why demonstrate?
Saturday, December 20th, 2008
the weather in Tel Aviv has been perfect. I am glad I’m not in Europe.
I put on my sandals and walk to Kaplan Road, outisde the Ministry of Interior. a morning demonstration is taking place, by and for Eritrean refugees. many of them are wearing white masks, so as not to be identified by government officials in their home country. their families may be put at risk. they have escaped one of the worst totalitarian regimes in the world; one that has recently closed down the only university in the country. citizens of age are conscripted into the army for an unlimited period as slaves to the system.
on arrival in Israel, Eritrean refugees are denied refugee status and rights due to muddled or nonexistent policy. many of them are sent back to Egypt, where they are often maltreated or shot. a legal procedure for asylum seekers is unavailable. they are largely prevented from settling in city centres, at the same time as not having access to social and medical services whatsoever. along with Palestinians under the occupation, they are probably the most compromised demography in the areas Israel controls.
the demo
back at home, my husband-in-law picks up the flyer I brought back.
“why don’t they just flee somewhere else?”
this gets me going.
“because! Israel is probably geographically the closest signatory of the 1951 Geneva Convention, which is supposed to make it a safe haven for political refugees. the whole idea is that if a dictatorship in your country is hunting you down, you have somewhere to go.”
“well, you don’t really think a few people demonstrating outside the Ministry of Interior is gonna make a difference, do you?”
this would have actually been a rationally acceptable argument to me a few years back. outcomes were important to me. people do things to achieve something, right? why demonstrate if you’re not going to make a difference? or, for that matter, why make art if you’re not getting paid? why have sex if you don’t get commitment? why exercise if you’re not losing weight? but then my mind changed. I realized that goals cannot really guide me in life, because the truth is I never really know what’s going to happen. I don’t know how this demonstration will affect the rights of refugees in Israel just like I don’t know something as simple as whether someone’s gonna think my T-shirt is gorgeous or ugly. in either cases, sometimes I find out, and sometimes I don’t. I would need to be infinitely arrogant to believe that I can know or exactly measure how the actions of a group of people will affect the whole. I can only work with what I got. I could strategize and calculate the number of TV channels that covered the event, the number of people attending, the likelihood of considerable pressure to form around this issue in the government and in the public. and then, if I can get myself to label the imagined results as “good” according to my set of beliefs, then I might be bothered to leave the house and shout some slogans. I’d be standing there, entirely invested in future outcome, and still not know what was going to happen. I could wait and see how the government reacts, and then either congratulate or criticize. I could either become depressed or ecstatic, my engines either revved or silenced. it would be, quite simply, an unending struggle, and one where my only option for peace and contentment is to freeze reality in the frame that I consider ideal.
but why should I? why pass a judgment? why on earth would I let the government or the public decide by way of their reactions whether it was a good demonstration or not? that would be ludicrous! the reality is that people came together, danced, expressed themselves, exchanged information, voiced their stories, and took a stand. that is that. I can’t think of a better reason to leave the house. if that demonstration has consequences that I would judge as “good” or as “bad”, well, so be it. can I know? and if they change the law and help these people out, and the TV coverage inspires one little madman to become a Zionist dictator - would it still have been a “good” demonstration? all I need to know is that I got a message, it touched my heart, and I showed up. I had fun, too. I danced.
looking back on history, enormous changes do not happen because people strategize and organize. they don’t happen because people play little gods who draw statistics and dictate what needs and doesn’t need to happen. it’s because individuals make personal decisions that are free from expectation and convention - organization happens naturally as consequence, and only when other individuals find in it themselves to follow the same path. not by education or dictation, but by inspiration. we don’t need to know the path in advance. we just need to know what step to take next. this is freightening for many people, because it involves letting go of a seeimgly clear vision of what they think the world (and people, and themselves) can and should look like. and, who knows. we might get there, we might not. whatever the case, it seems the only certainty is that things will always continue to change.
