13. Practice corporeal politics.
Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them.
-Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny
Forcing Nonviolent Encounters Is Powerful: MarchOnHarrisburg
Sound Your Voice in Political Circles
A Pennsylvania state senator once lamented to me, “I have a 6:1 rule. For every six lobbyists I meet with, I need to meet with one normal voter. But I can’t even keep that rule because nobody comes here [to the Capitol].”
History is made by those who are there. If we are not in the halls of power, then the decisions that govern our lives are made in smoky backrooms without our consent or approval. If we do not burst into our civic temples and make our needs and humanity known, then we abdicate our responsibility of democratic self-governance. If we fail to show up and take our seat at the table, then we are doomed to forever be on the menu of those driven by greed and hate.
Over the last eight years, MarchOnHarrisburg and I have lobbied all of our 253 state legislators, marched some 300 miles and engaged in more than 40 nonviolent direct actions to push our state government to pass pro-democracy, anti-corruption laws. Our concrete achievements include passing Vote by Mail into law, two committee votes on the Gift Ban, House passage of a massive Dark Money bill and progress on gerrymandering, open primaries, automatic voter registration and more. We are making one of the most corrupt and authoritarian legislatures in the country outlaw their own corruption and democratize their own tightly held grip on power. We do this through the transformative power of forcing the nonviolent encounter. This power, what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called, “The marvelous militancy of the soul,” has the ability to redeem both ourselves and our indifferent overlords. When we are in the arena, face to face, panim el panim, we make real the words of Immanuel Levinas, “When you see the face of the other, you are ordered and ordained to service.”
We are making one of the most corrupt and authoritarian legislatures in the country outlaw their own corruption.
We force the encounter with our elected officials, and we transform them from selfish politicians into public servants. And we also force the encounter with each other, and we build the community and movement that we need to win the democracy that we deserve. When we engage in nonviolence through lobbying, marching and direct action, we are shoulder to shoulder, moving forward together.
On our long-distance marches (we have twice marched from Philadelphia to Harrisburg, once from York to Harrisburg, and once [soon to be twice] from Lancaster to Harrisburg), we walk together, we share meals, we sleep under the same roof, and we encounter each other. It is our moving convention. We learn from each other, we strategize and plan, and, most importantly, we develop a deep feeling of responsibility and service towards each other. When we are out of our algorithmic echo chambers, genuinely encountering and loving each other, we become committed to building a new world grounded in love and not indifferent greed. While corruption and fascism depend on neighbor turning against neighbor, when we engage in nonviolence, we learn how to fight for our neighbor. We actively turn away from the golden rule of the empire, “The guy with the gold makes the rules,” and we create a world based in the true golden rule, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
We must all take that first step out of our isolation and into the streets and into our halls of power if we hope to redeem the soul of democracy and turn the tide against fascism. Taking that first step can be difficult and daunting. I find that most people’s greatest obstacle is the lack of faith that the first step will lead to a second step. I beg and implore you to take that first step into the public square with the faith that Dr. King spoke about when he said, “Faith is taking the first step, even when you can’t see the whole staircase.”
