Take Back the Night, Professionals, and Trayvon Martin: A discussion of theory

A young friend of mine recently went to the local Take Back the Night demonstration and march, she was disappointed by the role of the police. Her view is that the cops are a tool of oppression, and one tool of oppression can't be used in the struggle for liberation from another oppression. There is an irony in the fact that what started as women take back the night has become women take back the night with armed escorts from men. I'm sure there may have been some women police, but when I asked my friend if the entire escort was female she of course said no. The early take back the night demonstrations as I understand it were women who had become fed up with the violence of the night and took to the streets in large numbers in mutual self-defense. The last take back the night demonstration I went to, which was quite a number of years ago, at times had a feeling like a pep rally for police/feminist cooperation.

I had to agree with my friend that the police often play an oppressive role in our society. When I worked at a homeless shelter I came to know homeless people who have been beaten up by police just for being homeless. The impression that I developed while working at the shelter was that nearly all homeless people who loitered too long in the public sphere, because they don't have a private space, experience at least police harassment. We could go on with examples of how state power props up systems of oppression. Nonetheless, it's worth asking, as I did of my young friend: "do you think there is any role for individuals who specialize in the promotion of public safety, and the resolution of social conflicts. Or are such things too important to leave to professionals?"

What this gets to is the question of the expert. My friend pointed out that in Ann Arbor it seems that everyone wants to defer to the expert. It makes sense that in a university town this might be a prevalent dynamic. Here where even your cabdriver might have a PhD there is no shortage of experts. There is of course an old definition of expert, one who knows more and more about less and less. And as we learn more in one field we often assume we know less about another.

I myself suffer from this dubious malady. As a nurse practitioner, a role that is often given the unfavorable title of mid-level provider, I am a healthcare expert. In spite of additional training and experience in certain areas of medical interest I still sometimes defer to that expert class, the physicians. Healthcare of course is different than maintaining public safety and resulting social conflict. Nonetheless, my approach to healthcare is to see expertise as a set of resources that whenever possible should be shared. I try to give my patients the information I have and the perspectives I have, and then to engage them in making decisions about their care with me.

How should political decisions optimally be made? I think there is a reasonable and important distinction between governance and administration. There is an old debate between those who favor democracy, and those who believe in the ideal of the philosopher king. In the current political discourse, we might ask what role should science have in shaping political decisions? And related to this, how much should we turn over the experts? It seems to me that to begin with, the role of the expert is to provide information. There is a danger of experts being bought out, but this doesn't completely negate the value that can come from an expert. But experts don't have a monopoly on information either. And in that "more and more about less and less" sense there is a tendency for experts to lack a holistic perspective. Information gathered from whatever source should be processed through democratic participation. A truly democratic decision gives no extra weight to the expert. This point of decision-making is what can be called governance. It's not inconsistent with direct democracy for the participants to identify experts or professionals to administer the decisions that the people have made. However in this context, information must be available regarding how well administration is being carried out. In other words transparency.

In my role as a board member of the Ann Arbor People's food co-op I get to see a variant of these dynamics in action. The co-op runs by a process called policy governance. It is assumed that the board will set policy, and that an administrator will execute that policy. My opinion, which is not necessarily the opinion of the entire board, is that the place that this process breaks down the most is where transparency or feedback is lacking.

Yet a third role in my life where I struggle with challenges around democratic participation and expertise is that of a parent for better or worse I often find myself in the position of having to make decisions for my children. I do this in partnership with my partner. We try to take input from our children, and even to engage them in a consensus process, but fortunately or unfortunately we often make the decisions about aspects of my children's life. On what grounds do we claim the right to this decision-making? Presumably it's our life experience. Our life experience has made us the experts. I wonder if parenting and taking charge of the child's life doesn't promote the kind of thinking that accepts or endorses experts. One term for the attitude of an expert or an experienced individual who looks down on the views of another is patronizing. Of course this comes from the same root as parent.

Okay what about Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman? The dynamics of oppression were clearly in play in this tragedy. Race, age and class were all significant dynamic. Mr. Zimmerman's crime included his biases around these issues. But beyond prejudice what were the other elements of his crime? He has been criticized for not listening to the police after he called them, and they told him to stop his pursuits. Is it a crime not to agree with the perspective of the police? He has been criticized for trying to take the law into his own hands. I don't think that it's inherently wrong to want to act to stop what you see as an injustice. We might sort out if pursuing someone you are suspicious of is a crime. One thing for which I have no doubt is that shooting and killing a young man is a crime. Regardless of how much cover stand your ground laws might give you in the eyes of the law, to me shooting and killing an unarmed young man is a crime. This is a crime if it's committed by of bigoted vigilante, or if it's committed by a highly professional police officer.

I'm reminded of one of my favorite cartoons. The caption reads the nonviolent police. It shows a picture of people crouched behind police cars. One of them holds a megaphone that's pointed in the direction of a house in the background. The words from the megaphone are “okay Rocky! This is the nonviolent police! We know you are in there! Come out with your hands up or we’ll start fasting!!” There is humor here because it's naïve to expect Rocky to surrender in response to a Gandhian fast. Still, I want to ask, how would we design a social mechanism, or social process to stop injustice, or crime with nonviolent methods.

Because it is said that the state claims to have a monopoly on violence, experts from the state are not totally credible agents of nonviolent methodology. I am much more hopeful that society is mobilizing the forces necessary to oppose violence against women when women march on their own terms without police escort. This does not completely negate the expert. Another friend of mine is a local legend for her accounts of times that she has encountered fights about to break out. She has found creative ways to distract and defuse, for instance asking for directions, or breaking into song. She is an expert who does training in nonviolence for the Michigan Peace Team, an organization that sends nonviolent activists to Palestine and other conflict rich areas. Sure, she is an expert, and quite good at what she does. But the most important thing she does is train others. What would the world look like if we all had the basic skill set of a well-trained nonviolent activist?

Postscript: With a neo-Nazi group now patrolling the streets of Sanford, Trayvon Martin's Hometown claiming they are there to protect white people from a "potential" race riot, a couple things need to be said. When it comes to analyzing issues involving race, class, gender, and so on, the power status of the groups involved is an essential ingredient in any worthwhile analysis. Large numbers of women marching at night make something safe that wasn't before. The action by the neo-Nazis is the exact opposite their presence on the street intimidates people who are already on the downhill side of oppression. A reasonable interpretation of their actions is that they are not there to protect white people from a race riot, but to be a lightning rod that starts one.