protest

If You Like It Then You Should Be Able to Put A Ring On It

admin — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 16:01:00 +0000

Adorable, DIY-style animation and quirky music start off this excellent and important film about marriage equality in Ireland. Cara Holmes and Ciara Kennedy cut and paste stories, images, protests, and facts into a clever, witty, and purposeful narrative.

Voice-overs and interviews are illustrated and screened, intercut or overlaid upon footage from rallies, photo montages, and title cards (which have a very on-trend hand-drawn look). These touches make the film more accessible and adhere to the filmmakers’ established aesthetic. I really respect the directors’ decision to use this style–it actually underscores the gravity of the issue. It’s a very watchable, warm, and likeable documentary, and will have wide appeal.

Full disclosure: I met Cara when we were both booked at Ladyfest Berlin a few years ago, and her band wrote a song about my zine. A couple of years after that, we were both on the bill at Ladyfest Cork, which became the hen do before my UK civil partnership with my wife Sarah. Sarah and I actually staged a mock wedding as part of our comedy show at the festival, using vows rewritten to address the illegality of our marriage in Ireland. We met with MarriagEquality, who were tabling at Ladyfest, and took badges back for our friends to wear while preparing for our ceremony in the UK. We knew some bills were being proposed, and things were looking pretty good in Ireland at the time–like this issue was moving ahead.

When I saw If You Like It Then You Should Be Able To Put A Ring On It mentioned on a friend’s Facebook page, I immediately recognised Cara’s name and followed the link to the film. I felt really frustrated as I began watching; Ireland seems to have come no closer to legal and financial equality for queer couples who wish to marry.

Here’s a quote from one of the on-screen title sequences early on in the film:

In 2005, it was argued before the High Court that Katherine and Ann Louise had a constitutional right to equality: a right to marry, property rights, and family rights. They also argued that the failure to recognise their marriage breached their rights under the European Convention on Human Rights. To date their marriage is still not recognised. On Feb 23, 2007 the case was appealed to the Supreme Court. There is no known timeframe for the Supreme Court hearing.

If You Like It... goes on to introduce couples who’ve married elsewhere, shows footage from protests and rallies (including some awesome placards!), interviews representatives from several marriage rights organisations, and manages the difficult task of presenting different viewpoints (civil partnership as a stepping stone to full equality vs. ‘separate but equal’ compromise) toward a common purpose remarkably well. It also puts the campaign into the larger context of queer rights around the world generally, and provides links in the credits to the organisations and artists who contributed to the film.

The pace of the film is quite inspiring–it builds to a climax that offers hope to the queer community, and should galvanise new allies into action. In the end, I was heartened by both the message and its style of delivery.

The case mentioned above is still pending, and a civil partnership bill is working its way through the Irish government, but it’s a slow process. Major props to Holmes and Kennedy for helping speed things along with this outstanding short film.

Written by: Chella Quint, June 26th 2010

How Nonviolence Protects the State

admin — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 18:48:00 +0000

By Peter Gelderloos

South End Press

Do anti-war protests really stop the United States from invading another country? Do pro-choice marches affect legislation on abortion? Did sit-ins during the Civil Rights movement help to end racism? These are the questions that Peter Gelderloos asks in his new book How Nonviolence Protects the State. With a wealth of experience in anti-prison work, prisoner support organizations,and the anti-war and anti-globalization movements, Gelderloos brings his seasoned perspective to these important issues.

Drawing on large historical events, such as the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement, Gelderloos shows how pacifists and nonviolent protests have not achieved the same results that active resistance has. At a time when everyone in the world, except for the US government, is realizing that US troops need to leave Iraq now, Gelderloos’ book argues how ineffective the current peace movement has been at stopping the war and creating any sort of political change. Before the war broke out over four years ago, “[s]ome groups, like United for Peace and Justice, suggested the protests might avert the war. Of course, they were totally wrong, and the protests totally ineffective. The invasion occurred as planned, despite the millions of people nominally, peacefully, and powerlessly opposed to it.” So how do we switch our peace movement from marching in the streets to actually resisting our government and creating change?

It is this question that Gelderloos has a difficult time answering. How Nonviolence Protects the State _is not meant to change any minds. Instead, it reads as a reassurance for those who already know the ineffectiveness of peace movements. Gelderloos’ language is aggressive at times, as he conflates peace activists with “good sheep.” But perhaps this is his point. Maybe if we started to realize that marches and nonviolent protests were ultimately tools of society to make people feel as if they are creating change, then we would actually find a way to resist our government and create the change we want on our own terms. Covering a diverse range of topics, from how nonviolence is racist to how nonviolence is patriarchal, _How Nonviolence Protects the State is an important book to read for anyone who recognizes the ineffectiveness of peace activism today. And while the text doesn’t provide many answers, it does inspire the reader to reconsider her notions of “activism” and “change.”

Written by: Chelsey Clammer, July 17th 2007

Globalization from Below: Transnational Activists and Protest Networks

admin — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 17:23:00 +0000

By Donatella della Porta, Massimiliano Andretta, Lorenzo Mosca, Herbert Reiter

University Of Minnesota Press

On November 30, 1999, roughly 50,000 demonstrators descended upon Seattle, Washington, to protest the World Trade Organization (WTO) conference. The mission of the conference was to increase global market liberalization, and every imaginable progressive activist group was in attendance—from Greenpeace and the AFL-CIO to the Sea Turtle Restoration Project, whose members donned turtle costumes and patrolled the crowds to promote non-violence. As the authors of Globalization from Below note, the 1999 WTO protests ignited a global movement that has since surfaced, both in protest and participation, at the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa, Italy, and the 2002 European Social Form in Florence. The authors surveyed activists at the two events in order to analyze the means and motivation of global protest. The results from those surveys, along with other anecdotal and epistolary information, are presented and analyzed in this book. Reader be warned: this is not a Newsweek article or any other easily-digestible political analysis. However, despite the density of the subject matter, the authors, all researchers or professors at the European University Institute, skillfully create a framework around their data to establish the means, medium and message of the global justice movement that calls for "an alternative globalization based on principles different from economic growth and free market . . . and focuses especially on social justice." Chapters like "Global-Net for Global Movements?" and "Media Conscious and Nonviolent?" help ground the data within the particular strategies and repertoires of the movement. The global justice movement has been successful in appealing for debt relief for poor nations and bringing increased environmental standards to the global conversation, if not (alas) to the board room. While analyzing the movement, Globalization from Below offers a cogent critique of neo-liberalism run amok without resorting to conservative isolationism as a cure. There is a way, the activists say, to use globalization to foster human connections and interdependency versus independence and exploitation. "Another world is possible," they chant, and we may want to listen.

Written by: Rachel McCrystal, December 3rd 2006