Can I defend Critical Mass?

The last Friday of each month in evening rush hour taffic has been designated as "Critical Mass" night by the young Anarchists of Minneapolis and other cities.

I'm a biker, and really can't imagine participating. I've participated in on-foot protests in the past, on specific issues, and don't clearly find them valuable, at least the traffic blocking side - I have more support and sympathy with groups like the local peace movement and their protests on the Lake Street bridge, sharing awareness and letting traffic be.

I would like to find some defense for the CM movement, even as I largely agree with much of the opinion article at the Strib:
http://www.startribune.com/191/story/1463278.html Katherine Kersten: Bike-riding mob owns the streets of Minneapolis
Robert Lichter of the Center for Media and Public Affairs has studied protest movements. He points out that political protest has changed since the '20s and '30s, when those involved were usually poor. ... The '60s and '70s brought a sea change. For the middle- and upper-class young people who flooded into the streets, protest became a vehicle for self-assertion -- the "politics of personal expression." ... In his psychological studies of '60s-style radicals, Lichter discovered two revealing things: They scored high on the power scale, exhibiting a strong need to feel powerful. They also scored high on narcissism -- the need to call attention to themselves, to get public notice.

I didn't know narcissism is about the need to call attention to one's self, but okay whatever, hard to reduce things well to a short description.

My primary complaint about self-righteous judgement over self-righteous rebellion is we're all imperfect human beings trying to find our way and judgement like this article basically pretends what I think it is a false moral highground. (We're civilized, and you're the savages.) I suppose I have to assume that the writer has properly analysed her own moral failing in private and has worked them out sufficient, and now needs not consider herself more than a pure innocent bystander.

Anyway, can I defend CM? Can I give it meaning I could believe in? I'm sure I COULD. I've got my fair share of rage at the outrageous abuses of power in our world, and our daily bribes that keep us silent. What I DON'T have is answers, or at least clear ones, ones that fit into the consciousness that keeps our way of life afloat.

Critical Mass is outrageously offensive, in the sense that it's INTENT is to offend, as easily deduced by their choice of an "innocent bike ride" in downtown in rush hour traffic. Some will admit this. Others are just looking for a cause to celebrate and turn their attention away from the pissed drivers caught in their nets.

I mostly don't see the point in rage, except in SELF-motivation. I don't think MY rage can change YOUR mind on anything except concluding that I'm an asshole.

I do think, if you're going to piss people off, you'd better not be smiling when you're doing it. You'd better not be laughing, and expressing your apparent joy in your power to dominate your will over others. So they ought to be very sober, you know, like a funeral precession. SURE, it's not much fun to go to funerals, but at least that makes sense to me.

If you want to SMILE and LAUGH, do that on your Sunday morning bike rides, when no one is in a hurry and you can take the time talk to people along the way.

I'm not doing well in my defense so far. I could compare another protestor, a nun who has camped herself outside the whitehouse for some crazy period of time like 20 years, in protest against the US possession of nuclear weapons. That's 24 hours/day, minus some strategic bathroom breaks. Such a person might also be narcissist for all I know, but the cause is just and the symbolism crystal clear - she values human life over her own freedom and prosperity. She's a living message to the vision of peace, and when we climb into our cozy beds, we can know she's there outside in the cold, and we're not. Her power isn't apparent, but the process of power is a mystery, like Gandhi showed with his outrageous quote “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

If CM has meaning, in changing consciousness, what would it look like? We have a bunch of mostly kids breaking traffic laws, riding their bikes in unity, defying the control systems.

For riders, I can see the exhileration, to face fear of doing something not allowed, and more than challenging external authority, they're challenging their own inner projections of external authority. They are saying NO to simple rules, even PRACTICAL rules. Some will call putting one's self above the law as narcissist, and others will consider it learning the nature of liberty - to tear down the childish submission to external authority, and open the door to rebuilding a more mature authority that is based on higher reason.

Well, that's a defense for all youthful rebellion. Interestingly it only "works" in some way if the external authority that is being rebelled against actually responds to the transgressions. WELL, this is where it looks tricky! At one level "The law is the law" and there's no exceptions.

Those 600 bikers should ALL be ticketed for breaking the law AND hopefully they'll submit peacefully to authority, and those that don't ultimately need to be subdued. A tricky place for police, to find a level of force that respects the law and the law-breakers.

I guess the August messy ride had police trying to arrest some, and got surrounded by a mob yellowing in unison, telling the police to let them go. Mob democracy isn't very good, and I don't know what they ought to do. If it's just yelling, I'd say continue with the arrest. If a physical fight breaks out and the police are overwhelmed, they're better off retreating rather than using stronger force. I don't know - it's damn scary to be surrounded, and probably 90% of the mob might be ultimately peaceful. Ideally the police need to gain the trust and respect from the crowd, and brutality (like clubbing randomly) isn't going to gain this.

Worse than being outnumbered is to have TWO large forces, so neither feels so weak that it needs to retreat. In general I'd accept that arresting people in a mob situation is difficult and so a united mob can "protect its own".

I could speculate further, but maybe enough to see that it is a rather strange "football game", and people must make up the rules along the way.

With that, perhaps I can wonder "What POWER does a MOB have?" Okay, so they're a mob. They're "above the law" because they have "critical mass" to protect their members from being arrested. Now what? They can "take over the streets". They can break windows and loot. They can even carry weapons and shoot or hurt people. I guess I can classify action as (1) Annoying (2) Destructive (3) Violent. I'd tend to think police ought to refrain from violence until violence has occured, but even that is messy. If 1% of a mob is violent,"mob rules" say the sins of the mob are equally shared among all the members, so once violence erupts, NO one can declare their innocence. This makes mobs rather dangerous political institutions - ultimately being held hostage to the most extreme members. OF COURSE with responsibility means that a MOB is responsible for their own violent members. So perhaps police SHOULD give a mob some time to police ITSELF (i.e temporary strategic retreat if needed.) AND the same holds for police controlling their own "overenthusiastic" officers.

Its all so much nonsense, and the mob people and the police people are not in an sort of personal conflict. Just like wars of old, each side being fought by soldiers no different except wearing a different color uniform.

Perhaps it is "good practice", to face the power of mobs and armies, to surrender your individuality for a collective voice. I can see value in the "game" of expressing power. I don't call it names like "narcissistic" which is just a "power-over" label to explain why the claimed and demands fom the other side ought to be ignored.

Okay, a value for CM? I ought NOT to be held as a promised event, a celebration of freedom, but only as a political tool with very specific political aims - of drawing attention to an issue that has been ignored by all other attempts.

BUT really the "bike" side makes no sense to me UNLESS practical - like ESCORTING people in danger of arrest from place A to place B. Bikes could also help in a "multi-front" protest where the mob is divided and needs more help in some areas over others. But the strategy of mobs is not what I'm intersted in - since it creates success more from cleverness than anything else. Generally I'd say it is better for a mob to simply stick together and not overextend to where it can't defend itself.

So CM as expressed contines to be nonsense to me - it is (1) youthful rebellion searching for its power (2) Learning to wield collective power and the need for self-responsibility.

I might have added a (3) but I can't support it. There's no justifable political reason for monthly bike rides that distrupt people's lives.

I imagine (1) and (2) can help explain why CM has partically been responded to lightly by authority - FOR ONE - the more you fight back - the more will participate in the future, so violence itself will help it grow. AND in defense the "predictability" of the event means affected drivers can respond by avoiding the streets at that time.

I accept it is "lawlessness" in the sense of overriding the law. I accept there is a place of "civilization" where everyone behaves and shares and follows rules that treat others with the golden rule. THEN there's a "wildland" where civilization doesn't control, and all laws are open to negociation. I don't have a GREAT hope that mobs have much to teach, except in lessons of failure - seeing how easily things turn muddy and dark. Humility might come out, and respect for the safety we live in most of the time.

People shouldn't just be terrified of the wildlands, they should be prepared for them, to KNOW what power looks like, and how to de-escalate violence. Good lessons, even if seemingly silly ones to be learned on the street - any better than a football game, I don't know!