On Modes of Protest — a letter regarding collective responses

On the need for collective, co-ordinated responses (to crimes against humanity, specifically the war on the people of Gaza): ...’only’ that peaceful interventions should (to my mind) be made in all possible contexts and that we need to speak to people to bring 'them' on board with addressing situations rather than entrench 'them' as enemies. I strongly believe that peace (in all contexts) can only come about by the privileging of open conversation, to show that human rights also involve the consciences of those who violate them and those consciences need addressing. As a pacifist, I am on the path of total disarmament (of all), and I think that empathy is core to change. At present there is no concrete world language of empathy outside a few individuals and groups — no means of translating different cultural values, lived experience, heritage  etc, into a comparative model so people generally understand difference as something necessary and inherent rather than something that poses a threat. That such rights are essential beyond all else. For me, the apparent total non-protest and the apparent lack of civil disobedience around Australia's militarisation (or, rather, its dramatic upscale from a force of colonial oppression to one with colonial-imperial designs) is entangled with all the other oppressions it overtly or inadvertently supports. So, really, I argue for a holistic approach to protest — we cannot hope to effectively help stop genocide in Gaza while the very basis of our lives in Australia is entrenched in the legacies of genocide itself, and future projections of this (via the realities of AUKUS and the like). We need to protest empathetically, persistently, emphatically (non-violently) and holistically and not in bits and pieces. A concerted but non-belligerent approach. Many will disagree with this, and see belligerence as essential, but in my life of enacting and participating in protest, I have found belligerence to be ineffective. Being emphatic and persistent — never giving in — is a different thing from 'belligerence'.

            John Kinsella