You were one of the millions that attended one of the thousands of actions in the U.S. Empire and around the world yesterday. Amazing! Now what?
I share, again, some lessons from Korean protest culture, where protesting is in our blood, and a way of life. We in Korea recently successfully impeached our president within 4 months following his dangerous martial law declaration, through the power of people protesting. And while of course our countries and governments are different, we can share the power of people organizing.
Protest is valuable for so many reasons, but it is not the conclusion of our work. It is just the beginning. Protest is a part of a whole. Protesting is not the end of a path, but part of the path itself. The reason why energy often fades or is forgotten after a large protest, is because people view it as the event itself.
Protest is not an event. It is also not the solution. Protest is one of many tools to build resistance and community. It helps to build collective consciousness to keep building toward the collective liberation. Protest is a practice in and of itself. Protesting can be a drop of water that helps to create the momentum for the crash of the wave, but it has to be continuous to create that wave.
In Korea, it is not that a protest happens, and we wait until another protest down the line. It is that we are continuously protesting with crescendo until we get what we demand.
So instead of protest high to lull to protest high, or something that resembles a jagged skyline of skyscrapers, for Koreans it is an ongoing build up within the crescendo of a wave that then bolsters the next wave infinitely. There is always movement toward momentum. A protest always builds on the previous, which builds up to the next, and so on.
This is different from what I feel often happens in the U.S. where the pattern resembles that jagged skyline, where a protest happens and another will happen, but each is regarded as a protest separate from the one before and separate from the next, where protest almost becomes the objective itself. It is almost as if you start over again from scratch each time, not only with the energy, but with the mobilizing, scaffolding, logistics, messaging, political education, and with the critical mass.
This not only causes fatigue, but also creates separation between struggles and reinforces the harmful culture of individualism, instead of uplifting the collective interdependence needed to build upward and outward. There can be no continuity if there is no connection. There can be no crescendo, either.
Remember to zoom out, and connect the struggles, community organizing pulls these struggles together for Black lives, for Palestine, for LandBack, against U.S. imperialism, against borders, against cop cities, against militarism, for disability justice. Those are all part of a continuous cause for the liberation of all oppressed people. Protest, too, should be connected and continuous through these struggles.
Protests do not stop. Resistance is continuous.
It just so happens that protesting in the streets is highly visible, so it is a fantastic conduit to help inspire, make people believe in something, build power, embolden, bring in new people, educate many, and prompt further action. But it can take days, months, and even years of protest to get what you demand. We cannot simply think we are at a protest, we have to ingrain the understanding that we are in protest. For as long as it takes. As a way of life itself.
And there are so many forms of protest that should be a part of the whole, too. Between the very visible protesting in the streets, there can be an infinite number of protests in other shapes such as digital organizing, sustained boycotts, interrupting politicians, community groceries and gardens, rallies, actions, disruptions, writing, calling, free food programs, free learning and libraries, or even neighbor political education circles.
Do not only boost the mass street protests, but also the daily protests that are and can happen all around you. For every barrage of genocide, eugenics, fascism, anti-Blackness, anti-immigrantism, ableism, anti-Indigeneity, and militarism, uplift the protests big and small and share them with others. Make people aware that protest is happening all the time. Amplify. Bring them to the forefront so that people understand it never stops.
We don’t stop. And we make the connections.
Whether it was 100 in a small town or 100,000 in a major city, people showed up yesterday.
People get to witness each other through protest. There are more of us than you think. There is more courage than you imagined. You are not alone. You witnessed millions, and yesterday affirmed all of that. And also, we must protest even between protests. Drops to waves.
Ask yourself, while making the connections:
What did you learn? What did you come to understand? What did you experience? What did you want to see more of?
How will you build on that? How will you build on it with others? How will you build it into the following movements?
Build on, build with. There is no need to start over each time.
Continuous.
Connect.
Crescendo.
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