Foundations of Fierce Vulnerability: Pillars shall crumble

What could be if we thought about power differently?

Happy New Year! First off, I want to invite you to an event I’m convening this Friday at 2 p.m. EST, called Liturgy and Lessons from the Magi with Christians for a Free Palestine. You can learn more and register for the Zoom link here. Hope to see you then.

Secondly, I’ll be devoting January’s newsletters to what I’m calling Foundations of Fierce Vulnerability. This essay on power is the first installment.

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In 2017, I had the chance to take a class called Leading Nonviolent Movements for Social Progress with Srdja Popovic. A founder of the Otpor student movement which nonviolently overthrew the dictator of Serbia 20+ years ago, Popovic and his fellow activists became famous for their use of practical jokes that made the ruling party look utterly ridiculous, while dissipating the public’s fear of the dictatorship and emboldening more people to take action.

In one of my favorite stories, which Popovic relates in his book, activists painted president Milošević’s face on a barrel. They set it up in a public square with a sign inviting passerby to put in a coin for the privilege of hitting the barrel with a baseball bat. Initially nervous, but quickly overcome by the fun of the it, shoppers began lining up to gleefully take a whack at the dictator. The next day, state television played reel of police “arresting” the barrel — having faced the dilemma of doing nothing and appearing impotent or looking silly, they chose the latter.

The success of this action hinged on an understanding of what, in nonviolence circles, is referred to as the “social view of power.” Whereas the traditional view of power is that power flows from the top down, with the ones who exercise the most coercive control over a population being most powerful, in the social view, the flow of power is from the bottom up, with the people on top there because the rest of us act in accordance with their perceived authority. To put it more simply, people and systems have power because many, many people cooperate with the status quo. Things are the way they are because of our participation in social norms, our compliance with laws, and our contribution to society’s institutions.

In the example from Otpor, the seriousness with which people took the dictatorship was a huge factor in its perceived authority. When people found the courage in community to laugh at the absurdity of the dictator, some of that authority fell away.

Here’s what I’m getting at: The powers that be cannot unilaterally maintain a serious self-image. Nor can they collect taxes, build roads, or grow food. They can’t singlehandedly educate the next generation, or religiously indoctrinate communities.

For all these things and more, they rely on others. On us.

Consider the below image, the Pillars of Support. This model illustrates how the status quo is upheld by various pillars of society. Some pillars may include the local community, the police, organized religion, the media, the business community, the educational system, government bureaucracy, and the military. Each of these pillars is comprised of groups of people — different constituencies with different interests.

Pillars of Support, à la Lauren Grubaugh Thomas.

The powers that be can only rule so long as these pillars remain in place.

So long as people perceive their interests to be in alignment with the status quo, they will stay in place. They will also remain fixed if they feel helpless to move, or lack an alternative vision of what society could look like.

But pillars can be pulled down. Think of workers banding together in unions for better working conditions, withholding their labor from corporations while mutual aid allows them to continue providing for their families, as Amazon labor organizers have done. Or consider this rabbi, whose longterm advocacy for Palestinian rights and vision of a just peace in the region has built a community which slowly but surely has grown to include over 200 rabbis for ceasefire. When people know they are not alone, that a better tomorrow is possible, and that they can do something about it, pillars begin to crumble.

Pillars can also be pushed, when the cost of staying loyal to the status quo proves higher than the cost of leaving it behind. Consider how Black workers at Massachusetts-based Polaroid, upon realizing that the company was printing the ID badges used in South Africa to maintain apartheid, outed Polaroid — which under enormous public pressure eventually divested from South Africa — and effectively initiated the international divestment movement. And then there’s the Disability Rights Movement, which had a major win after the longest occupation of a federal building in US history, in which disabled activists, supported by the Black Panther party and other allies, made themselves impossible for San Francisco officials to ignore or invisibilize any longer.

All of these stories remind us: power is not a monolith. Rather it is constituted of the everyday actions each of us takes (or neglects to take). It is enhanced or diminished by the attitudes we have toward those in authority, and the cooperation we render to or remove from them. In all our interactions, whether small and personal or collective and strategic, we have opportunities to shift the pillars of support that uphold the status quo.

All of which brings me to my soul note for today: Power is piecemeal, it is moveable, and all people possess it. I have learned this through social science and through the many stories of social change that I cling to like scripture. This reality gives me enormous hope. My soul is buoyed by the faith that, as the activist and writer Arundhati Roy puts it,

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. 
On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.

For me, nonviolence — which I often refer to as fierce vulnerability — is both a spiritual practice and a political praxis. It allows me to face the world with courage and conviction, with spirit and strategy. And I’m looking forward to sharing more of the foundations of fierce vulnerability with you in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, I wonder: what stories of power have you internalized? Where have you seen pillars of support pulled down or pushed aside? Is there a way you could withhold your cooperation with the status quo today?

Next week, we will begin exploring the holy trinity of nonviolence: unity, planning and nonviolent discipline.