Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade Americans have been in the streets protesting.
But it seems like most Americans who aren’t protesting, along with many who are, see little hope of success. I agree in ways I’ll explain. But still I see this as probably our last best off-ramp before true fascist carnage. There may be little chance of success. But whatever chance there is now it will only lessen with time. So this is an opportunity to seize.
The end of abortion rights is a moral and humanitarian disaster. Things that are on the individual scale a surprise or a tragedy, like rape and ectopic pregnancy, are on the national scale not a surprise but a constant. Every day little girls are raped by their father, their uncle, their neighbor. Every day pregnancies result. And now many states will condemn those young victims to deliver the baby or die trying. It is unspeakably evil.
But it also fits tightly with the other evils we face. The Supreme Court has gone to war not only against reproductive rights but also Miranda rights, religious freedom, the EPA, and more is coming. And this stands against the backdrop of worsening climate catastrophe, and of Republicans working hard to seize full power while Democrats alternate between hapless resistance and positive collaboration.
Our system is too broken and these catastrophes are too close. We’ve run out of time for reform. Voting will not save us now.
Then what’s the answer? And how exactly is a particular protest going to bring about change, haters keep asking. But I come at this from a different angle.
I have no confidence that things will get better. I have no confidence that rising Christian fascism will be stopped, or that climate change will be addressed, or that capitalism will be replaced. I think it’s entirely possible we’re already fucked. I think it’s entirely possible that the atrocities that fill me with horror and rage, from slave ships to the Holocaust to Operation Condor to our laughing war criminals in Iraq, are about to embed themselves in American life and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
But if so I’ll still fight. I want to fight this good fight even if it’s doomed. I will not pursue a comfortable and cowardly life while vulnerable people are destroyed. I refuse. This alone is enough for some of us.
And if I squint hard enough I can sometimes see reasons for hope and prospects of success. Our best scenario might look something like Chile. They stand on the threshold of adopting a new constitution to replace an old broken one. And this came about not through voting or calling legislators within the old broken system, and not through protests that stayed polite and legal, but through months of sustained disruptive protest across the country. Real pressure was applied and maintained, and those in power eventually yielded. Maybe we can hope for something like that here.
Applying serious pressure can instead go poorly. It can simply be crushed by brutal state violence. Or the popular pressure and state violence can spiral into civil war, as happened in Syria. There’s no guaranty that pressure will bring improvement.
In advance it’s impossible to know how a protest movement will grow and develop and what will ultimately result. But I think we need to find out. The evils of the current system and the direction it’s headed are enough to force our hand.
So let’s get in the streets. And let’s stay there.