Responding to Your Comments on the LA Protests

A constitution without a constituency is just a piece of paper.

Amid ongoing demonstrations against the Trump administration and ICE in Los Angeles, I laid out the following argument on Tuesday: Go out, stand up for what’s right, but keep it peaceful—both because it’s the right thing to do and because it’s a sound political strategy. And for the sake of your freedom and your self-respect: get some real opposition leadership. I’ve been tracking what Democrats are saying about Los Angeles, and many—including senators, members of Congress, and California state officials—are getting it right. But the party’s national leadership is missing in action.

Tuesday’s column was the most widely-shared piece to come out of The Next Move since we launched back in April. I don’t point that out to stroke my ego—I say it because it makes me cautiously optimistic.

With nationwide protests planned for this weekend, I sincerely hope that this piece reaches as many people as possible in order to ensure that the upcoming demonstrations send the right message, because they’re critically important.

Call it a platitude, but it’s true: This is a battle for America’s democracy.

The institutions and documents that serve as the foundation of that democracy—the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and Bill of Rights, among others—are only part of the equation. People matter too, and that’s what this is about.

The democratic Weimar constitution technically remained in force under the Third Reich. Growing up in the USSR, my comrades and I could point with pride to our own constitution, which enumerated far more rights than America’s. But we also had a joke—a Soviet citizen goes to a lawyer and asks: “Do I have rights?” The lawyer answers, “Yes.” “Can I…?” “No.”

Without the right people, a constitution is just a lot of fancy words.

Public officials have a responsibility to abide by the law, and ordinary citizens must hold them accountable. People make a nation’s foundational papers work. That’s why it’s imperative that you don’t feed an authoritarian bully’s provocations, lest we lose the constituency for the Constitution.

The response to Tuesday’s piece makes me hopeful.

Annie Tucker writes:

I could not agree more. Protests must be 100% non-violent. It is both a moral imperative and a strategic imperative.

Julia adds:

You are correct in pointing out that Dems should be leading and visible, everywhere. They are not. We the people need to hold it together, literally and figuratively. Peacefully.

Steve O’Cally says:

Thanks. What is patriotic Pride by Americans-flying the flag of their ancestors-is being besmirched by the Orcs.

Much appreciated. Although, I’ll note, we reserve the term “orcs” for Russian marauders in Ukraine. You’ll have to come up with your own dig.

Of course, there are skeptics in the comments. And for their contribution, I’m grateful! I appreciate the overwhelmingly positive response to my appeal for coordinated, nonviolent resistance. Still, at The Next Move, we don’t cheerlead, we strategize. Dissenting voices help us to refine our thinking.

The thrust of what the critics are saying is summed up in one snide remark:

You resisted Putin in Russia? Cool. Who won?

I anticipated this kind of response. The elephant—or Russian bear—in the room is that the dictator Putin is still in power in Moscow and I’m here in America. So does that make my appeal to nonviolent protest misplaced?

Another commenter elaborates on this line of reasoning, questioning the role of peaceful protest in the United States.

Peaceful protest has its place—but we need to be honest about what it's become in America: a pressure valve. Allowed, even encouraged, precisely because it doesn't threaten power [...] It's time we asked: Who really benefits from a movement that never scares its enemies?

First, and strategy aside: Nonviolent resistance in Russia was a moral imperative for me. We had to try—and we have to continue to try—whether or not our victory was close at hand.

Now, as a practical consideration: If we’d broken a single window, let alone set a car on fire (God forbid a police car), we would have been shot. And this was during what we Russians call Putin’s vegetarianskiye vremena, or “vegetarian times.” The Kremlin went on to murder a number of my friends anyway. The victory is that some of us are still alive to fight another day. That is why dictators work to crush their opposition so absolutely, even when it’s already marginalized as in Russia. As long as the embers of liberty remain, the strongmen can never be fully secure.

America is not at that point yet, and there is still an opportunity to change this country’s trajectory. That requires not taking the bait when the bad guys lay it out in front of you.

More to the point, I reject the analysis that peaceful protest “doesn’t threaten power” in the US. If that were true, Trump would not be trying so hard to instigate a violent confrontation in Los Angeles. Footage of soldiers and police attacking peaceful protesters will not play well with most Americans. Nor will many like seeing their democratically-elected senator manhandled by the administration’s goons. But even isolated instances of rioting give potential allies permission to look the other way or draw false equivalences in the face of state abuse.

Aspiring dictators need a spectacle to remain relevant. They will manufacture one on their own if necessary: Think back to the Moscow apartment bombings at the end of the 1990s. But you do not need to create that spectacle for them. Throwing rocks and lighting fires puts people in imminent, physical danger and is a guaranteed way to lose the broader public. Just look at all of the videos of violent episodes from 2020 making their way around social media, dishonestly framed as videos of this past week’s events in Los Angeles. Aside from the obvious—that MAGA is an engine for viral disinformation—this speaks to the enduring political value that riots provide to American reactionaries.

Footage of burnt-out car chassis and looting offer the far-right a gift that will pay dividends for generations. On the other hand—and unlike in Russia—America still has independent media that can showcase nonviolent protest. That is inconvenient to Trump’s narrative and it frightens him.

Until next week! I look forward to continuing the conversation with you in the comments.

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