Originally entitled:
Rebel Girl Says: “Basta!”—Or Tales of “Bad” Behavior and Nobel Prize Winners
Rebel Girl knows a demonstration when she sees one. And at 1:30, on Thursday December 3, Rebel Girl saw one at Irvine Valley College.
All parties involved stood in the shadow of the IVC clock tower, in an odd snake-like formation, beginning at the perimeter of the A-Quad and leading to the large floor to ceiling tinted window of the august IVC presidential office in nearby A-100.
Rebel Girl knows that every demonstration needs props (related to propaganda, from the Latin for propagate or to spread)—how else to communicate a message to the masses? So while concerned faculty and staff arranged themselves in an impressive conga line, Rebel Girl ran to her faculty office and located a half-sheet of poster board stashed between the wall and a bookcase for just such an occasion. The placard was, she decided, large enough for just one word. But, she wondered, what single word would best communicate the nature of the crisis?
Granted, one particular event had galvanized the crowd forming outside the President’s office window, but the incident had not occurred in a vacuum. No. During the last months, indeed the last week, conditions at the little college in the shrinking orange groves had worsened. Withheld accreditation reports, reprimands, curious summonings of a select few for Presidential audiences and now, a rumored transfer of beloved staff member. What single word would best capture both the current miscarriage and the parade of past injustice?
That was a tough one.
Rebel Girl is a seasoned veteran of demonstrations. She cut her activist teeth in the 80’s, when Ronald Reagan championed “constructive engagement” with South Africa and Rebel Girl learned how to spell “Apartheid” and “Free Mandela” and was a regular, if unwelcome, visitor to the South African embassy, located on Wilshire Blvd in Los Angeles. She marched, she chanted, she sat down, she stood in groups.
Together with a lot of other people, she made noisy demands. Free Mandela. Free South Africa. She was told, by many people, that none of this made any difference. —By President Bonzo. By the media. By her family. Indeed, she was informed, not only was her behavior foolish, it was embarrassing, uncivil, extreme. It would amount to nothing.
But Rebel Girl knew her history.
Thirty years earlier, another black man languished in jail. Rebel Girl read the letter he composed during his incarceration. It was written in response to criticism received from his colleagues, fellow clergymen who did not approve of the activities that had landed him in jail. The critics called his actions “unwise and untimely.” They deplored the campaign of demonstrations and marches he led. They asked the question, “Isn’t negotiation a better path?” They counseled “patience” and “moderation.”
The jailed letter writer pointed out that his critics deplored the demonstrations taking place—but not the conditions that brought them about. He answered the questions “Why direct action? Why not negotiation?” by pointing out negotiation is “the very purpose of direct action.” Indeed such action “seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.”
Then, in 1990, Rebel Girl was part of the audience that greeted a recently freed Nelson Mandela in the LA Coliseum. Had her actions, her noisy and outrageous demands, and the same behavior by others across the globe made a difference? Nelson Mandela himself said they had, citing the student movement in Los Angeles for special recognition.
Years later, in her cluttered office, the crowd of tension makers outside growing by the minute, Rebel Girl decided what exact word would serve. Six letters, plus the ubiquitous exclamation point.
Rebel Girl, an English professor, generally frowns on overuse of exclamation points. The practice is, she feels, often used to make an argument more convincing or to add force to a weak statement (witness the recent spate of exclamatory official emails clogging our virtual mailboxes).
Rebel Girl agrees with her associates in the English department that emphasis is better provided through word choice, sentence structure, and reasoning. However, this occasion was, after all, a demonstration, or as they say below the US border, a manifestacion, a term Rebel Girl thinks is a more accurate description of the true spirit of the activity. In such cases, deploying exclamation points is appropriate.
Finished, she returned to the clock tower picket with her sign. It was well received and passed along from one hand to another until it reached the window glass, where it was pressed so all inside could see it.
Our message?
Enough!
Rebel Girl invokes the proud legacy of direct action, of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela and countless others who learned the lesson that, as King wrote, “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” She invokes this tradition because she was forced to reconsider it in light of the recent manifestacion.
Shortly after the sign was affixed to the window by willing hands, the Chancellor [Samson] concluded his meeting with the President. Intercepted by Ms. J, the Chancellor was steered toward our group, which promptly surrounded him. Accounts of what followed have appeared previously in Dissent and the Irvine World News Weekender, so Rebel Girl will not bore her readers with transcripts of the passionate speeches and entreaties made by some in the crowd, which numbered at this point perhaps fifty. Instead, Rebel Girl will focus on what disturbed her most about this encounter.
The Chancellor cast his eyes upon us and declared that this assembly was no way to conduct business. He did not respect the angry and fearful people surrounding him. He felt that our assembly was, in the words of the clerical critics from 1963, “unwise and untimely.” He counseled moderation. He called us extreme. He exclaimed at one point, with obvious disdain, “Look at you!,” the implication being that had we the ability to see ourselves at that moment, we would be as repulsed as he was. Before excusing himself, he pointedly reminded us that we had no power.
Rebel Girl is, of course, paraphrasing here, but she has checked her account with others in attendance and they agree that her characterization of the Chancellor’s remarks seems faithful enough. Rebel Girl is, however, more than willing to revise or retract her account if the Chancellor wants to suggest that he did indeed respect the gathering, that he understood that these were, indeed, people of good faith gathered to express their outrage over yet another pending outrage, people who felt that all other channels had been exhausted and they had little choice but to stand, on a cold day, in front of the office window of the college president—who, tellingly, kept his back to them for the demonstration’s duration.
The Chancellor’s reaction reminds Rebel Girl of a similar response—this one generated from Steven Frogue. Some months ago, Rebel Girl’s alter ego authored an essay for the O.C. edition of the Los Angeles Times. The essay discussed the efficacy of recall efforts in general and the Frogue recall campaign specifically.
Two weeks later, Frogue responded with a letter to the editor, in which he attacked the author: “One would have to see her screaming and chanting at a Board of Trustees meeting to be reminded of the old adage, ‘One may smile and smile and yet a villain be.’”
Rebel Girl sees nothing shameful (or villainous) about indictments of “chanting” and “screaming”—though she remembers doing so at only two of dozens of Board meetings the Rebellious One has attended. Like exclamation points, Rebel Girl advises using chanting and screaming sparingly, only when the situation truly warrants it.
Other than the two occasions, Rebel Girl believes that her deportment at Board meetings is exemplary. When possible, she sits, listening, quietly grades papers.
Of course, with her “screaming and chanting,” she is participating in a process older than the Boston Tea Party, a process of which Frogue, a history teacher, perhaps “the best history teacher...in the country” according to him, might be aware. It’s a tradition that helped abolish slavery, establish women’s suffrage (Rebel Girls all!); end child labor, gain workers’ rights and, yes, as in the case of the misbehaving man in the Birmingham jail, advance civil rights.
Of course, Rebel Girl knows that the problems of a little community college district in this county don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy mixed-up world, nor do they compare in deed to other infinitely more risky and necessary battles. Or do they? An injustice somewhere is an injustice everywhere.
Rebel Girl very much likes her sign. She has returned it to her office and stashed it between the wall and the bookcase. It will be there to be used when needed.
Upon reflection, she realizes the sign sports an all-purpose go-anywhere kind of message. She’s considering retiring her gallery of aging placards and relying solely on this one in the future. Short, simple, to the point, no matter who you direct it at: college president or chancellor; corporate exploiter or union-buster; developer or polluter; white supremacist or fervent nationalist; Bill Clinton or the House Judiciary Committee; Augusto Pinochet or Slobodon Milsosevic. Enough already. Enough! --RG
[Editor's note: I found this piece having lost its paragraphing, so I supplied that. No doubt the original paragraphing would have been better! -RB]
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