Panama’s national police left approximately 20 indigenous Ngäbe protesters injured last week in what one medic described as an “absurd and irresponsible act.”
The protesters, all residents of Gualaquita, mobilized against the Barro Blanco hydro dam after the project’s owner and operator, Honduran-based Generadora del Istmo (GENISA) began flooding the Tabasará River basin with blessings from the government.
It didn’t take long for Ngäbe communities within the basin to suffer the consequences. In the community of Kiad, local road connections were washed away by the flood waters leaving entire families geographically isolated. Houses were also submerged by the rising waters, along with significant archaeological sites in the region.
Submerged houses. Photo: Ricardo Miranda
All of the Tabasará communities affected by the flood waters were excluded from the talks that led to the agreement. They also didn’t endorse the new agreement in any way, shape, or form.
The Ngäbe community of Gualaquita is located outside of the affected area, but they too declined to endorse the agreement.
For the protesters, who are members of the Mama Tatda religion, the Tabasará River is a holy site that needs to be protected. The river is also home to ancient petroglyphs and unique Ngäbe cultural centers. To the protesters, their loss or destruction represents a violation of religious freedom.
The government wasted little time responding to the protesters.
According to a preliminary report by one of the country’s largest trade unions – the National Front for the Defense of Economic and Social Rights (Frenadeso) – around 2pm on Aug 24, 2016, some 500 police officers arrived to crush the opposition.
Police in Gualaquita. Credit: Frenadeso
Speaking to Frenadeso, Dr. Manuel Pardo, who attended to the injured in the aftermath of the assault, called the protesters “victims of police aggression,” stating, “There was a clear and flagrant violation of the fundamental human rights of the community of Gualaquita.”
Dr. Manuel Pardo assesses the injured. Credit: Frenadeso
Osvaldo Jordan, director of the Alliance for Conservation and Development (ACD), told IC that the police didn’t just target the protesters. “[They] stormed into the whole community, detaining people who were not even in the protest… It was an outright occupation of the community, war style.”
Injuries that appear to have been inflicted by rubber bullets. Credit: Frenadeso
“The weapons that were used for the confrontation were rubber bullets, birdshot and pepper gas,” said Dr. Pardo during his visit to the community on Aug 28, 2016.
“The police entered the community and practically every house was ‘fumigated’ with pepper gas… we are still coughing and itchy… In addition to rubber bullets, birdshot and pepper gas, the attacks involved physical blows and kicking… The result was 20 people injured…”
Police ammunition and equipment collected in Gualaquita. Credit: unknown
Police ammunition and equipment collected in Gualaquita. Credit: unknown
Police ammunition and equipment collected in Gualaquita. Credit: unknown
Dr. Pardo went on to explain that, three of the protesters were severely wounded during the crackdown. One person may have suffered a life-changing injury to his right eye. Another, who sustained serious head trauma, was detained by police for 48 hours before receiving medical treatment in a hospital.
Some of the injured community members reportedly refused to seek help from official institutions for fear of being arrested. Dr. Pardo described this as a “lamentable” violation of their basic human right to health care.
The Frenadeso report also alleges that the police burned a Mama Tatda flag and broke into several community stores. They apparently stole food, cell phones, chargers and hundreds of dollars in cash. They are also alleged to have threatened a storekeeper with firearms and made various death threats to different people.
Adolfo Miranda was allegedly shot in his right eye by a rubber bullet. Credit: Frenadeso
Some of the protesters hit back at the police with rocks and slingshots. Several officers were injured and subsequently transported by plane for treatment in private hospitals.
In the aftermath of the clash, images of the injured protesters were circulated on social media, but government ministers initially denied their veracity.
“They are using old photos of other incidents,” Alexis Bethancourt, Minister of Security, told La Estrella newspaper. “This police force guarantees human rights.”
Subsequent on-the-scene reporting from national journalists such as Lissette Centen helped to confirm that the images were in fact real.
This photograph of journalist Lissette Centen at the scene verifies that the images were real. Credit: Frenadeso
According to a BARRO BLANCO. INFORME DDHH 22-6-16 (HRNP), the repression in Gualaquita is only the latest act of violence the Varela government has committed against Panama’s Indigenous Peoples.
According to eye-witness testimonies collected by the HRNP, on May 23, 2016, in an orchestrated prelude to the filling of the Barro Blanco reservoir, riot police descended on a Ngäbe protest camp, demolished a Mama Tata church and decapitated the community’s livestock. They rounded up some 30 protesters and held them for 36 hours without due process. Young children were among the detainees and one woman was apparently stripped naked in front of her family.
Despite clear threats to their safety, the Tabasará communities are determined to keep fighting Barro Blanco. Mass mobilizations are planned in different parts of the country for Monday September 5, 2016.
Meanwhile, the Ngäbe community of Kiad is at a critical juncture. According to Osvaldo Jordan, the waters of the reservoir are nearing the houses. “The main square can still be saved,” he said. The government just has to stop the flooding of Ngäbe land.
This year’s Fourth of July week grew in horror as it passed. Each day brought new nightmares that struck me at a dizzying pace. By the end of the week, after I decided I was sick of weeping, I turned off the television, shut my Facebook tab, and remembered that the best antidote for despair is action.
My week started hopefully enough in Eugene, Oregon where I participated in a training hosted by members of Deep Green Resistance called Extraction Resistance: A Three Day Training in Direct Action. One of the goals of the event was to normalize direct action tactics, and I was asked to write a primer on the topic. This is that primer.
When I got home from Eugene, I found a video news story from Karachi, Pakistan showing men digging mass graves in anticipation of the number of heat-related deaths caused by soaring summer temperatures. The ghosts of people not yet dead climbed from trenches dug in the dry Pakistani dust. I could almost see the bodies piling in the grave-diggers’ shadows.
The next day I watched as two white police officers pinned Alton Sterling, a black man, to the ground, put a pistol to his head, and shot him execution-style. I went to bed wondering how the cops were going to get out of this one only to wake to see Philando Castile slumped over in the seat of a car, blood seeping through his clothes, as his fiancé, Diamond Reynolds, explained in a video that Castile was just shot four times by a police officer in a routine traffic stop.
Then, during an otherwise peaceful rally protesting the murders of Sterling and Castile, twelve cops were shot, five of them fatally, and two civilians wounded by Micah Xavier Johnson, a military veteran who had served in Afghanistan. The Dallas Police Department then killed Johnson with a robot bomb.
Now, I am white, and I will not comment on the efficacy of Johnson’s actions. I will, however, direct a suggestion to white people who benefit from the white supremacism that the United States is founded upon and perpetuates. Let me suggest that the same culture producing climate change is the same culture producing the cops who murdered Sterling is the same culture producing the cops who murdered Castile is the same culture that trained Johnson “to shoot and move” is the same culture that employs police departments who possess robots with bombs that can be remotely controlled to kill citizens.
Let me suggest to those white people who are truly interested in undermining racism and stopping white supremacy that to do this we must dismantle the dominant culture. If we want to live in a world where Pakistanis are not digging mass graves for the victims of climate change, if we want to live in a world where people of color are not being murdered by cops, if we want to live in a world where veterans are not sniping from parking garages, if we want to live in a world where humans are not made into veterans in the first place, then we must look to the roots of the problem. Finding those roots, we must dig this poisoned tree out.
And, how do we dig these roots out? The answer begins with serious, militant resistance movements that correctly identify the dominant culture’s sources of power. Once those sources are identified, resistance movements must engage in direct action to undermine the dominant culture’s power.
***
First, we need to understand power. Quite simply, power is how the powerful do what they do. Power is how the cops murder and get away with it. Power is how corporations extract fossil fuels, burn fossil fuels, and drive the planet ever-closer to runaway climate change.
Power is best understood as a physical phenomenon. Power is not merely a mental event. Power is not simply an emotion. Cops may or may not personally hate the people of color they are murdering. Corporate decision makers may or may not personally despise the Earth that gives them life. What matters is that cops are armed with real batons, real pepper spray, real tasers, and real guns and they are supported by an entire governmental system that can protect them with even more batons, pepper spray, tasers, and guns. What matters is corporations are armed with real machines, real poisonous chemicals, real labor forces, and once their projects have been granted permits by the government, they can call on real cops with all the real weapons I’ve already described to protect their projects. What matters is physical power in the real world.
There is perhaps no person on Earth who has spent more time understanding the importance of power in contemporary politics than Gene Sharp. There is also perhaps no person in the world responsible for more successful revolutions than Sharp. This is no coincidence.
Sharp describes his theory of power in his brilliant book, How Non-Violent Struggle Works. His work helps us identify the dominant culture’s sources of power and provides insight into how those sources of power can be undermined.
Sharp begins by explaining the central importance of power, and writes: “Power is inherent in practically all social and political relationships. Its control is the basic problem in political theory and in political reality. It is necessary to wield power in order to control the power of threatening adversaries.” In short, the goal of any serious resistance movement should be to undermine the opposition’s power while enhancing the movement’s power.
Sharp defines political power as power “which is wielded for political objectives, especially by governmental institutions or by people in opposition to or in support of such institutions. Political power thus refers to the total authority, influence, pressure, and coercion which may be applied to achieve or prevent the implementation of the wishes of the power-holder.”
According to Sharp, the sources of political power are authority, human resources, skills and knowledge, intangible factors, material resources, and sanctions. These sources of power are interconnected and benefit and build off each other. Increasing power through one of these sources often enhances power in all the sources. This truth, while scary, also highlights weaknesses in the dominant culture’s power. If a resistance movement can undermine one source of power, it can deal a heavy blow to the others.
Sharp quotes Jacques Maritain to define authority as “the right to command and direct, to be heard or obeyed by others.” Taking this idea deeper than Sharp does, I want to point out that rights mean nothing if they are not enforceable. On the surface, it is easy to confuse the right to command and direct bestowed upon elected leaders, in the United States, as being derived from the results of an election. This is not completely true. Think, for example, what would happen if Barack Obama refused to yield the Oval Office to the winner of this year’s presidential election. Eventually, a governmental decision-maker would order police or soldiers to remove Obama at gunpoint.
Sharp describes how power is derived from human resources with, “The power of rulers is affected by the number of persons who obey them, cooperate with them, or provide them with special assistance.” These human resources come with the next source of power: skills and knowledge. Sharp writes, “The power of rulers is also affected by the skills, knowledge and abilities of such persons, and the relation of their skills, knowledge and abilities to the rulers’ needs.” Understanding this point, we see why the dominant culture is so obsessed with developing science and technology. It uses science and technology to enhance control. We see, too, why Western science has been a disaster for life.
Next, Sharp describes intangible factors as “Psychological and ideological factors, such as habits and attitudes toward obedience and submission, and the presence or absence of a common faith, ideology, or sense of mission.” To illustrate this point, imagine if rulers could convince people that this world isn’t real, that the sacred exists in an abstract sky God, and that the point of life is to suffer in this world to prove your devotion to this abstract sky God so you can join him, after death, in his abstract sky kingdom.
For material resources, Sharp writes, “The degree to which the rulers control property, natural resources, financial resources, the economic system, communication, and transportation helps to determine the limits of their power.”
To supplement Sharp’s analysis, here, we see one reason why the dominant culture is hell-bent on ecological destruction. Resource extraction yields power. Industrial agriculture – which requires the displacement of indigenous peoples, the extermination of animal populations, the theft of water from natural communities, deforestation, and the destruction of the world’s most important carbon sinks (grasslands) – yields a controllable food source. Mining – which also involves the displacement of indigenous peoples, the extermination of animal populations, the poisoning of groundwater, and mountain-top removal – yields energy sources for industrialization. And these are just two examples.
Sharp quotes John Austin to define sanctions as “an enforcement of obedience” and writes, “Sanctions are used by rulers to supplement voluntary acceptance of their authority and increase the degree of obedience to their commands…Violent domestic sanctions, such as imprisonment or execution, are commonly intended to punish disobedience, not to achieve the objective of the original command.”
We see, here, one of the primary roles of the police. Police exist to enforce obedience. Part of enforcing obedience is the performance of violent domestic sanctions like imprisonment and execution. To understand how this works think about a saying from the battered women’s movement: “One beating a year is enough to keep a woman down.” For a battered woman, it’s enough to keep her down that she merely be threatened with violence once she has experienced a man’s violence. The same is true for would-be resisters. After seeing videos of police murdering citizens, it only takes the threat of police violence to keep us in line.
***
Understanding that power is physical and identifying the material roots of the dominant culture’s power is only the first step. Now, we must act to physically dismantle those sources of power. Physically dismantling power requires direct action.
So, what is direct action?
The term “direct action” has been used so often within environmental and social movements in so many different contexts that it is in danger of losing its meaning. It is difficult to find a clear definition of direct action in activist literature rooted in a radical analysis, so I have formed my own. It has three parts: First, direct action involves a clearly defined and obtainable goal. Second, the success of that goal is demonstrable by a quantifiable reduction in the opposition’s physical power. Third, it is primarily the actions of those engaging in the direct action that produce the desired goal.
It is important that a proposed action begins with a clearly defined and obtainable goal because an action involving a poorly-defined goal makes it difficult to determine the scope of the action. And, proposed actions with unobtainable goals will be, by definition, ineffective. Planning to change the world through an educational program designed to illustrate the evils of the fossil fuel industry, for example, is neither clearly-defined nor obtainable. What does it mean “to change the world?” And, how will you possibly reach enough people to effect this change? Planning to delay the construction of a pipeline for a day, however, is both clearly-defined and obtainable. Resisters can, without too much imagination, envision a successful action.
Once a clearly-defined and obtainable goal is established, the direct action must reflect an understanding of power and be designed to materially affect the opposition’s physical power. Let’s say activists come up with a plan to drop a banner that says “Stop the Tarsands!” from the rafters of the Utah State Capitol. The plan is both clearly defined and, with some clever security dodging, obtainable. This action cannot be considered direct action, however, because there is no way to quantify how, or even if, the banner affects those in power’s ability to destroy.
Let’s look at another hypothetical plan: Activists plan to blockade, for 24 hours, trains carrying oil through the State of Washington where they will be loaded on to tankers to fuel the US Navy in Hawai’i. This plan has a clearly defined and obtainable goal. The goal also reflects an understanding of where the dominant culture gets its power. The US Navy, one of the weapons the United States uses to perpetuate imperialism, literally requires oil. Depriving the Navy of a little oil for one day may not be a big hit to its power, but it is quantifiable.
It is primarily the actions of those engaging in the direct action that produce the desired goal. Another way to say this is: There is a clear causal link between the direct action and the desired goal. If the goal is to block the construction of a pipeline, for example, then the planned action must literally stop the pipeline’s construction. If the goal is to liberate individual children from human trafficking networks, then the planned action must literally involve the means to escort children from human trafficking networks to safety. Yet another way to say this is: direct action does not leave it to external decision makers (governmental, corporate, or otherwise) to produce the desired goal. Direct action is not an appeal to those in power. It does not rely solely on moral persuasion, shame, or economic cost-benefit analyses.
A lawsuit, then, that is filed to gain protection for a species that lives on land where a mine is planned to be dug in order to stop the mine has a clearly defined and obtainable goal. If the lawsuit is won, then it will materially affect one of the dominant culture’s sources of power. But, this lawsuit is not direct action because it relies on a favorable ruling from a judge for its success. The actions of the lawsuit’s planners are necessary, but ultimately the planners themselves cannot produce the desired goal.
***
I’ve called this essay a “primer.” One definition of primer is “a short informative piece of writing.” Another is a “compound used to ignite an explosive charge.” I hope that this essay serves as both. We need to see the problems we face clearly and we need a spark to ignite the change that is so drastically needed.
This Thursday morning, March 3rd 2016, was stained with blood at the hands of the murderers who took Berta Cáceres’ life. Berta was a Honduran Indigenous leader who has been deeply involved in the protection of Indigenous land rights in Honduras, well known for her activism leading a campaign against the construction of the Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam in the Gualcarque River, a sacred site for the Lenca people. It was a result of her work that the largest contractor of this dam at the international level, Sinohydro, pulled out of the process.
After many years of organizing in the face of repeated death threats and the assasinations of her colleagues, Cáceres herself was killed at her home in La Esperanza, Intibucá, Honduras. The attackers entered into her home at approximately 1:00 AM Thursday morning, informed Tomas Membreño, member of Commission of Indigenous Peoples of Honduras (COPINH) of which Berta was the Coordinator. Berta, a Lenca leader from Honduras, had spent many months in hiding, after receiving threats to her life over the years for her work accompanying movements that defended her community, in addition to suffering from political persecution, and multiple calls for her arrest. The international community had strongly condemned the threats to her life; Berta’s fight, together with COPINH and her community, was recognized with the highest recognition on an international scale for Environmental defenders with the 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize. Berta had applied for and received Precautionary Measures from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, meaning that the government of Honduras was obligated to provide police protection. However, there was no police detail protecting her on the night of her death, reported The Guardian.
UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Vicky Tauli Corpuz recently met with Berta in Honduras during a country visit. “I condemn this dastardly act and I urge the Honduras authorities to investigate this case and bring the perpetrators to justice. I condole and deeply sympathize with Berta’s family, relatives and community. Such impunity is totally unacceptable and the State has to do something about this,” she commented.
Berta held the role of Coordinator of Council of Indigenous Peoples of Honduras (COPINH) and as a member of coordinating team of the National Platform of Social and Popular Movements of Honduras (PMSPH). She was a major contributor to Cultural Survival’s campaign work against the Patuca III Dam in La Moskitia in 2011, and had tirelessly documented the extensive human rights abuses experienced by her community and Indigenous Peoples across Honduras in order to bravely denounce these actions at the national and international level via reports to the United Nations. She was also active in leading protests against the 2009 US-backed coup d’etat against former president Manuel Zelaya, who has also condemned her murder: “The assasination of Indigenous leader Berta Cáceres removes all possibility of dialogue and the responsibility lies with current president Juan Hernandez,” said Zelaya in a statement this morning.
During protests against the construction of the Agua Zarca dam, Cáceres demonstrated her strength and courage in stating “Our people come face to face here with dignity, capacity, resistance, intelligence and ancient strength.” Berta leaves behind her four children and husband Salvador Zuñiga, Executive Committee member of the Council of Central American Indigenous Community Radio network.
“When a bright star of hope and power goes out, we grieve deeply because we know our pain and loss is much larger than ourselves and timeless over generations in our struggle. Berta Cáceres devoted her life to her people, to Indigenous people worldwide, and to life itself. Her murder is a criminal act of violence, is senseless, and a deliberate attack on what Berta stood for — the rights of Indigenous Peoples. It should be condemned at every level from the state to the international and the perpetrators brought to justice,” said Suzanne Benally, Executive Director of Cultural Survival
Cultural Survival sends our deepest condolences to her family, colleagues, and the entire Lenca community. Rest in power, Berta.
“We know that relying on argument we wandered for forty years politically in the wilderness. We know that arguments are not enough…and that political force is necessary.”
–Christabel Pankhurst
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
–Frederick Douglas
Video Transcript:
Two of my favorite people from history. My dad gets upset because they don’t really teach science anymore in the public schools, and this is mostly because the Right Wing can’t bear the thought of evolution. My mom gets sad because they don’t really teach history anymore and my sister fairly weeps because you don’t get art anymore in the school system. But I say, “they just don’t teach revolution anymore in those public schools.”
So this talk is the basic political education that really, we all should have gotten, and really most of us didn’t. And I start here with liberals and radicals because I think this is the main division.
I think this is important because a lot of times in our friendships and our activist networks and even in our groups, and across broader movements, there are these tensions that can be really painful and profound and a lot of it really comes down to the difference between liberals and radicals. I, in the end, don’t care which side of this you decide to land on. You’ve got to figure out which world view actually describes the world as you know it (and that’s up to you really). But it can really help to understand where these different perspectives are coming from because then when you have these conflicts suddenly you can think, “right, that’s liberal and I’m radical, and that’s why we’re never going to meet in the middle” because these are profound differences, politically. Doesn’t mean we can’t work together; lots of coalitions need to happen.
I am not trying to demonize anybody but these are different positions that people can take across the spectrum. I would say the main division between liberals and radicals is individualism.
Liberals believe that society is made up of individuals. That’s the basic social unit. In fact individualism is so sacrosanct that in this view, to be identified as a member of a group is seen as an affront; that’s the insult.
This is totally different for radicals over on the other side of the chart. Society is not made up of individual people, it’s made up of groups of people. In Marx’s original version this was class, it was economic class. This is the debt that all radicals owe Karl Marx. It doesn’t matter if you are a Marxist or not, he figured this out. It’s groups of people and some groups have power over other groups. That’s what society is made of.
In the radicals’ understanding being a member of a group is not an insult. In fact it’s the first primary step you have to take coming to a radical consciousness and then ultimately having effective political action. You have to identify as a member of that group. You’ve got to make common cause with the people who share your condition. That’s how political change happens. This is both an active and a critical embrace of that group identity.
We radicals get accused all the time of creating this kind of “victim identity,” but that’s not what’s going on. We are more than what they’ve done to us, and we do have agency. But we do have to recognize that there is power in the world and we’re on the receiving end.
The other big division is between the nature of social reality. Liberalism is what’s called idealist. Social reality, for them, is made up of attitudes, of ideas; it’s a mental event. And therefore social change happens through education. Through changing people’s minds.
Materialism, in contrast, over on the radical side: society is organized by concrete systems of power, not by thoughts and ideas. Society is organized by material institutions. And the solution to oppression is to take those systems apart brick by brick.
The liberals will say, “we have to educate, educate, educate,” and the radicals will say, “actually we have to stop them.”
Political movements need education. This is an educational event, here we are. And you need active proselytizing. The oppressed need mechanisms to understand political oppression such as consciousness raising. This is all really profoundly important.
But for radicals, education alone does not change social reality. Because the world is not an internal state. It’s not a mental state. The point of education is to build the movement that can take down those oppressive structures and bring about some kind of justice.
If you remove power from the equation oppression looks either natural or voluntary. If you’re not going to see that people are formed by these social conditions how else are you going to explain subordination? Either those people aren’t quite human, so they’re naturally different than us—that’s why they’re subordinate, or they’re somehow volunteering to be subordinate. Those are the options that you’re left with.
For instance, race and gender are seen as biological. These are supposed to be physically real. Well they’re not, they’re politically real.
It’s brutal, vicious subordination that creates those things. But it’s ideology, and it is the ideology of the powerful that says this is biological. They make the claim that this is biological because how are you going to fight God or Nature or 4 million years of evolution? Well you’re not.
There are physical differences between people who are from northern Europe and people who live at the equator, just like there are differences between males and females but those differences only matter because power needs them to. It is power that creates the ideology and it’s a corrupt and brutal arrangement of power.
These are unjust systems that we are going to have to dismantle, and these are social categories we are going to have to destroy.
Just like naturalism operates in the service of power, so does volunteerism. If you are not going to go the biological route, all you are left with is volunteerism as a concept.
This is the thing that liberals do not understand. With power removed from the equation, if it looks voluntary you are going to erase the fact that it’s social subordination.
Florynce Kennedy said,
“There can be no really pervasive system of oppression without the consent of the oppressed.”
Ninety percent of any oppression is consensual. That’s what it does. It does not mean it’s our fault, it does not mean we are responsible, it doesn’t mean it will somehow crumble if we withdraw our consent. All it means is that the powerful—the capitalists, the white supremacists, the masculinists, whoever—they can’t stand over vast numbers of people 24/7 with guns. Luckily, for them, depressingly for the rest of us, they don’t have to.
When I am in Hawai’i, I ask everyone I meet if the United States will ever voluntarily de-occupy the Islands. No one ever says yes. Usually, before I can say anything else, people hurriedly start talking about the lack of a valid treaty or that the American occupation is illegal by their own laws or that the United States will pay for its human rights violations.
I am a haole in Hawai’i, a white settler in the United States. I acknowledge that every square inch of the United States of America exists on stolen native land. Leadership in land based struggles in the United States rests most properly in the hands of indigenous peoples. I will not undermine indigenous leadership, so I direct my thoughts to other settlers.
If no one believes that the United Sates will ever voluntarily de-occupy Hawai’i, why are so many of the movement’s settler supporters so focused on achieving this impossible voluntary withdrawal? Why, for example, do so many settlers spend so much energy supporting a parade in Oahu – a parade that is billed as a march for Hawaiian sovereignty while quietly being a voting drive to encourage participation in the occupying American government? Why do so many settlers hold up expensive court cases relying on American judges who are paid by the American government to make decisions leading to this mythical voluntary de-occupation as the only viable means for de-occupation?
The first answer is privilege. Settlers benefit from the current arrangement of power in Hawai’i. These Islands represent the tourist fantasy to many settlers despite the fact that Hawai’i’s life support systems are inches away from total collapse. The inability of settler support to recognize that Hawaiian de-occupation is our responsibility leads me to conclude that most settlers are not as concerned with Hawaiian liberation as they are concerned with maintaining a feel-good environment that balances settler crises of conscience while never threatening settler access to Hawai’i. Hawai’i does not have time to coax these settlers from their positions of privilege. So, I direct my thoughts to settlers of strong heart who simply suffer from a lack of analysis.
Apart from privilege, the second reason settlers have proven unable to mount a serious solidarity effort with the Hawaiian de-occupation movement is they see no alternative to a liberal mindset. “Wait a minute,” I hear a lot of confused readers saying, “Aren’t liberals good?” No, actually. It’s too late to rely exclusively on liberalism. Hawai’i has been cursed for 122 years of occupation with too much liberalism. Liberalism is the haoles’ game. Liberalism serves the United States of America. Liberalism renders resistance ineffective and must be forsaken if de-occupation is to be achieved.
The alternative is radicalism. An examination of the differences between the liberal and radical world views will demonstrate how radicalism arms settlers seeking to demonstrate true solidarity with a better analysis for forming an effective de-occupation strategy. This is not to say that a mixture of tactics cannot be effective. The Hawaiian de-occupation movement should not remove any tool from the table, but the longer Hawai’i remains occupied the clearer it becomes that decisive action is needed.
***
Before I begin, I would like to absolve the term “radical” of the bad reputation it has received in popular circles. Too many people confuse the word “radical” with the word “extreme.” But, as the great African-American activist Angela Davis has explained and as every major dictionary will tell you, the word radical simply means “getting to the root” and is most properly applied to political analyses that seek the origins of oppression.
The brilliant writer and activist Lierre Keith has pointed out two fundamental differences between liberals and radicals. The first difference revolves around individualism. Liberals believe that the basic social unit is the individual, while radicals believe the basic social unit is group or class. This reliance on individualism allows liberals to claim that every individual is entitled to their personal identity free from the realities accompanying social class. In fact, for many liberals, it is an insult to be identified with a certain group regardless of political reality.
For radicals, on the other hand, each individual is socially constructed by political reality. Radicals embrace their social group recognizing it as a source of strength. The first step to affecting change is making common cause with those who share your condition.
The other big difference between liberals and radicals is a disagreement on the nature of social reality. Liberals subscribe to a certain idealism while radicals root their analysis in materialism. For liberals, thoughts, mental states, and attitudes are the only sources and, therefore, solutions for oppression. Liberals locate reality in the human mind and tend to think that education is always the key to social change. For liberals, evil is a misunderstanding and if oppressors can just be shown the error of their ways, they will change.
How does this play out in Hawai’i? Take the role of white supremacism in the domination of Hawai’i, for example. Liberals, long ago, succumbed to the lie that racism and white supremacism are merely emotional states held in the hearts of individuals. They confine the definition of racism to hatred based on the color of one’s skin and confine the definition of white supremacism to hatred for everyone who is not white.
It is astronomers relying on a liberal definition of racism who can claim they are not racist because they hold no hatred in their hearts for the Hawaiian people while still insisting on destroying Mauna Kea’s summit to build telescopes. It is mining executives relying on a liberal definition of white supremacism who can claim no hatred in their hearts for native peoples while insisting that the guts be ripped from native land and poisons pumped into native waters to provide iron ore for the telescopes that destroy native peoples’ sacred sites.
Radicals see tangible systems of power maintained through force and working in the real, physical world as the sources and solutions of oppression. Education is an important first step to building radical consciousness, but they see organized political resistance and force as the means by which real change is achieved. Evil is not a misunderstanding. It is intentional and gives material benefits to oppressors. Oppression is always linked to resource extraction.
An emotional state – like hatred – might contribute to white supremacism, but radicals are less concerned with changing the hearts and minds of those murdering people of color and murdering the world, and more concerned with stopping the destruction. Hawaiian radicals, like Haunani-Kay Trask, for example, see racism as, “A historically created system of power in which one racial/ethnic group dominates another racial/ethnic group for the benefit of the dominating group.” White supremacism is the latest version of this system of power with white people dominating everyone else.
Racism and white supremacism establish, “Economic and cultural domination as well as political power…in the systemic dominance of the exploiting group.” Finally, radicals recognize, as Trask pointed out, that the dominating group holds a monopoly on the means on violence. It is this violence that must be confronted and dismantled if racism and white supremacism are ever truly going to be undermined.
To take this even further, consider what would happen if the liberal analysis was carried out to it’s logical conclusion. Imagine that liberals were actually successful at convincing those in power to treat every one in the world with love and kindness. Without a corresponding change in material reality, there would still be a huge problem. The dominant culture is built on the exploitation of natural resources. Resources are becoming scarcer and scarcer. Humans need to eat, for example, but topsoil is so depleted that major crops are all supported by oil. What will happen, despite the liberal conversion to loving kindness, when the dominant culture needs oil and indigenous peoples and others refuse to give up their lands to give them that oil?
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A primary strength of the radical analysis is its ability to articulate the role power plays in oppression. Gene Sharp, the world’s foremost authority on civil disobedience and direct action tactics, has identified two manifestations of power – social and political. Social power, for Sharp, is “the totality of all influences and pressures which can be used and applied to groups of people, either to attempt to control the behavior of others directly or indirectly.” Political power is “the total authority, influence, pressure, and coercion which may be applied to achieve or prevent the implementation of the wishes of the power-holder.”
The powerful do everything they can to convince the oppressed that the current arrangement of power is inevitable. To believe power is inevitable is a mistake. Sharp says, “Power, in reality, is fragile, always dependent for its strength and existence upon a replenishment of its sources by the cooperation of a multitude of institutions and people – cooperation which may or may not continue.” The key to Hawaiian de-occupation, then, is dismantling American power. Power is dismantled most effectively by cutting it off at its sources.
Sharp lists six sources of power: authority, human resources, skills and knowledge, intangible factors, material resources, and sanctions. Jacques Maritain defines authority as “the right to command and direct, to be heard or obeyed by others” and Sharp notes that it is enough that those in power be perceived and accepted as superior. Human resources are simply defined as the number of people who obey those in power and will do their bidding. Those in power derive power from the skills, knowledge, and abilities of those who will do their bidding. Closely tied to skills and knowledge, intangible psychological and ideological factors like cultural history and spirituality can be leveraged by those in power to dominate others. Those in power need material resources like property, money, and sources of energy to maintain their power. Finally, those in power must have means to enforce obedience – punishment, in other words, for those who dissent.
The goal of any resistance movement aspiring to true success must engage in shrewd target selection to undermine these sources of power. Taking Sharp a step further, it is possible to prioritize which sources of power are more essential to the functioning of power than others. The most important sources of power are the material resources power depends upon and the brutality of the sanctions they can enact through their commitment to the exploitation of resources. All the other sources of power ultimately depend on the ability of those in power to enforce their power physically. This is a radical conclusion and can be easily demonstrated.
Consider the Overthrow. Did Queen Liliuokalani abdicate the throne because she believed in American authority or the inherent right of Americans to command Hawaiians? Did the Americans command more people to do their bidding in Hawai’i than the Queen? Was Queen Liliuokalani victim to some psychological failing that the Americans exploited?
The answer is obviously no. At the time, Kingdom of Hawai’i supporters outnumbered the Americans over 13 to 1 on the Islands and constituted 4/5 of the legally qualified voters in Hawai’i. Queen Liliuokalani abdicated the throne in order to avoid bloodshed and, according to her June 17, 1897 letter to President William McKinley, because she, “recognized the futility of a conflict with so formidable a power.”
Queen Liliuokalani abdicated the throne because there were 200 United States marines, holding rifles, standing outside her door. Again, it wasn’t the moral superiority of Americans that convinced the Queen. It was, quite clearly, the threat of violence. It is important to understand the physical processes that allowed the Americans to exert that kind of power in Hawai’i. Another way to understand this is to ask, How did a nation existing thousands of miles away on another continent succeed in pointing 200 rifles at Queen Liliuokalani? The answer is, superior material resources.
In order to occupy Hawai’i, Europeans had to get there first. The only way Europeans ever got to Hawai’i and then transported themselves in numbers great enough to gain power was through the use of large naval ships. In order to build these ships, those in power needed wood and lots of it. The U.S.S. Boston that provided the marines and firepower for the Overthrow was in fact one of the American navy’s first steel warships. In order to produce the steel needed to armor the U.S.S. Boston, iron ore must be harvested. To turn iron ore into steel, vast quantities of coal are needed. To mine sufficient quantities of coal, vast tracts of land housing this coal have to be ripped up. To gain access to these vast tracts of land to be ripped up, the indigenous peoples of that land have to be removed or destroyed.
It is true that the other sources of power support the exploitation of the natural world as we can see in the manufacturing of American naval ships. Coal mining, for example, requires human resources. Most humans will not voluntarily mine coal, so those in power have to employ a mixture of authority, psychological coercion, and pure violence to access the coal they need to exert more power. But, the whole system of violence requires material resources. No one is killed by authority alone. Mountain tops are not ripped off by simple knowledge. Belief systems, by themselves, do not colonize indigenous lands. Material action in the physical world produces power. Bullets, swords, or atomic bombs at various stages of human history kill people. Oil-powered excavators and dynamite blow the tops off mountains. Soldiers delivering blankets infected with small pox clear indigenous peoples off their land.
The good news is that the more destructive those in power become, the more complex their system of murder gets, the more opportunities they expose for dismantling their power. Each step in the manufacturing of the U.S.S Boston, for example, presents an opportunity for resisters to stop the replenishment of power at one of its sources. The method is simple. Restrict those in power access to the resources they require and their power weakens. Cut them completely off, and empire comes crashing down.
The physical processes that produce warships and put rifles and cannons in the hands of American troops in Hawai’i follow a similar pattern. These processes are ultimately what make civilization unsustainable. These processes demonstrate precisely how the civilized have come to dominate the world at the expense of the uncivilized and life on this planet. Again, this present state of the world is not inevitable. It is the result of power built through the exploitation of life on the planet. The problem for life right now is the American empire shows no signs of slowing. The bigger their weapons become the faster life is pushed to the brink of total extinction.
Radicalism, then – because it springs from material reality – gives the Hawaiian de-occupation movement an ecological imperative. European contact has resulted in half of Hawai’i’s endemic species being lost to extinction. How many more species must be lost before actions that truly reflect the seriousness of the situation are taken? The American empire is built on the use of fossil fuels and the American military is the single largest consumer of fossil fuels in the world. Burning fossil fuels must be stopped to avoid climate catastrophe. The American military presence is, perhaps, the most serious physical obstacle confronting the de-occupation movement. Blocking the military’s access to imported fossil fuels, then, could deal a decisive blow both to American power on the Islands and American environmental destruction.
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This is the reality of the challenge confronting the Hawaiian de-occupation movement:The United States will never voluntarily leave Hawai’i and the survival of life on the Islands demands de-occupation. Too many settler liberals would have everyone believe that if Hawaiians just ask nicely enough, or cleverly enough, or with irrefutable American logic, the Americans will leave. Too many settler liberals hold up the American political and international legal systems as the only means for de-occupation. Too many settler liberals can be relied upon for sign-holding events, parades, and social media campaigns to achieve de-occupation, but when it comes down to being accomplices to Hawaiian liberation, we are failing.
Appealing to the American political system hasn’t worked in 122 years. Appealing to the international legal system misunderstands the material reality of power. These liberal tactics can be employed to erode American authority, to persuade humans not to support American power, but there are more decisive routes to undermining American power. It’s not that liberal tactics do not have their place. But, by themselves, they do not undermine power in any serious way.
Time is short in Hawai’i. Settlers wishing to demonstrate true solidarity need to embrace a radical analysis. It is time to get to work seriously dismantling the sources of American power.
Will Falk has been working and living with protesters on Mauna Kea who are attempting to block construction of an 18-story astronomical observatory.
