Like many of us I’m gingerly feeling my way into the Trump wreckage. I look to others to see how they do it. One obvious place is where the Missouri and Cannonbll rivers meet at the Sioux’s Sacred Stone resistance camp at Standing Rock. Many Native American nations came together in subzero blizzards to stop Energy Transfer Partners from completing an army Corps of Engineer-approved link of an oil pipeline that will pollute their water supply and desecrate ancient burial ground. Standing Rock is the most powerful gathering of American Indians since the great 1890 Ghost Dance religious revival. After Amy Goodman took video, and mainstream reporters broadcast how North Dakota cops and hired mercenaries grenaded, sprayed freezing water and set dogs on the protestors, suddenly the Corps of Engineers got environmental religion and put a screeching stop to drilling under sacred land…for now. A win not a victory. Myself I believe the tipping point came when 2000 military veterans from all over showed up as a human shield between the peaceful camp and the angry police. Whoops! Can’t have corporate rent-a-cops in full camera view shooting combat veterans who have showed up wearing patches of their old uniform. Bad publicity! OK, what can we learn? First, absolute nonviolence. David Archambault, the head of the Standing Rock Sioux, insisted that the camp was a place of prayer, drum circles and sacred fires. Not your ordinary rah-rah protest but a “spiritual quest”. Trouble is, most of us are not Native Americans with their long and bloody history that makes it natural f or the nations to come together en masse and raise a little hell. And some of us are not noticeably as spiritual as a Sioux or Lakota. I’m a godless plodder, so it’s not an easy ladder for me to climb. Although I suppose I can learn if I channel my past with the church-going civil rights Student Non Violence Coordinating Committee who taught us that loving Jesus and loving ourselves was a successful political strategy. And we’re not ex soldiers who share a disciplined command language and quick reflexes that helped them “muster” – in full gear - at four days’ notice. I’d like to “militarize” the left by borrowing some of the army’s best bits, like punctuality, the buddy system and respect for the Constitution. And we’re not sitting in today’s California legislature which defiantly may announce itself as a “sanctuary state” and is putting together a legal package to help the undocumented. Nor are we California's police chief Charlie Beck who told Trump to go take a flying leap if he expects his cops to help deportations. (In LA alone we have half a million undocumenteds.) So if we’re not spiritual Native Americans or soldiers or law makers or cops, who are we and what can we do? Forget deal-happy Democrats like Chuck Schumer and pathetic Al Gore (“Trump is a good listener”) they’re yesteryear’s men. It’s on us. And, please, no more clichés of shock and horror, our model is Muhammed Ali who took terrific punishment on the ropes before rope-a-doping to victory. Yes, he paid a big price and so may we. If many of our fellow citizens are Nazis in their hearts, like the apprentice storm troopers who scream “Treason!” and “Lock her up” at Trump Nuremberg-style rallies, what’s our choice except to outnumber and outfight them? |
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