Endgame Volume I_ The Problem of Civilization - Derrick Jensen [44]
Perhaps I’m being too harsh. Global Exchange does offer people the opportunity to change the culture in more ways than merely buying things. For example, by following a link you can “Send a fax to [CEO] Philip Knight asking that Nike take immediate and concrete steps to ensure that the people making the company’s products aren’t facing abuse and intimidation.”108 I’m sure Phil will personally read your fax, and I’m sure yours will be the one that convinces him to give up the practices that have made him one of the richest men in the world.
If the fax doesn’t work, you can always try a rock through his window. But be warned: folks at Global Exchange probably won’t approve (see Premise Five).
Back to Seattle, where black-clad anarchists were throwing rocks through the windows of Nike and other stores, and police were nowhere to be seen. Who was going to protect the stores? Pacifists to the rescue. Many shouted “You’re ruining our demonstration”109 as they formed human chains in front of chain stores. Others began “physically assaulting window smashers while yelling ‘This is a non-violent protest.’”110 One shared her thoughts with a reporter for The New York Times, “Here we are protecting Nike, McDonald’s, the Gap, and all the while I’m thinking, ‘Where are the police? These anarchists should have been arrested.’”111 Local kids—mainly people of color from the Seattle equivalent of the favelas (favela in Brazil, poblacione in Chile, villa miseria in Argentina, cantegril in Uraguay, rancho in Venezuela, banlieue in France, ghetto in the United States112)—joined the anarchists, smashed some windows, and started liberating some of the goods (I believe the technical term for this is looting ). The crowd of vandals—from the Latin Vandalii, of Germanic origin: a member of a Germanic people who lived in an area south of the Baltic between the Vistula and the Oder, overran Gaul, Spain, and northern Africa in the fourth and fifth centuries CE, and in 455 sacked Rome—was the most multicultural and multiracial group of the protest. As one anarchist later commented: “When [writer] Jeffrey St. Clair started to leave town on December 3rd, a black youth rushed up to him and excitedly asked if this WTO thing will come back next year. Sure, the labor march and enviro’s were mostly white folks. But the action against corporate property was the one truly diverse, inclusive, festive action.”113 Pacifists were caught on videotape assaulting young black men—the whole time chanting “non-violent protest”—and attempting to hold them to turn over to police.114 I’m sure that had these youths wanted to do some real damage to Nike, they could have gone to the library, logged onto computers, and sent Phil Knight a bunch of faxes. And when they’d finished at the library, they could have gone back to their ghetto and played tin can drums for tourists.
All of which is to say that pacifism makes strange bedfellows.
To keep dogmatic pacifists from calling the cops and then holding me till they arrive, I need to say that I no more advocate violence than I advocate nonviolence. Further, I think that when our lifestyle is predicated on the violent theft of resources, to advocate nonviolence without advocating the immediate dismantling of the entire system is not, in fact, to advocate nonviolence at all, but to tacitly countenance the violence (unseen by us, of course: see Premise Four) on which the system is based. I advocate speaking honestly about violence (and other things), and I advocate paying attention to circumstances. I advocate not allowing dogma to predetermine my course of action. I advocate keeping an open mind. I advocate a rigorous examination of all possibilities, including fair trade,