Building on the concept of aufhebung—preserving the hope of the old world within the joyous creation of the new—Emma Davidson calls for protest as jamming and radical love. A collective protest practice countering fascism with joy instead of anger.
Tim Hollo’s recent riffing on the word aufhebung was perfectly timed, given how much I’ve been thinking-by-doing recently. He talks about the need for action and activism while the world is in a critical moment of change. I’m not much of a philosopher, I just like to be helpful and do stuff. His reflections were a useful provocation.
I helped organise my first protest when I was 17: a call for peace as Australia joined the Iraq War in 1991. When I moved to Canberra not long after, I found my people. Activists of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities were part of anti-nuclear protests. By 1997, I remember a nice young chap from Perth encouraging me via IRC (yes I have been extremely online for a very long time) to start a Canberra chapter of Stop Jabiluka. I wasn’t ready for that kind of organising yet, but I was very happy to show up when others organised protests in the streets. Peter Garrett showing up at protests in Canberra was a great way to convince my musician share-house friends to come with. I joined the Democrats (because that’s who I met at the protests), my boyfriend at the time became a Greens supporter, and what we were doing just felt right.
Tim talks about aufhebung as a tension between destroying the old and preserving it in some higher form, as well as the word for making jam. I can feel the discomfort in my body when he speaks of “the abyss between the no longer hungry and the not yet overly full”. I’ll look into any other abyss you care to name before I turn to what I feel in my gut. But taking a close look at the interregnum between the old world and the new brings me great hope, and it’s hope fuelled by activism. Looking closely at what is causing those strong feelings is important when we decide on actions that align with our values.
I like his idea about jamming as a collective practice in activism. Values are a muscle, they need to be used regularly to stay strong, and it’s easier to do that with others who share our values. This is why we show up every weekend.
Rally, eat, sleep, repeat.
We’re building muscle memory for when it really counts, reminding ourselves that democracy still works in this city and we can use our voice to say what we want this world to become. When the crunch hits, our flex needs to be:
Hit the streets, lock arms, bring water, sing loud.
Let’s look at activist jamming not just as a jazz trio in musical conversation with each other, but also in the sense of a roller derby skater calling back and forth with their blocker pack to push through barriers and win the game. There will be dropped notes or bruises along the way, but we knew that going in, and we take care of each other.
The bruises are derby kisses in recognition of the strength and resilience and speed it took to get them. Activism, for me, is the same. It’s challenge with purpose, it’s good trouble. We break our bodies to save our souls, and somehow that feels right. I’ve never had a serious injury from musical performance – maybe a blister on my thumb when I first started playing bass and didn’t have my technique right, or a sore shoulder from playing violin for seven hours straight with poor posture. Skating has been the same. Nothing a band-aid or a good night’s sleep couldn’t fix. Remaking the world comes with risk, but it is just as beautiful as a jazz standard or a derby kiss. It’s a pivot from a comfortable old world that is dying, through whatever barriers are put in our way, to a beautiful new world that we make for ourselves. There will be challenging conversations and consequences along the way as we exercise our values to push for the world we want.
The most radical form of activism is sometimes the simplest: love. Radical love, the kind that Martin Luther King Jr or Jarrod McKenna or Dr Cornel West explain more eloquently than I can. I find action more comfortable than words when it comes to radical love. The act of engaging with courage in non-violent resistance, in refusing to fall into a framework of aggression and escalating suffering, is the most effective form of activism. It’s the most true form of revolution, because it enacts the compassion and care in the world we want through the forms of action we take to get there. It denies energy to violence and trauma, and gives momentum to peace and empathy. Let that momentum propel us forward to a more equal, inclusive, gentle relationship with planet and each other.
Radical love is an active practice. It recognises complexity and questioning binary constructs of what is right or wrong.
Radical love requires that we look at the whole individual and offer what is most useful to them, not follow unbending rules about what we should do.
Radical love requires that we hold the line. Do not respond in kind when met with violence. It’s harder than it sounds when someone is shouting in your face or dragging you from the line.
The long history of radical love and non-violent resistance within the civil rights and environment movements in Australia looks like the 1939 Cummeragunja walk-off, the 1965 Freedom Ride, the 1978 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, and the 1982 Franklin River blockade. When we refuse to comply with unjust laws, the consequences can include arrest and incarceration, or violence from those who wish to preserve the status quo.
The reason why non-violent direct action, grounded in radical love, has been so effective for over a century is because it made injustice visible to wider society. When someone is simply sitting down and refusing to move until they are forcibly dragged away, it becomes far more obvious who in the situation has power and what they are willing to do to keep it. Making injustice visible reduces social license, and increases the chance that people who have never personally felt the impact of that injustice will act to change it.
But over the years, I have seen some activists treating all forms of civil disobedience and non-violent direct actions as interchangeable. Civil disobedience and non-violent direct action are not the same thing. Sitting down in a public space and refusing to move until the protester is arrested is a non-violent direct action. But if that sitting down in a public space is accompanied by anger directed from the protester towards police or authorities, then it is not grounded in radical love. The aim of civil disobedience in combination with non-violent direct action is to confront the observer of the scene with visible injustice, and awaken their conscience.
Non-violence requires more than just abstinence from physical forms of violence. It asks that we abstain from hate for those who are opposed to the change we seek in the world. It is not the police or the political opponent or any individual person that we are opposed to. What we are opposed to is a system, a structure in society, that perpetuates suffering and inequality. The people who seek to maintain those structures may be persuaded to change their position if they see the role they are playing in causing harm, if the broader community rises up to demand that this harm must stop.
Those who engage in non-violent direct action are doing so not because they want to create conflict, but because they want to bring to the surface a conflict that was previously unseen. It is challenging not because we directly create conflict with the aggressor, but because we hold up a mirror to the conflict and tension within the aggressor. The conflict is not between the non-violent activist and the authorities, but between the desire to maintain existing systems and the commitment to cause no suffering to others. The conflict lies wholly within the aggressor who opposes the activist.
Dr Martin Luther King talked about the aftermath of non-violent direct action being redemption and reconciliation, creating a stronger sense of community. In contrast, the aftermath of violence is bitterness, pain, hurt and suffering. When we are challenged in our activist work by violence, and we respond in kind by shouting or physically pushing back, all we are doing is perpetuating the cycle of violence. Someone has to be willing to end the cycle, and the activist bears responsibility for this because they have the awareness that there is a better way to live than constantly trying to shout the loudest.
This is why I’m shifting my protest practices away from the traditional impassioned speeches and angry shouting. Where I’m headed is more like what we started to see at a recent anti-racism rally in Canberra, or in Portland. Dressing up in a Wonder Woman costume, with my friends dressed up as inflatable bunnies and dinosaurs, to take up space in protection of people who don’t want to be harassed by the far right. There was still some angry shouting going on, but I’m hoping to see more people join the theatrical, silly, joyous, radical love practice of non-violent resistance. Singing instead of shouting. This is how we make visible the extremism of the fascist movement that is trying to gain momentum here.
This is aufhebung within our movement. We are preserving the radical love foundation of non-violent direct action, and adding in the joy of the new way singing and dancing in the face of the anger and hate of fascists.
It’s really hard to take someone seriously when they’re pointing at the “extreme radical dangerous woke left” and we’re dressed up like it’s a children’s birthday party. Blowing bubbles with big bubble wands across the crowd. Waving rainbow flags. Dancing to pop songs. Passing around sunscreen and water, asking if anyone needs a safe ride home. Laying blankets on the grass for kids to do craft activities.
Let us raise our voices for a beautifully inclusive, compassionate world where nobody is left behind. Let us strengthen our muscle memory to have the courage to hold the line in protection of those who are most at risk from fascism. The time to lock arms will come.
There’s anonymity in protesting in a unicorn or frog costume. It’s hard to see from inside an inflatable costume, and even harder to dance, but that makes it all the more fun to be part of when there’s an inflatable menagerie in the crowd. For me, I feel a responsibility to take more of the heat in public by choosing a costume that gives me more movement flexibility and peripheral vision. I can stick with my Tyrannosaurus Rex friends to make sure they’re not left behind when the crowd starts moving. I don’t get to be anonymous anyway. I can use my visibility to say that exclusion and violence do not belong in the world we are making. Also, I have way too many comic con costumes that just want to go out and have fun to counter the scary.
The world needs more joy, and the revolution needs more hope punk. See you on the frontlines, and be ready to dance.
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Emma Davidson works in the university sector to improve diversity, equity and inclusion in technology. She was a Greens Minister in the ACT Government and National Convenor for the Women’s Electoral Lobby.
Feature image courtesy of Emma Davidson.