The Degree to Which you Resist is the Degree to Which You Are Free!
Thursday, May 7th, 2009It’s easy for many queer people to shrug of the idea of civil disobedience. We’re used to defeat and we’re used to accepting it. We’ve learned to stuff our anger down our throats because of the enormous risk that comes with shouting it from the rooftops. Civil disobedience has been called naïve by those who have turned cynical by the lack of progress made after years of struggle. It has been called reckless by those who believe the path to full equality is good behavior. There are those who believe that at the end of the day civil disobedience won’t really change anything, so why bother?
It’s true; Civil disobedience isn’t going to change the minds of the Supreme Court justices or convince the bigots to join PFLAG.
It’s going to change us. It’s going to change the way w e feel about ourselves, our place in the world, and our value as human beings. I know this because when I found out that fifteen people had been arrested for blocking an on-ramp during the November 15th protests it changed how I felt about being queer. I had never seen us fight back before.
The first queer person I knew was a Mormon lesbian who committed suicide. I was eleven. By that point, I knew about Matthew Shepard. At thirteen I saw Boys Don’t Cry in which Brandon Teena, a transman (finally, someone like me!), was gang raped and murdered.
Lawrence King. Gwen Araujo. Angie Zapata. Simmie Williams. “Corrective rape” used to “fix” lesbians in South Africa. The execution of gay Iraqis. The staggering rate of suicide and attempted suicide among LGBTIQ youth.
These things are real. These things are things that have happened to me, to my friends, to my community. It’s on the news, it’s in t he paper. But these are not the only stories that will be told about us, not anymore. We are utilizing nonviolent direct action, the same methods that have led countless movements for social justice and civil rights. We are fighting back with our bodies and our hearts, the only weapons that have ever truly mattered
Bill Kraus said it best in 1980:
“The problem lies not in evil personalities or traitorous acts, but rather in the political orientation which believes that an oppressed group gets what it needs by being careful not to offend the powerful. The problem lies in the desire to protect the little we have gotten by not risking a fight for what we deserve. The problem lies in believing that what we have gotten is somehow a favor given by politicians rather than the politicians’ recognition of what we have the political power to get.”
