Last week Elizabeth May leader of and the only sitting member of Canada's Green party got arrested while protesting at the gate of the Kinder-Morgan tank farm in Burnaby, B.C. (much less noticed was the arrest of NDP member of Parliament - Kennedy Stewart). A piece of me wants to clap my hands in almost an excited way that at least someone who has some sort of status is prepared to do something to draw attention to the issue. But there is an almost larger part of me that wants to yell out - so what!
My lack of excitement for their act of civil disobedience has nothing to do with their cause or the fact that their concerns are reasonable for any rational, forward thinking, grandparent-thinking-about-their -grandchildren type of person - it is because it is such an inadequate response. In fact to call the miniscule protest at the Morgan-Kinder site a civil disobedience fees like a profound exaggeration. I think much of my discomfort at the protests over the pipelines is the fact that the protesters suggest that they are acting on behalf of all First Nations and other British Columbians while very small numbers of people are actually showing up and protesting. I suspect that those protesters and the hundreds of people who pass comments on their Twitter and Facebook pages have little or no understanding of the amount of energy required to actively engage in any sort of civil disobedience.
If one were to look at some at examples of effective civil disobediences that have occurred on this continent - two conditions become apparent. One was that a large percentage of the affected citizens were involved and secondly that the protests lasted not just for a few hours or a weekend - but for weeks and weeks - if not months. For example if one looks at the Montgomery bus boycott - it lasted for 13 months and during that times no (or at least very few) African Americans used city buses. In March of 2011, in the province of Quebec a handful of students staged a protest over the announce hikes in university tuition. A year or so later there were student lead protests for night after night - some of which were attended by 200,000 people.
A march or a protest of a few thousands or even a hundred thousand but that last but for a few hours does not impact the bureaucrats, the politicians or the corporate elites. It is no more effective at stopping anything than are a few mosquito bites. A number of years ago, during the Mike Harris days in Ontario, the public service unions orchestrated a series of rotating day long, city wide strikes. For a day the downtown core of Toronto was shut down. There were thousands of workers taking the day off from work - supposedly in protest over some significant cuts to budgets and services. It was a lovely day - nice weather, great people to talk to; it was fun walking down the middle of major streets with no concerns about traffic etc. Everything was closed down - there were no civil servants visible nor were there any corporate offices that seemed open. The next day we all went back to work, Harris ignored that and other similar protest and continued with the cuts. A short while later the union announced that there would be no more large strikes.
If the actions of such people as Elizabeth May are to have any effect, there must be a continuous, planned, and focused strategy developed and carried out. As tempting (and as lazy) as it is to believe that Facebook and Twitter are all that is required to (1) get people out and (2) to maintain a long term, sustainable agenda of civil disobedience - it will never work. People need to commit the time and energy not just into getting to the demonstration but into keeping it fresh and vital for weeks if not months.
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