoch, the narrative that should prevail is not always the narrative that does. . . . . . . In October, Chenoweth had told me, “If Trump does leave office safely, we might not be in immediate crisis mode anymore, but the struggle doesn’t end. That’s when the real work begins.” ♦ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#3731): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/3731 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/78385519/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
