hyper-local thoughts on one campus protest of the genocide in Gaza

What did the Portland State University library ever do to oppress?

In the aftermath of the destruction and senseless vandalism of our campus library in the name of protecting the people of Gaza (huh?), the library workers have mobilized and are working very hard to bring as many services to students and faculty as possible as soon as possible. Watch for announcements here: https://library.pdx.edu/library-closure-faqs/

It feels in some ways like what we are faced with on a local campus scale what we will be faced with if Trump loses the election and violent mobs continue to try to destroy democracy. I mean, the campus may need to attempt to offer nonviolent defense of the library, as some so-called anarchists continue to try to retake the library for godknowswhat reason. 

The pop-up library aims to open in the basement of Smith Memorial Student Union to offer limited in-person services, including access to books placed on reserve, and other limited but valuable services. I suppose a PSU peace team should be on hand to help mobilize mass nonviolent defense of what we used to take for granted. 

Now the anti-PSU people have at least also targeted the administration building, the logical place if the administration is being told to make certain decisions. Evidently, one campus public safety officer was hurt and sent to the hospital. I will try to find out more. 

These activists have avoided the very basics of good nonviolent campaigning, including declaring a code of conduct that might begin to engender any trust. It is obvious they have had no basic training in nonviolent resistance. They have failed to seriously try to educate the campus community about the PSU role in waging genocide in Gaza. They've lost the hearts and minds of the PSU community and Portland in general. 

Another PSU professor and I will be offering one or more workshops over the summer on designing and carrying out a campaign that wins in the court of public opinion and wins a stated goal. We will do our best to publicize it. It works.

• When we wanted our US Senators from Oregon to oppose any further funding for the occupation of Iraq, we negotiated with their staff, we went into their offices without using spraypaint, without wrecking anything, and even without interfering with any constituent business. We were just a presence discussing stopping an illegal and immoral invasion and occupation of someone else's land. In one case, we got the Senator to publicly support us and vote the way we wanted him to. In the other case, we helped defeat him and bring in someone far better. 
• Where I started teaching, in northern Wisconsin, we nonviolently blockaded a thermonuclear command base. In that case, we used hand tools to dismantle some of that base. We didn't go after a library that had nothing to do with anything, but instead went straight to a portion of the nuclear arsenal itself that threatens all of life on earth, and took a bit of it apart. We were open, transparent, and we turned ourselves in. No masks, no smash and dash. We won. That entire base is gone. We built an unstoppable coalition of peace, environmental, and tribal rights activists. It takes a great deal of "work before the work," with many educational events, a great deal of lobbying, and lots of nonviolence training. We won the hearts and minds of our fellow citizens. 
• The tribes did the same thing and regained 100 percent of their treaty rights. They were disciplined and completely nonviolent. Unlike the Standing Rock compromises that included camp areas where there was no commitment to a peaceful protest, the Anishinaabe were disciplined and there were no gaps in their beliefs, their decision to use only nonviolent methods even if they were attacked (which they were), and I was happy to help in ways that they said they wanted. They not only won in the courts, they completely flipped public opinion, which began in polls that were approximately 90 percent opposed to Native treaty rights in 1986 and by 1992 were more than 90 percent in favor of Native treaty rights. 

These are the stories of serious, disciplined nonviolent campaigns and there are thousands more. There is no guarantee, of course, but the model is clear and more likely to win than any other approach. I am always sad when activists don't get that. I am sadly confident that they will alienate the public, even when their cause is good, which is a great mistake and great disservice to that cause.