No Violent Revolution

No Violent Revolution

By Rick Smith

“The more there are riots, the more repressive action will take place, and the more we face the danger of a right-wing takeover and eventually a fascist society.”

-the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., African-American civil rights activist

A troubling aspect of the right-wing is that they continually seek to paint leftism as necessarily involving revolutionary means of achieving their goals. This is done through a process known as “red-baiting”, in which obscurantist interests attack progressive activists as “commies”. In this way, they turn a population that seeks democratic means of achieving equality away from their champions. Fundamental to the ideas of the Canadian Renaissance, however, are that violence is an unacceptable means of initiating reform. As long as free political expression and assembly are allowed, no adherent of the Renaissance or other progressive forces would in their right mind advocate violence. After all, the Renaissance’s raison d’être is to advocate spreading knowledge and making cultural changes at a community level before making political changes, and then building on the unity of the common person to reinvent our democracy.

To be certain, those involved in the Renaissance movement are dissatisfied with the current fusion of big business and government. They dislike the elected-emperor nature of the top-down democracy that we currently have in place. However, as promoters of peace, disciples of the Renaissance must refuse to use the barrel of the gun to achieve political goals when avoidable, as it often is. The Rev. Dr. King’s quote introducing this essay denotes a correlation between the level of violent public resistance and the level of reaction by an anti-progressive government. While certainly by no definition of the word is Canada’s government fascist, they nevertheless display an affinity for the status-quo or to advance the interests of the upper class. This is evident in the axis of Liberals and Conservatives peddling neoliberal economics in the 1990s which resulted in downsizing, outsourcing, lay-offs, and a widening gap between rich and poor. However, for a movement that seeks to rid the country of that, the Renaissance is blessed with having a government that more often than not allows free expression. In this way, Renaissance ideas may be openly distributed without fear of legal repercussion – although contemptuous backlash from the ruling elites can only be inevitable. Taking to the streets in protest is a tried, tested and true of getting attention and should be used to challenge government activity that the people do not approve of. At all, though, the Renaissance is a movement of peace and mankind. To take up arms against one’s fellow human and killing is not a way to achieve lasting peace, whether the victim is a brutal police officer or an innocent bystander. Every human being is somebody’s child, was born, had their first giggle as they played, innocently saw the world as a place of love, and has loved and been loved. No human being has the right to take this from another. As Mahatma Gandhi said, “What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?”

When deciding on how we wish to bring about the downfall of the corporate power-structure in Canada, we must consider that the options are not so limited to peace or war. Even so, as declared in two publications of the Canadian Renaissance Organization, the Renaissance Manifesto and Bottom-Up Organizing, the principle means of achieving democracy in the streets is to conceive it there. In accordance with believing in the need for a commonwealth of neighbourhoods, the basic beliefs it that units as low as city blocks must organize into legally democratic units. Despite the powerful media machine of high society, a combination of truth and this form of democracy can combine to place leaders who wish to see the empowerment of communities in the government that we presently do have. By taking this method we avoid the methods of uprisings, riots and rebellions, methods which would only fill with blood the streets that we seek to bring real democracy to. Revolutionary circles would have one believe that the capitalist-democratic complex can only be overthrown by violent seizure of the means of production, but there is evidence that change can be made without resorting to bloodshed. Multiple fronts of those opposed to the racist apartheid regime in South Africa, notably the African National Congress led by Nelson Mandela and the South African Council of Churches led by Desmond Tutu, and emerged victorious not by petrol bomb but by protest. The build-up of popular support for the end of apartheid summed up in the government bowing to the demands of a citizenry eager for universal suffrage. Mahatma Gandhi’s campaign to end British rule in India came to a conclusion after his philosophy of non-violence civil disobedience inspired the masses to silently rebel against the Crown. Even in the face of authoritarian regimes, the so-called Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia saw the downfall of the Communist dictatorship without a single shot being fired. While these are extreme examples, they make a point that a system need not be overthrown to be changed drastically.

Still, consideration must be paid to the possibility that all else fails. It is entirely possible that even after communities the country over organize and become fully capable of self-governance that the powers that be will not relinquish their hold. Such was the case of the Six Nations occupation of a portion of land slated for development near the southern Ontario town of Caledonia. After putting their claim into the courts in 1995, the land having been sold to Henco Industries Ltd. in 1992, the Natives waited patiently for years until in 2005 the province of Ontario approved plans to develop a subdivision of McMansions on the land. With their options now limited to do nothing and allow the land to be built over with no hope to ever reclaim it or to do something to call attention to their plight, protestors from the nearby reserve marched onto the land and blocked Henco’s access to the subdivision. The courts continually refused to hear the claims of the Natives, however, when an injunction was handed down ordering the protestors off the land. On April 20, 2006, the Ontario Provincial Police brutally attacked the Natives using taser guns and clubs which would be the catalyst to the chaos to come. Soon, Natives from the Reserve began pouring onto the occupation site to stop the OPP’s unprovoked violence. In a show of strength to the strong arming-OPP, the Natives dug a trench in Caledonia’s main street which rain by the site, pushed a van over an overpass and started a tire fire. Many saw their actions as violent and it served to show the degree to which Canadians are unwilling to listen to the claims of the Natives nor support them when they stand up to unjust police authority. This relates to the Renaissance in that it goes to show that even non-violent action can be met with excessive might from a feral police force. Now, nobody can deny that what happened in Caledonia should ever occur elsewhere. Nevertheless, it proves that sometimes kickback results when the government refuses to listen to reason. Consequently, while protests and political action should always be carried out peacefully, the use of mace and tasers by the police must not be tolerated. In the case of Caledonia, few could see past the surge in racial tension to listen to what happened that morning on the occupation site, and so the inner racist in many people emerged as they began to see the Natives as savage, unreasonable folk looking for a fight. This underscores both a need for unity between races as well as between communities, because the interests of the people of Caledonia and the Six Nations were both compromised by this divisive issue that could have been settled back in the 90s. Violence as initiated by someone seeking change will go nowhere, but exercising one’s fundamental right to self-defense should never be compromised.

Admittedly, it is a program without its uncertainties and flaws. The guidelines, however, remain simple: self-defense in the face of aggression, peace in the face of everything else. As demonstrated, revolution is therefore undesirable as a means of achieving the true society of community council-based socialism that seeks to unite mankind first in Canada and then across the globe. This must be done in peace, for in the words of Oscar Wilde, “When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her”.