Like Coxey's Army
About a month ago I heard a story on NPR's Morning Edition that referred to a protest march in Vietnam. The story as a whole dealt with the effect the global down-turn is having on those nations and economies where global manufacturing is now encamped. The march had formed the hook of the story. After a few weeks I decided to double back inside the internets and find out what all that had been about.
Toward the end of March there was a largely catholic protest march in Vietnam
Catholic Culture : News Briefs : Viet court affirms conviction of Catholic activists, sparking new protest. My friend Trân indicated that this was not the first time something like this had happened. Five thousand residents of a northern Vietnamese town marched on Hanoi. They didn't get very far. They got some twelve kilometers before a police force that rivaled their size could be assembled to stop them. Not bad for a prayer vigil that just decided to get up and take a walk. All this was following the trial and conviction of a group of (Catholic) church leaders. They had been arrested late last year for protesting the seizure of church property by the government and had been charged with destructive behavior
VIETNAM Sentence against faithful of Thai Ha upheld. Catholics protest injustice - Asia News. A minor populist uprising and a reflection of latent resentment of the government. The varied sources of this resentment, the stories indicated, were local corruption much of that centering on access to good housing. Interference by the central government in Catholic Church affairs
VIETNAM Ahead of trial against faithful of Thai Ha, Catholics welcome a new bishop - Asia News. Also, a general dissatisfaction due to rising unemployment and abruptly lowered expectations of the current depressed global economic situation. As the NPR report put it:
The communist government of Vietnam derives much of its political legitimacy from rapid economic growth. Now that the global economic crisis is slowing this export driven economy, the government is worried that discontent will spread among the people
Vietnam Worries Economy Will Spread Discontent.
What is it about a protest march? What is it about the notion of someone saying: "Hey let's form a group and march down the road to capital city." I imagine it is the spontaneity and symbolism of the thing. The strong immediate demonstration of feeling. Even if what thought has to be put into it takes a few hours days or weeks of planning, that's still spontaneous for the majority of participants, and there's never the feeling it can't be done. For everyone involved there is that cathartic feeling of accomplishment at the end. It is spectacle and almost never fails in its mildly disruptive nature to be disobedient. And so earns its place as a subset of civil-disobedience in the taxonomy of protest.
I would say further that the protest march is a thing in its own category. More than the sum of its parts. This is due to its deep history. It traces through periods of direct action as well as modern movement-protest. In the United States, since March of 1894 when Coxey's "army" left Massillon Ohio towards The District of Columbia; marching on Washington
List of protest marches on Washington, D.C. - Wikipedia has become a national pastime
Marching on Washington : the forging of an American political tradition. The attraction is clear, it is a bonding experience of considerable power, it creates a consciousness among those involved or who simply witness it. Few of these would doubt it creates a raised consciousness. Another factor is how well it lends itself to the principles of non-violent protest. The more disciplined and emotive the crowd the more gravitas behind the message. And yet the march is still certainly a cousin of the mob. What happens when the march stops? Where have they stopped? Is the cathartic feeling sufficient, do the marchers feel their implicit (or actual) petition is delivered, understood? Or do they need more? However, the critical observation to make here is that a protest march does not equal a protest movement.
What then makes a protest movement? Simply stated it is a program of activism that brings about change. It is worth qualifying that as preferably change towards greater degrees of self-determination. There are institutional factors involved with protest movements. They are a coherent promulgated set of aims, embodied in groups that represent those aims. The initial phase is to raise awareness for your cause. Success here could be read in the scale and number of protest events. Against this as Debra Minkoff argues one might look at the density of activist organizations and sequencing of allied protest movements [
The Sequencing of Social Movements | Debra C. Minkoff : JSTOR link] The first sees protest movements emanating out the the observed popularity and success of previous disparite protest events. The second sees the crucial determinant of the success of movements lying in the accumulation of organizational competency and the effect of degrees of competition among activist groups for that competency (to simplify the argument a great deal). Sequencing of allied protest movements refers to the relation and effect of concomitant though not directly related protest movements to each other in the formation of a generalized era of reform. There are problems extrapolating studies and histories of U S or western european movements
Protest and opportunities : the political outcomes of social movements [WorldCat.org] elsewhere
Repression and mobilization [WorldCat.org]. Western style protest is not useful for situations where the government is willing to outlaw criticism, and jail or kill large numbers of protesters.
Considering the future of protest, of reform in Vietnam the first thing that has to be said is that for the Vietnamese it is lonely struggle. The literature in protest studies of resistance to and attempts to reform people's republics of the left, runs thin. At first glance there is opportunity for a potential sequencing of reform movements in Vietnam. There is the Catholic Church with its commitment to social justice and autonomy of conscience. There is the Democracy movement represented by the forces behind the TdNgonluan web site
Freedom Democracy for Vietnam tdngonluan.com and their existing 8406 movement
Bloc 8406 - Wikipedia, named for the date they released their Manifesto for Democracy in 2006. The Falun Gong movement is a potential source for reform as it gathers adherents in Vietnam BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Falun Gong finds followers in Vietnam . I know little about them: a spiritual movement dedicated to exercise, meditation and well being:
phapluan.org. They've been active in China for 20 years. The government there recognized the incompatibility of such a group dedicated to self-reliance with a collectivism or managed capitalism that prefers the people remain reliant on a privileged elite. Similarly there is potential for the principles of the extensive roadmap for reform and human rights en-scribed by Charter 08,
Charter 08 - Wikipedia, which has already elicited arrest for one of its principle drafters
Xia Liu - A Voice for My Husband - washingtonpost.com to spread to Vietnam. At some point in the near future I'll have to come back and look into and write more on Charter 08 and its earlier model Charter 77.
States born thorough revolutionary action seem to have an especial difficulty dealing with reform movements. A tendency to see any criticism as counter-revolution, revanchinsm, a step back from achieved perfection. Vietnam's regime attempts to deal with a tool like the protest march by making visiting a city where they fear one might be forming illegal, and backing that up with house to house searches. Where some power structures will deal with reform movements grudgingly through bargaining and expansion of rights and franchise - which they may certainly view as mere appeasement. Regimes which view themselves as the pinnacle result of a movement of class struggle will instinctively shy away from correction and offer only reaction and repression.
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