On Monday a couple hundred people sat outside the Governor’s office. They had walked with me there from the Washington State Capitol rotunda where a large crowd from across the state was protesting emergency budget cuts being made in a special legislative session called to address the massive budgetary shortfall–the predictable result of Washington’s regressive tax structure (worst in the nation, by some measures), and the ongoing recession.
In a successful ‘Mic Check’, I had suggested to the crowd that, since the legislature had adjourned in response to our protest, while the Governor remained in her office, that we march down the steps and invite her to join us. Sitting on the floor was not my idea, but I believe it was a decisive one.
The occupation of the Governor’s hallway demonstrates the utility of that strange invention of the Occupation movement known as “the people’s mic”. When it works, it is a powerful thing, like gospel music, or call and response–it synchronizes humans around a shared thought, as the thought is spread and amplified by their collective voices. For people who’s fundamental grievance is powerlessness, it is a key discovery.
But the people’s mic has a dark side. Because it can be used by any person at any moment, it can amplify thoughts that are wrong, or divisive, or even dangerous, making them seem like they are widely shared. It also distorts certain kinds of speech that are necessary for a crowd to capture the public imagination. It’s halting nature fragments oratory, and poetry, and like a bullhorn its harshness pushes pointed thoughts over a threshold so they can’t help but sound belligerent.
We had no intent to march into the Governor’s office. The explicit plan was to stand in the hall. But the State Patrol massed in the doorway shortly after we arrived, and though there was no intention to advance further, the physical fact of 15 or more officers, shoulder to shoulder, three men deep, facing a crowd of frustrated protestors immediately took on the appearance of a physical standoff. Tensions predictably rose, urged on by some of the crowd’s worst instincts–amplified, as they were, through the people’s mic.
The State Patrol began to gear up–for something. Many put on latex gloves, as sign that physical contact was imminent. The person next to me leaned over and said in my ear “this is isn’t good”, echoing a palpable sense of dread that washed over the crowd.
Quick thinking on the part of several people turned the situation around. A man in the back used the crowd’s voice to engage the State Patrol and ask them what they were preparing to do. A woman used the mic to suggest that the crowd sit down. We did–echoing the famous moment when Gandhi admonished his followers to lay down to thwart the advance of charging British horses. I then activated the mic and, now seated, used crowds voice to alert both the crowd, and the officers, to something germane. I told them that some of us had met some of these very officers in a previous standoff, one week before, and that we had discussed with them the escalating police violence across the country. I told the crowd that these officers did not want to harm us, and had promised that they would not meet our non-violence, with their violence–ever. I proposed a minute of silence hoping it would break the tension. We were quite.
No physical contact occurred in the Governor’s hall. And though none of us can be sure what actually took place, it certainly looked like a crowd of citizens successfully restrained itself and engaged the state’s Police force–holding it to honorable standards and promises, and thereby averting a clash that would have served only the interests of the tiny minority pulling the government’s strings.
Those who have hijacked governmental power know what they are doing. They are students of history enough to understand the importance of pitting the people and the police against each other to divert attention from the real story. In that light, the people’s mic is at once an asset, and a curse. It was used on Monday to avert a needless physical clash. But how long will it be before an agent provocateur in a wool hat successfully inflames a crowd past a point of no return?
And what are the reasonable people in the crowd supposed to do when the mic is used to broadcast utopian fantasies held by a small minority, as occurred when one protestor used the mic to demand of the Governor the elimination of ‘capitalism, economics and government?’
The people’s mic needs to evolve. It is powerful. If we want it to retain its power, the crowd must learn to use it carefully. And we must be able to dialog with it–even with news camera’s rolling–without that looking like a failure of solidarity. Crowds can be wise. They can also be foolish. The crowd must learn to think and, thereby, to speak with a voice that becomes ever more difficult to dismiss. At the very least, the mic should not be used to amplify things over which there is serious disagreement, even amongst those that share the crowds basic anger over the un-sustainability and inhumanity of our present system.
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