Forms of direct action: The darker side

When you are looking up direct action options, it includes property destruction and vandalism. 

Those things have been done, so it would be dishonest not to talk about them. There are some pretty important caveats to get into.

First of all, people are more important than plate glass. If windows get broken and it was associated with acts of violence and injustice against real human beings, the violence and the injustice are more important.

Focusing on the property damage is a way of siding with the property owners who are generally higher up in the power structure. If the structure is corrupt and built on oppression, that corruption and oppression needs to be called out clearly and consistently.

That being said, I can't think of a time when breaking windows has helped.

There have been times when groups have tried to sabotage the lumber industry and its bad practices, not by putting people in trees, but by hiding spikes there in order to damage the equipment. I am not necessarily against that, but it also has a good chance of injuring people.

I am pretty against that.

The people injured are probably not going to be the ones who make the decisions about clear-cutting and other destructive policies either; they are probably just people trying to make a living.  

As they try and make their living in a way that is environmentally destructive, they may pick up some pretty terrible attitudes and be really unpleasant, but that is still not a reason to hurt them.

(And yet, the Unabomber did target people higher up the corporate ladder and I think he was wrong too.) 

One important thing to remember is that once you set something in motion, you no longer have control over it. Even if you think you planned things really well, something that was only meant to cause a delay could cause maiming or death.  

That doesn't change all of the previous points about considering whom will be affected and how the message will come out and if the action makes sense, but I hope it adds some perspective. You don't know if someone is going to get trampled or shot. Sometimes just being at a peaceful protest or working to help it stay peaceful may still get you shot, because there are people who disagree so much with that peaceful protest and its cause and they love their guns. June Knightly's murderer did get life in prison, but Kyle Rittenhouse is still out there and still has supporters.

https://www.portlandmercury.com/news/2023/04/18/46465671/normandale-park-shooter-sentenced-to-life-in-prison 

If we want to do good things, we have to have a sense of responsibility, knowing not just that the end may not justify the means, but that the wrong means are likely to backfire in achieving that end.

Nelson Mandela's organization MK had plans to bomb power plants, communication lines, and military installations. They included protecting human life in those plans, and they only went to those plans after trying many other things.

Right now, where we have conservatives selling merch for a new concentration camp, the most noticeable thing becomes the delight in depraved cruelty. It's easy to be confident that you are not like that.

However, I promise you that on their way there was a lot of not caring about issues that were not as egregious but were still wrong.

We need to keep caring, even for pretty awful people, even as it can take some work figuring out what that looks like.

Sometimes when I am reading about medicine, I am amazed at the potential impact of some things that would seem very small. Concussions and being knocked unconscious are no joke and getting shot can't get shrugged off that easily, even by tough guys. (So, movies and television are lying to you.)

I also get amazed by the body's ability to heal, but life can be very fragile, and we need to remember that.

It is even more important that we remember that life is precious. Life is valuable. People matter.

That's something we can't afford to forget.