#on protest

In raising the “by what right” question, [Thomas] Merton forced us to consider that protest, if it is to have any hope of constructive impact on others, has to be undertaken not only with great care but with a genuine sympathy and compassion for those who don’t understand or who object to one’s protest, who feel threatened and angered by it, who even regard the protester as a traitor. After all, what protest at its best aims at is not just to make a dissenting noise but to help others think freshly about our social order and the direction we are going. The protester needs to remember that no one is converted by anger, self-righteousness, contempt, or hatred. One has to use the hammer of protest carefully. Protest can backfire, harden people in their opposition, bring out the worst in the other. Sometimes this may be necessary—consider the confrontations that occurred in Selma just a few months earlier in which police and others brutally attacked non-violent demonstrators simply wanting to exercise their constitutional right to vote. If it is to be transformative, protest needs to be animated by love, not love in the sentimental sense but in the sober biblical sense of the word. Hence Christ’s insistence on love of enemies. “Until we love our enemies,” Merton said, “we’re not yet Christians.”

“The grace to protest,” Merton wrote in his notes for the retreat, “is a special gift of God requiring fidelity and purity of heart.” Far from seeing an opponent merely as an obstacle, one wishes for him or her “a better situation in which oppression no longer exists.”

Fremeaux, Isabelle  & Ramsden, Hilary  (2007) We Disobey To Love: Rebel Clowning For Social Justice [online] Available at:www.labofii.net/docs/wedisobeytolove.doc

Hancox, Dan (2012) And Then?: A year of unrest in the UK, Frieze, Issue 144 January-February 2012. Also available at:http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/and-then/

Holert, Tom (2012) Face/Off: Anonymity and iconography in contemporary protest culture,Frieze, Issue 146, April 2012. Also available at:http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/face-off/

Jordan, John (2006)In the Footnotes of Library Angels: A Bi(bli)ography of Insurrectionary Imagination, London: Live Art Development Agency Study Room Guide [online] Available at:http://www.thisisliveart.co.uk/pdf_docs/SRG_Jordan.pdf

Mouffe, Chantal (2007) Artistic Activism and Agnostic Spaces,Art & Research: A Journal of Ideas, Contexts and Methods, Vol. 1, No. 2, Summer 2007 [online] Available at:http://www.artandresearch.org.uk/v1n2/mouffe.html

Trowell, Jane (2012)Take the money and run? Some positions on ethics, business sponsorship and making art, London: Live Art Development Agency Study Room Guide [online] Available at:http://www.thisisliveart.co.uk/resources/Study_Room/guides/platform_guide.html