This past Wednesday, the Muslim Student Association and Diya held a candlelight vigil “to commemorate the victims of militants attacks that have been occurring throughout Pakistan,” as their Facebook invitation read.
In January, following Israel’s brutal siege on Gaza that resulted in the deaths of almost 1,400 Gazans, of whom more than 400 were women and children, and almost 800 had nothing at all to do with fighting Israeli troops, MSA called for... a candlelight vigil.
Meanwhile, many students and young folks around the world, following that same siege, occupied their universities, demanding that they divest from this brutal system of not only military occupation, but of apartheid, that they boycott Israelis complicit in this system and that they sanction Israel for continuing it.
Moreover, they won some important concrete demands, including scholarships for Palestinian students studying abroad, and a promise that universities would send old computer equipment and textbooks to universities in Palestine.
But what do these far-flung incidents—vigils and occupations—that seem so at odds have to do with one another?
In previous columns, I’ve noted the dramatic polarization of our society toward the left and the right as the center fails, in the wake of crises both economic and political. Here, I would put forward that candlelight vigils at Duke and militant student occupations around the world suggest not necessarily a war between right and left, but a war within ourselves—a war between those of us to whom fighting injustice is a living and breathing commitment, and those to whom it is simply something to put on a resume, “proof” of one’s heart on the way to a career as an I-banker.
The MSA is hardly alone in this. Throughout the University, these tensions linger just below the surface. Duke Democrats undoubtedly have a few black sheep disillusioned by the limited “change” Obama has delivered. Among Blue Devils United, there are certainly those for whom “Remember Stonewall”—a fight against homophobes and the cops—is no empty phrase.
In each, we have a choice to make.
Such internal conflicts are nothing new, and we can look, perhaps, to the Civil Rights era, and the conflict between nonviolence and armed self-defense, to guide us in our search for answers today.
Debates between these two poles raged throughout the entire history of the Civil Rights Movement. As with so many intellectual debates, they were settled by the practical action of normal people on the ground. On Feb.1, 1960, just an hour away from here in Greensboro, N.C., four students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University sat at a lunch counter in Woolworth’s and refused to leave, making all the ink exchanged between Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Williams or Malcolm X to that point moot.
The tension between candlelight vigils and building occupations within our communities awaits a similar reckoning today, in the mass actions of students and young folks around the world.
But let’s be clear—to equate candlelight vigils with MLK and student occupations with Malcolm X or Robert Williams would be a mistake of the highest order. The reality is that those students occupying administration buildings around the world are taking up the nonviolent tradition of civil disobedience that MLK advocated. Those lighting candles have no precedent in the civil rights tradition that springs immediately to mind. Very few people saw lighting candles as an effective means of struggle against white supremacy.
Some people will undoubtedly protest what I write here. They will say that I am doing a disservice to King’s legacy. These people need to remember that King was arrested dozens of times for acts of nonviolent civil disobedience like those students are engaged in today. Liberals that love his talk of a colorblind society tend to forget that King died in a hail of gunfire while organizing Memphis sanitation workers shortly after he began condemning the Vietnam War in terms that made Robert Williams himself blush. Even today, people snicker on MLK Day, referring to it as “James Earl Ray Day.” Clearly, we still have not reached the promised land King dreamed of.
And yet, every day and with every indignity, the war within our communities intensifies. Today, we face a choice between the politics of vigils and the politics of occupation. The politics of Malcolm aren’t even an option yet.
Michael Stauch is a second-year Ph.D. candidate in history. His column runs every other Friday.
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