Dan here is how the evening will work. I will give you a brief overview of how the evening will work, a few minutes on the theory of direct action and questions to think about, then i will turn it over to the panelists. Each of the five has been asked to speak for more not more than 12 minutes. I will give the meantime check toward the end give them a time check toward the and. We are going to talk about and the larger movement, what works, what doesnt, the concerns raised in the movement and those on the outside, and similar questions. Panelists will focus on personal stories, specifics, this is what happened on this occasion, this is what we learned from it, this is why it worked or did not work. The focus tonight is not primarily on the issue that led to the direct action, so for tonight we are more interested in resistance, rather than why the war was that. We are interested in the demonstrations that black lives have. Although the title does not say about othertalk kind of direct action. I thought it could involve property, not people. After panelists speak, we will through the floor open to people in the audience and we very much want audience dissipation. You do not have to participation. You do not have to pretend to ask a question, you can make a comment. Will also limit the people in the audience and people can have up to two minutes, but not more, for a question or comment. We will collect several questions and comments and then go to the audience for responses and each palace will have panelist will have not more than two minutes to respond. They can choose to focus on just one. Let me pose to questions to view about tonight as we stories and remarks. Why engage in direct action . Why is direct action the way that we should approach something . I do not mean what moved people to act in the first place, but why choose direct action and why and what it hopes to accomplish . I will suggest three reasons to take direct action, recognizing that there are others that recognize action includes a mix of reasons. You can do it as an act of moral conscious. The war is awful, i cannot participate, i refuse to be drafted. I will not do it. That is what this is about, that is all there is to it. You can do it as a way to bring public attention to something. The media will not cover this, but if we mount a large demonstration, if dozens of people are arrested they will have no choice but to cover it and it will bring publicity to the issue and help raise awareness. And third, people do it as a way to exchange conditions. I do not care if the media covers it, nobody is writing the buses in till riding the buses until they are integrated and we will not ride them until we win. That is a third and separate purpose. What form should direct action take . We can do it in a variety of ways and it is partly determined by the goal of the action. If the goal is to get Media Attention and in my experience, these days, most of direct action is intended for that purpose, then the action is usually planned by organizers, they notify police, negotiate terms of the arrest and how it will operate. , the moreal rule people arrested, the more Media Attention so organizers want to get a lot of people arrested, that is what you are trying to do. How many people can we get arrested. And for, if you are taking that approach, there is maybe tendency to be more likely to include people who have a level of privilege, class privilege or race privilege, or they do not have a fixed work situation. Because it is easier for them to pay the cost in those situations. Emphasize those for those of you getting worked up already. That is a good thing. [applause] [laughter] dan if the aim of the direct action is to disrupt the normal functioning of society in ways that matter to people with power and to sustain it until people with power have to give in, then you have a different equation. And in that case, the aim of protesters could be not to get arrested so you can continue the disruption for as long as possible. Recently, especially young quasianarchist groups have specialized in demonstration were thousands of able suddenly of people suddenly cut her gate and they do not know what theyre going to do, they are blocked in wonder direction and they flow into another. Sometimes there are two or three different groups that rejoin later. If it is done properly, you hope nobody gets arrested. You had a successful action in some way. Those are two different ways of thinking about it. Mostgenerally speaking, direct action we will hear about will probably be in public, but that is not inevitably the case. We were talking before this in the fbi breaking office in 1971, where people ,roke in, stole all the files went through them and released political files, which was a lot of files. Those people were never caught. They told their story to the media long after the event was over and the statute of limitations had expired. They did not want to because. The aim was caught. The aim was not to become. I will now turn it over to the panelists and we will take them in the order on this sheet, this is the order we are sitting at the table. If you do not have a sheet, we will get copies and pass them out. I will say the name of the person. Be randy. Peaker will randy to tell the truth, i do not know it direct action is. I have not studied theories of i didjust, if you will what i thought made sense to me. It made sense to me strategically and ethically. Defined, i loosely think, i spent most of my adult life engaged in direct action. Some of that is in the program you have and i will try not to repeat. I think many of us when we first get involved in direct action of any kind, there is a moment or issue that gets us involved. That moment for me was 1966 and the issue was the u. S. War in and on the it non. I went gradually but steadily tom quiet, peaceful protests out and out resistance and noncooperation and a very public way. I turned in the draft card, finally got arrested by the fbi and i spent 22 months in federal prison as a result. Foundbsequent years i that was something that i liked to do and i could do and it was a helpful thing to do, so this was not just enacted participant active participant, but i spent far more time organizing them. Trying to stop Nuclear Plants being built in the 1970s, or stopping the construction in seabrook, that Nuclear Power plant in New Hampshire in the late 1970s. A number of things like that. With mytarted early to see that war was so horrendous in so many ways, you are creating poverty, abuse, killing itself. So many ways. We not only, i do not want to give my body to the war, or been, so betsy and i have tax resisters ever since 1976 and have had Bank Accounts seized and our wages levied and taken in 1991,e seized and sold out from under us. We had hundreds of supporters, which was an amazing thing. Most of the 1990s, i spent organizing two Major National campaigns. One of them for nuclear disarmament, the other for the abolition of privately financed bigmoney political campaigns. Respite,ew years of recuperating from my exertions, i got involved in trying to stop a Nuclear Power plant here in vermont, which has been stopped. [applause] randy other people here have been involved in that. People,i am one of many including some here tonight, hit is involved who is involved in thinking about who does what is the role of direct action in stopping this huge pipeline that wants to destroy major pieces of land through towns all throughout massachusetts, to unneeded gased to profits for those corporations that want to build it. That is another issue and i think that people will talk about that in the discussion portion. I will share some observations and conclusions maybe. Learned fromi have the activity i just described. First, direct action is not the same as civil disobedience. Is involved,ience direct action can be a number of things, not just stopping things , which is a primary activity and i have been involved in a host of things. ,ut it can be in Creative Arts banners on hanging buildings, sculptures, street theater, you name it. Directct action with action, it is usually a key element for change, but it is rarely in my estimation able to pull off fundamental change. It is at best the element, the key elements, part of a wider and broader strategy for other things from neighborhood organizing, public education, initiating discussion. Dan said and vanessa said, there is a risk in direct action, especially when it involves civil disobedience, but the risk is always greater for people of color, women, for working class poor people, then it is for people like myself who privileged, male people. That is the way it is and it needs to be recognized. I want to also say that courage and passion are contagious. They are contagious. When people step out with courage, compassion, and taking risk inspires other people. It is key to building a movement. Some number of people always end up doing that and it spreads and it inspires. I want to mention some people have told many of us, why do you riskingisking arrest, time off from work, disrupting family life, for a direct action even when you know it will not do any good . You cannot fight city hall, it does not matter and so forth. I want to say that i have heard that many times. And i want to say that for me, passion, canrage, ever be said to be futile. Simply because we do not know which ripples grow out from what we do. In my life, and had a dramatic story, i was giving a speech at a conference, giving a talk. And i was talking about the fact i was arrested by the fbi and i was certainly on my way to federal prison for draft resistance and unbeknown to me there was a guy in the audience who happen to be dan ellsberg who later revealed to the public a topsecret pentagon paper, which most historians have said played a Critical Role in stopping the war. I did not know he was there, i did not know that he would hear something i said, he has written about this, what could any of us do more than what we are already doing, if we are willing . Study secret at the corporation had to be revealed to the public showing decades, of lies to the public and press about the war in vietnam. Infaced a possible 115 years prison. Nothing is futile. Another story, when i was in federal prison, a number of us, some of the older comics hotheads, weed us protest. Organize a a strike for better conditions. Finally, i went on my personal strike. Weeks later we had the first strike in 40 years. Guess who let it led it . You got it. The chicanos and the mexicans. You thought maybe this failed. But you never know down the road what these ripples are that go out. There are other examples i could give. I want to say over others is a key feature and should be a part of the direct action. We win when we get enough people not joining us, but at least , supporting us to pressure and force decisionmakers to change things. We always have to think what we do, how it will affect other people and will they run from us or will they join us. Finally, i want to say open and active nonviolence is also absolutely key. People are afraid of violence, most people are afraid of that. There is a reason if we want to win over others these filings. Violence. Not to use i also think that for me personally, it is both an ethical and a spiritual question. It is the way i want to read other people, even my socalled enemies, opponents. It coincides with my values and allows me to feel good about actions i do and to keep on doing it over the long haul. So the last thing is there is something called the law of ends and means. I regard it as a fundamental, universal law, which is we get not what we want, we get what we do. It is like chickens always come home to roost. What goes around, comes around. If we use violence somehow, somewhere, it will trigger counterviolence, and that is the sad tragic story of our country and the world. So i think that is one reason why we need to think about how we do things, not just what we do and what impact it has on others. Thank you. Mr. Clawson thank you very much. Our next speaker is paki. Ms. Wieland i want to note what i see is direct action, and that is any number of things. It is sometimes sitting in, marching, sometimes walking, just standing. And i remember once talking with one of my sisters in black lives matter, one of our black sisters, and i said, what do you want from me . She said, sometimes i want you to stand with me because your whiteness will protect me, or sometimes i want you to walk behind me. That is one of the keys, the person who seems to have at least privilege suffering the most, has to be , the voice we finally trust. When i think about direct action, think about the different actions i participate in, i realize one of the things that keeps me going is a sense of community i have. So what i have done tonight is i could talk to you not for 12 minutes i could talk to you for about 12 years about the power of community, but do not worry, i am not. We will do Something Better than that. I have brought along in my Little Sisters and raging grannies are here, and we are going to sing a song, because this is one of the things our community of raging grannies does, we sing. And we are passing out song sheets for you to join us in singing this song, because we are not doing a concert. We are doing one song. We thought, what is the best song to do right now right here . And the one that won the contest was the one about the pipeline that randy just talked about. So, diane, do you want to hit it . And please join in. If you are not singing, remember, pete seeger said that is just another way of doing harmony. [laughter] o, give us a home where the gas lines cant roam where pipelines are banned and our children can stand free of harm no pipelines for us across the states we will make a great fuss we will keep them we will shout mother earth comes first for us there are so many ways to make power these days from the wind and the sun dont you see . Lets stop hydrofracking and send them packing let trees be where they should be no pipelines to keep earth healthy and whole we have come here to say no fracking, no way mother earth [applause] ms. Wieland so not only was that a nice song, a wonderful rendition by the western mass gaggle, but you in singing that have become part of the community. I know some of us are in the community that opposes the pipeline, but any way we can emphasize our connections is a good thing. So thanks for singing along. That was just a couple of my minutes. So im paying attention. What i wanted to do was really spend a little time looking at how i came to this. My own story is that i grew up in new orleans. I was born in 1943. And some of your grandparents were born about that. Then. I was born in new orleans in 1943 in the apartheid south. It was an amazingly horrific time. And i did not know it because with the color of this skin, i was very privileged. But i had another dimension of my life, and that was with my parents, who were extraordinarily already quite advanced alcoholics. So where did i turn and where did i find support . And where i found support was in the church, in nuns and priests, who were strong people, who were caring people, who provided those early seeds of my appreciation of community. And not only were they nurturing and caring, but they were also the people who were aware of the Racial Injustice that was happening. And so it was through them that i learned about what was happening in the various dimensions of racism that you have all read about and know about and was actually there when we took the signs down, because in those days, believe it or not, we were working for integration. And we have come some way from that. But it was a step. And if i talk to my other friends, particularly white southerners who have also learned about how not only do the people of color suffer, but we did, because we bought a lie, and it has taken many years to undo those lies. That is just the early seeds. Since then, what i have come to realize is that we are in this world in a place of confluence, where all of our contexts matter. And it is so important, as i look at some of the students here and some of the not so students, and i realized that each of us is really located, is really embedded in where we came from in our own history, in our own stories. And in knowing those histories and knowing those stories we are informed to really participate in this present in much we find in which we find ourselves. And this is quite an extraordinary time in which we find ourselves. When randy and vanessa were talking about the press, once upon a time when we did activities, when we did action, i was remembering the part of the womens pentagon action, that that actually made the washington post. Today, we have got people at ferc, at the federal Energy Regulatory commission, right now, protesting, fasting, and i ensure you have read all about it, in even the daily New Hampshire gazette. We do not have a press that covers anything of substance. I will tell you a little story, something that happened last week. Down in washington, and on last tuesday, the day after labor day, there was a man who was speaking at the American Enterprise institute, aei. One of our friends dubbed it the american empire incorporated, which sounds like a good aei name. Anyway, dick cheney, whom some of you may remember, was giving the talk, and god knows what they were paying him, but he was giving a talk. And one of the young people a number of friends tried to get in, but only one person got in a young intern with code pink, who got on to the front row, and during mr. Cheneys speech she stood up with a banner that said arrest dick cheney he is a war criminal wow, that is pretty amazing. There was a man who was upset about this and went over to her and started pulling the banner away from her. And she did not let it go. And finally, he actually fell over, trying to take it away from her. Later in the day, and she was nicely escorted out, no arrests or anything. She was sitting down with us, talking about it, and she got a call from the press, who wanted to know, what was her workout exercise . [laughter] i mean, how irrelevant can you possibly be . That that was their question, not why were you here, how did you get in, what did you really want to do . How do you plan to hold this man who has committed innumerable war crimes not be held being held accountable by anybody . But the 21yearold young intern god bless her, her, huh . If we do not tell the stories, they do not get out. Im looking around at friends who have radio programs on our local lowpower Community Radio stations and know that that is where you are going to get your news, because you are not going to get it from forget fox but even abc and nbc, the big networks, youre just not going to get it. T