'Caesar' in the parks - how should people protest?

 For the 2017 New York City Shakespeare-in-the-Park summer production of Julius Caesar, Caesar was portrayed as a figure like our current administration's Republican leader. Because Caesar is assassinated, there are a variety of conservative objections, protests, and corporate sponsors dropping their support of the Public Theater. Commentators have asked, wouldn't there also be objections if artists staged such mock violence against liberal leaders?

As many sharp-eyed Shakespeareans have pointed out, there was in fact a production of Caesar with the title character styled as Democratic president, Barack Obama. I happened to catch this production on tour in 2012. It was a striking production that didn't rouse any picket lines. But whether liberals actually protested that play or not (and the fact Shakespeare's classics are nuanced, often re-purposed, and hardly ever one-dimensional) sidesteps a chance at an honest and fair discussion of the heart of the matter.

It doesn't take much to find actual, frequent, lively liberal protests of conservative speech, artists, or shows, which makes the defense of "free speech, allow art to be art!" - which I myself feel inclined to! - sound hypocritical.

Do we only disagree on substance? I have to ask myself. Is something else going on?

The real question is, (1) How do we want people to protest, knowing that we won't always agree with why they're protesting? and (2) How do we want people to make art, knowing we won't always agree with the art?

I've touched on principles for ideal vs. non-ideal agents before and it is apt right now. This is the idea that when we make rules for society, it's not enough to rely only on the 'right' people interpreting those rules. You have to account for fallible people who will be both citizens and officials, and a society where not everyone agrees. If you say...

"Only ban highly objectionable art/speech."

• What if we disagree about what's objectionable? We can't just cross our fingers that everyone will have 'right ideas' and agree with us.
• What's the worst case if that art/speech is present anyway? In a public park? In a private venue? Directed at the subject online or shouted in person? Maybe we can ask "who is harmed", what recourse the subject has for defense, and compare not just this instance, but the strongest cases, especially how the same principle applies to substance with which we agree and disagree... 
• Is the speaker/artist in a position of power/authority? What are the greatest consequences that could be envisioned?
• What about respecting a private individual who attempts to limit exposure to certain content in their personal life? In their child's life? Should they and can they? How does that balance against expression?
• And of course- there's many a provocative subject. I love stage combat but consider myself a pacifist; I'm concerned about what lessons and metaphors are found in a violent story and whether they ring true with me. I love freedom of expression but I'm concerned about things like promoting a culture of aggression. Who decides what's allowed, and at what level? At what point - and here's an age-old debate - does provocative cross the line into dangerous? At what point do speakers/artists view themselves as bearing some responsibility? What if those who offend, provoke, enrage, just don't care?

If you say...

"Only protest objectionable art/speech."

• What rules would we want protesters to abide by, whether we agreed with them on the substance or not?
• What rules would we want corporate sponsors to abide by in allocating or withdrawing their dollars, whether we agreed with them on the merits of the art/speech or not? 
• Is it reasonable to allow market forces to determine what artists/speech has a platform?
• Is it reasonable to allow majority votes to determine what artists/speech has a platform?
• Is it reasonable to allow protests to determine what artists/speech has a platform?
• Are there limits? Exceptions? Principles we want the "other side" to abide by?

I am much, much more interested in each person tackling these questions than in hammering my own opinions on this. I believe to my core we're going to get to better answers and results as a society by everyone really asking this of themselves and others, trying to work it out, listening, taking into account great points, continuing to refine. If there are important differences between one protest, objection, speech, art, political correctness/incorrectness, we have to be able to articulate those differences in terms of more than just "when I do it, it's OK". Let's have these discussions. Let's be mindful that a reliable way to lose someone's good faith fast is to appear to want rules that only apply when they benefit me.

Politics & keeping your sanity

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, so before I get into anything else, this is always a good share: Ask Take This: how to support a friend with depression and more. (Thank you, Bill!) Mental health challenges come in a wide variety, and this is a great article on being a good friend no matter what someone is dealing with.

Second, last year about this time I started a pushup challenge for Mission 22 from a friend and started conversations about taking better care of our veterans. Still very relevant today. What I like best about this kind of challenge is (in addition to donating and working for better social services) raising awareness can help directly: the more people think about what they can do, and dispel the myths and stigma around mental health, the better we will tend to be toward each other. 

Which brings me to today's thoughts. This year I'm focusing on a hard lesson for me personally: staying engaged with civic dialogue and civic action in a healthy way.

How the heck do we even read the news and just take care of our mental health? Problems piling on from "staying engaged" can seem to strain our capacity for empathy, patience, and just dealing with difficulty. It feels like this year is particularly bad in the United States. Even if that were just the impression we were getting from TV, social media, and Thanksgiving dinner, we've still got some tough questions to face:

• How would we like to be treated by friends and family who disagree with us?
• How are we treating them? Is the Golden Rule enough?
• What would we like kids to learn to do to resolve differences, reach compromise - or react when things don't go smoothly, or they face intolerance and unfairness?
• What are we doing to take care of ourselves when things get to us?
• How do we keep from confusing venting (or "winning points") with trying to actually share understanding, improve our relationships, or build support for good ideas?
• How do we keep from shutting down when we're needed - by our friends, family, community, world?

I don't know how to say how urgent this all is to figure out, except this way: Politics is people - government is people. I can't imagine we'll get far without acknowledging that the whole thing and how the world works is tangled up with our day-to-day relationships, our day-to-day impulses, differences and how we deal with them, disappointments and wrongdoing and what it does to us.

If age-old aggression still finds a place to be nurtured in my own heart, how can joy and peace in this world ever be found?

I am working on remembering that I need to both take care of myself, and not shut down to the troubled world. Improving the system isn't a far-off concept, separate from us. It's the same as improving all these things that happen between me and other people. Both inching us towards a better society is needed - and also dealing sanely with inevitable human mistakes, wrongdoing, not living up to what we wish others to be and what we wish ourselves to be. Our processes, plans, rules and culture aren't separate from us and our messiness, The System was never some other entity. It's friends, families, strangers. Kids watching you.

It's you, and me, dealing with things that seem overwhelming, frustrating, never-ending - sometimes needing a break, or support, or forgiveness, or a change - and deciding to return and keep trying to do something good anyway.

I am working on upholding what I feel is most important (compassion for others, not letting frustration and anger consume me) and at the same time, fighting for what is right. On one hand, there's an impulse to be very righteously angry, and I feel that is understandable - hot things burn, injustice hurts. On the flip side, my guess would be, for someone to say "I don't care about politics" is a defensive impulse, when people are trying to protect themselves against this overwhelming feeling about what's going on by shutting off. Understandable as they may be, I think these extremes - getting addicted to anger, hardening, shutting off - would be a mistake. They would ultimately wear us down and cut us off from doing anything useful, or what may be more important, from living whole lives open to all the good we can do and see that's wrapped up with the experience of living, of relating to other people who are inherently imperfect. What can we do deal healthily, one step at a time, with both the wonders and the troubles of humanity? How do you take care of yourself, and get back up to keep going?

"We can help this troubled world. If these teachings make sense to us, can we commit to them? In these times, do we really have a choice?" - Pema Chodron

Bring Down The House (Henry VI, Seattle Shakespeare Company 2017)

It will come as no surprise that this all-female mashup of Henry VI Parts I, II & III (the War of the Roses, source material for Game of Thrones) was a hit with me. It's Shakespeare, politics, action, intrigue, and moments of movement with dancelike potency - all with a cast of powerful, versatile women.

It was head-spinning seeing this play twice between January-February 2017. In six weeks, the public stage of national politics seemed to convulse and shudder as if giving birth to Richard III. In these plays, figures like Henry VI are almost written as caricatures, with both beauty of language and highlighted humanity thrown into sharp relief, their actions abstracted to their most memorable arcs and tableaus. It felt familiar, as our current political parties cast each other in what often seems like real-time historical fiction. 

In the world of the stage, it's an enjoyable and almost therapeutic experience to get shaken up by the humanity, humor and heartache in Shakespeare even as the drama plays out. This production uses simple sets, dramatic lighting, an abstracted chorus, and fights intercut with stylized taiko drumming. In between this exciting and intuitively understandable action, human moments emerge where the talented actresses shine in touching the heart of the matter, underneath it all.

Commentary on the roles of women was unavoidable, but while opportunities were not missed to use the dialogue, most telling was the simple fact of exemplary performances in every role. When a character makes a side comment that women are capable of ruling, but they put up with a lot of shit, there are 18 women in the process of knocking out a war saga with virtuosity (often literally, knocking over set pieces) - no more needs be said. 

Most striking was actually the commentary on war. Using dancer's grace to portray brutal acts abstracted into mesmerizing rote, this production gave a weighty universality to battle scenes. A father finding he had slain his son, and a son finding he had slain his father, were played by the same two actresses, hold each other in their arms. In a split second they change between who is dead, and who is alive. More partners appear around the stage, repeating the same motions in beats of the drum, giving the impression the same scene has played out hundreds of times in a few minutes across the civil war.

Many blockbusters try and don't succeed as well in giving their combat such memorable, epic moments. But clearing away that noise and boiling it down to human moments accomplished much more.

The plays run through March 12, in two parts - marathon performances are almost sold out. It's great news a daring, appealing project like this found such traction - I would love to see more like it.

Women's March, Seattle, January 21, 2017

"Pledge to... Vote - Speak - Organize - for our core values - For All"

A friend and I went to the Women's March, the day after inauguration. I spent some time thinking about what message I wanted to share. I knew this was a big march, with a lot of different causes coming together, and it was also a lot of people's first time they had been moved to attend a march of any kind (like my friend). So I decided I'd hold a sign up with a message to them.

It doesn't stop here, I wanted to say. This is a marathon, not a sprint. There's no magic power that turns big crowds into good governance. It takes work, rest, and dedication. We all want a better future even if we disagree on how to get there. We can find commonalities that are more inspiring than our differences.

"Pledge to Vote - Speak - Organize - for our core values - for all."

Democracy is the worst

No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.  - Winston Churchill, speech given before the House of Commons in 1947

After Hurricane Katrina I went down to help do muck-outs - cleaning out all the mud and debris that had flooded peoples houses, the moldy drywall, everything down to the studs. I did this kind of work off and on from then through Hurricane Sandy. We worked with Habitat for Humanity and AmeriCorps, the Mennonites and the Baptists and the Lutherans, some volunteers on college break, some who had retired from owning construction companies and now traveled the nation and did only that. After all the chaos, you could stand in the sturdy framework of an empty house, and as volunteers started to put up walls again, see how life could continue. As I looked for my own first house, I stood in many and thought about how that framework could look, ranging from bare bones, to disaster, to full of life and family.

A functioning government is like a house: a basic sound structure you could see yourself living within, if you can look past the mess.

"Shakespeare explains the 2016 election"

Starting a discussion of political speech with the curious high schoolers in a production of Julius Caesar, that extended to an after school class on art, ethics and society 2007-2008, was a serendipitous intersection of my fascination with art and politics.

This timely article would have been a perfect topic. Here, reading a Shakespeare hit gives insight into the human foibles that can leave their mark on a country:

"Shakespeare explains the 2016 election" - New York Times October 8, 2016

What I want to say about politics

There's something I want to say about politics. Maybe it's not what you'd expect, maybe it is.

First, some background. What do I want to do with this topic everyone hates? I started my senior year of high school in September 2001. I was born in and grew up in New York; though I wasn't there when it happened the Twin Tower attacks resonated on a few levels. I got this feeling that I had to make some kind of meaningful difference in the world. That I had to better understand people, and big problems, and that I was pretty well suited - with my interest in arguments, groups, and talking a lot - for the field.

So I dropped my graphic design major and studied political science for my undergraduate and graduate degrees, with a break for an AmeriCorps year of service in between.

Taking our Kim Davises and SF clerks together - civil vs. public official disobedience

County-city clerks disobeyed the law (at the time) and issued about 4,000 same-sex couples marriage licenses in 2004 in San Francisco. A judge ordered them to stop. The legal dispute led directly to legalizing same-sex marriage in California in 2008.

If you feel there are some important similarities in the way we should treat officials in respect to this and today's news, and you haven't thought about that yet, please try to articulate that.

If you feel there are some important differences between this and today's news, and you haven't thought about that yet, please try to articulate that.

You can do this in your head if you want. I ask because I want you to be stronger and I want society to be better and I think that will happen because we asked.

I reached out to my Ethics & Politics professor, Dr. Tuckness, for his thoughts on this case - emphasis mine:

Role and perception of violence in social causes

The idea that "violence works" is everywhere - so much so, the way this question was framed to me made that assumption. Can you tell me more about violence in social causes? Will you give your thoughts about the role violence plays in getting things done?

First, let's take ten minutes to give that idea a closer look: the attention we give to violence in affecting social change is out of wack with reality.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJSehRlU34w

As the speaker points out, history books focus on war. The news zeroes in on riots. We tend to discount/never hear about decades of nonviolent action that happened before, after, alongside, or without fighting.

When we talk about social causes in particular, "success" includes changing public opinion, showing the injustice of the opposition, and leaving the overall social landscape (not just the particular cause itself) better - or at least no worse - than before. Violence tends to undermine all of those goals. Worse, people are more likely to support extreme action in the future. On the flip side, nonviolence tends to be perceived as more effective, more legitimate, exposes injustice, and builds structures that support nonviolent solutions. I'm not saying it's easy, or perfect, that it doesn't hurt. But there's no good reason to back up the perception that violence is better. (1)(2)

Why does it seem like violence is so prevalent, then? Making an impact in the public sphere is very different than making a splash on the "public screen". We think the two are the same, but what's actually effective might not make the TV news, and vice versa. Getting the most attention doesn't equal changing the most minds, behaviors, or laws. So, our view of what "works" is warped. We shouldn't give so much credit to the screen. (3)

Let's take a step back. There's danger in looking at violence vs. nonviolence dispassionately. We're not talking about which car to buy here. We're discussing when we think it's justified, or necessary, to resort to hurting people. Although the topic is social causes, even then, lives may be at stake on both sides. The truth is, we should closely examine any declarations that violence is necessary to change some people's minds... or that some things can't be changed without violence. Let's resist dehumanizing the "other side." Let's avoid talking in terms of good and evil, absolutes, when we're talking about real people. If we talk and think in terms of evil, we tend to more readily endorse violence as the best solution. (4) That's flat out wrong. It sets the stage for more and more violence. And if we're in it for social causes, that's exactly the kind of perception we want to change.

(1) When Will Collective Action Be Effective? Violent and Non-Violent Protests Differentially Influence Perceptions of Legitimacy and Efficacy Among Sympathizers (2013)
http://psp.sagepub.com/content/40/2/263

(2) Was it worth the effort? The outcomes and consequences of social movements (1998)
http://www.jstor.org/stable/223486

(3) From public sphere to public screen: democracy, activism, and the "violence" of Seattle (2002)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07393180216559

(4) Fighting the Good Fight: The Relationship Between Belief in Evil and Support for Violent Policies (2013)
http://psp.sagepub.com/content/40/1/16.full