If we’re using history as our guide, we know it’s coming. The state sponsored violence against citizens. It’s already here at the hands of ICE and the violence against women’s body’s in the restriction of reproductive rights. But we can expect more waves of escalation. An ICE abduction that goes sideways when they try to kidnap an armed individual who does not want to be deported to some third country gulag. Protestors shot by National Guard who are unsure of their engagement orders, brains in fight or flight mode. The attempted arrest of Trump’s political prisoners who stand up to the weaponization of federal police. Critics of the regime who end up dead as is common in Putin’s Russia. We are a powder keg nation, one Kent State away from exploding. And that may be exactly what Trump wants.
Trump loves to cosplay strongman. He’s already sent the Marines to Los Angelos. He’s hellbent on turning America into one of those “shithole countries” he shit talks about. The slightest escalation could cause him to bring the hammer down so he can prove he’s an “alpha.” Then he has his pretext for suspending elections and cementing his police state rule. History has told this story before.
So how do we respond to the worst provocations of state violence?
The right has long argued for the need of a second American revolution against the multicultural liberal democracy that has sought to dethrone straight cis WASP men. (Can we start using SCWASPM, or is that too much?) The left is now quoting founding fathers like Thomas Jefferson. “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Hidden among the peaceful protestors have been anarchists holstering side pieces. Is this the preamble to civil war?
I will admit the thought has crossed my mind. As someone who has had some weapons training, arming up for the coming shit show has been considered. But then I realize that’s a Hollywood fantasy of me protecting my family from Proud Boys and federal forces with an unlimited supply of ammo and slow mo John Rambo rage. It looks super cool in my head.
There will be blood. And there will be calls of retribution.
But, again, if history is our guide, we know that non-violence is the path. This isn’t the 18th century. For the last hundred years the model for the restoration of democracy has been built on mass uprisings that used peaceful means. They don’t always work. I’ll never forget watching the carnage in Tiananmen Square in 1989. But sometimes it has. (I also remember watching The Philippines and the People Power Revolution of 1986.) There will be casualties and it’s going to be heartbreaking. But the dictates of civil disobedience requires us to throw our bodies upon the wheel. Those deaths will be the seeds of a rebirth of democracy in the United States and their names will be cherished.
This moment, this terrifying moment in this terrifying history, could use a singular voice. We need an MLK or a Václav Havel to constantly remind us that the peaceful path is the most effective. To help us to channel our rage. An army of left-wing Timmothy McVeigh’s will not bring us the revolution we need. We can storm the ICE Bastille to liberate the prisoners of Trump’s race war. Or we can use our moral authority to transform those jailers to join us in the great experiment of democracy. In the absence of our Dr. King, we will have to be that singular voice.
We must hold the line and not become them. We’ve got the numbers and the moral arc.
It was three years before I found a bumpersticker that I liked enough to put on my first car. I was 19 and in Washington DC, lobbying for the nuclear freeze movement. It was 1983, and I was starting my work as a peace activist. There was a table in a DC church, with various progressive swag, and I bought a baby blue bumper sticker that read, “PEOPLE NOT PROFITS.” It seemed a summation of our struggle in Reagan’s war machine eighties.
People, not profits. Forty years later, I think, why not both? People AND profits!
When I was young, I lived in a world of black and white, good versus evil. It was a simple terrain to navigate. “You are either with us or you’re against us.” The us and them mentality had clear dividing lines. The misfits versus the straights. Left versus right. The oppressed versus the oppressors. Then I grew up and realized it is all shades of grey, context, and nuance. Nothing is black and white. And Ronald Reagan did a few (a few) good things.
I love how my fellow travelers on the left have worked at smashing binaries with regard to gender. Men and women are not “opposite sexes.” Gender is fluid in definition and performance. And so is sexuality. As Kurt Cobain sang, “Everyone is gay.” Well, at least a little bit. And more and more people define themselves as belonging to more than one racial category, including my daughter. We are a nation of “mulattos” and it’s beautiful. Smash the binary. Reality is intersectional!
I was at a pro-Palestine rally at Portland’s city hall this weekend where hundreds of people had gathered to call for a cease fire in Gaza. The young organizers were leading the crowd in boisterous chants, some calling for peace, but other refrains included, “2, 4, 6, 8, Israel is a terrorist state,” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” I get it. I imagine that if you are a parent in Gaza right now and your child has just been killed by an Israeli bomb, you are probably not blaming Hamas. I get it. And I get that Israel is probably facing an existential crisis in this moment, as these chants grow louder and louder around the globe. “Was this the best response to the slaughter on October 7?”
I thought about the death on both sides and the hostages who may still be alive somewhere in Gaza. I thought about how I was being pushed back into a binary. Israel versus Palestine, which side are you on, boy? I want to blur the binary, and say I’m for Israel AND Palestine. Obviously, there are people who want to eliminate Israel and/or Palestine from the face of the earth. But there are lots of people who don’t, including Israelis who have had family members killed by Hamas rockets and Palestinians who have had family members killed by Israeli rockets. I stand with them. Defend Israel. Defend Gaza.
I went through this three years ago when I was showing up for the Black Lives Matters protests in downtown Portland. Graffiti started popping up around the city that read, ACAB. “All Cops are Bastards.” I groaned, because I knew this reductionist thinking was appealing to the teenage brain, but A. It doesn’t help foster real systemic change, and B. It’s not true. Some cops are bastards and I’ve been lecturing about them for 30 years and trying to find real ways to keep them off the streets. But I know lots of police officers who are doing their work because they are dedicated to the same social justice values that I am. Maybe the left needs better slogans, or just a push to get out of its teenage brain.
Barack Obama’s political rise was based on the simple idea that America is not divided up into red and blue states. We all live in various shades of purple. We have been told we’re divided and we’ve swallowed the sales pitch fully. There are millions of Americans who are dreading the holidays, when they will be stuck at the dinner table with family members who have “opposite” views. We’re constantly being lectured about how polarized we are. All this divisiveness does not make America great. It turns the nation into a schoolyard screaming match. No member of the MAGA brigade ever turned in their red hat because some progressive called them an idiot. (And whatever the “vice versa” of that would be.)
This project I’ve been working on for the past year, Cure-PDX, is looking for ways to break through the us versus them binary that all too often spirals into political violence. We can recognize that our teenage brains want to “fight evil.” But what if there was no evil? What if it was all just ancient systems of oppression that we all get sucked into either reinforcing or resisting? A gay man suffers from the weight of a heterosexist society but also enjoys the privileges of patriarchy. Is he the good guy or the bad guy?
When the Israel-Hamas war exploded, I saw people get pulled in either direction, just like I witnessed with the “Black Lives Matter/Blue Lives Matter” narratives that must have made every black cop’s life nuts in 2020. Then, as now, I want to embrace what is valid about both sides. There is a line that for one side to exist, the other must be destroyed. We have the capacity to reject that simplistic world view. The goal of the powerful is to divide us, conservatives versus liberals, black lives versus cop lives, Israelis verses Palestinians. That’s how the status quo is maintained.
As we head into this fractious election cycle, where some are screaming for civil war, I’m going to look for the humanity in the other side. Instead of dropping verbal bombs (or real ones), I’m going to ask questions and find where our values align. I’m going to work for peace. And I know there will be those that say this position somehow empowers the “bad guys.” I anticipate the name calling, the accusations of betrayal. But maybe, just maybe, the frightening truth is that progress comes from building bridges, not dropping bombs.
Side Note: I’m still writing an imaginary musical, called Northwest Side Story, where an Antifa girl and a Proud Boy fall in love. Maybe instead of the tragic Romeo and Juliet ending, I’ll have them move to a kibbutz on the River Jordan.
“Regrets, I’ve had a few,” Sinatra once sang. We can claim to have no regrets but any thinking human has gobs of them. I’ve often joked that my epitaph should read, “He was his own worst enemy.” Better than Frank singing, “My Way,” would be Cher singing, “If I could turn back time, if I could find a way, I’d take back those words that have hurt you” (to a boatload of sailors). We’ve all been Cher.
When I was a young criminology professor, I would occasionally spend my lunch hour at the county courthouse, watching trials and hearings. The vast majority were for men who had made insanely stupid choices. Almost all offered the same defense, “It might have been me who committed that act, but it wasn’t really ME.” I remember one case of domestic violence that was particularly dramatic. The man attacked his wife after she said she was leaving him. In tears he told the judge, “I don’t know who that person was that hit her. It wasn’t me. I’m not that kind of man. It was like I was possessed.” I could tell the judge had heard that excuse many times and she booked him straight into the county clink for 90 days.
We have all done or said stupid things and wondered, who was that mad person in my body? I was commuting on my bicycle when a woman in an SUV ran a red light in front of me. I chased her down, accused her of being drunk, and spit on her window. That was 15 years ago and I still think about it with shock. (If SUV Lady is reading this, I’m sorry. I’m not that kind of man.)
Why do we do these things? Is it brief demonic possession?
There’s actually a simple answer and it has nothing to do with the devil and everything to do with our lizard brains. And fortunately, you don’t have to be a brain scientist to understand it.
Think of a lizard in the desert. It’s constantly on alert. It doesn’t sit around trying to figure out what’s funny or what’s hip. It’s constantly in survival mode. If there is a shadow on the ground, it isn’t going ponder what caused the shadow. It’s going to assume that it’s a hungry hawk and with zero pondering it is going to race under a rock or freeze and try to blend into the background.
Lizards have itty bitty brains that are primarily made up of something called the amygdala. It is quite literally prehistoric and it is the part of the brain that keeps animals alive. We think of it as the center of the fight or flight or freeze emotional response. Dinosaurs didn’t sit around wondering why the local T. Rex was hangry, they just ran or fought. The amygdala is connected to the sympathetic nervous system that turns those instantaneous brain impulse into immediate action. The lizard brain does not think. It makes a b-line for safety, fights with all its might, or freezes like a deer in headlights. The lizard brain is driven by hunger and, mostly, fear.
Humans have amygdalae. (I just learned that was the plural of amygdala.) Fortunately, millions of years of evolution have built an insanely complex structure around it that we call the “human brain.” One of the best parts of the human brain is the prefrontal cortex that gives us the ability to reason, imagine, and, yes, ponder. The prefrontal cortex regulates the lizard brain so we’re not alway freaking out every time we see a shadow on the ground. The prefrontal cortex allows us to function, otherwise we’d be overwhelmed with fear, aggression, and paralysis.
There’s an easy way to illustrate this point. Since the prefrontal cortex is the thing that makes us cognitively human, it’s the last part of our brain system to develop. Newborn babies are a lot like lizards. They just want their basic needs met. Babies don’t think, “I should wait for the sun to come up before I demand breakfast.” Babies are in survival mode all the time. Neuroscientists believe the prefrontal cortex isn’t fully formed until around age 25. So take a moment to think of all the epically stupid and impulsive things you did when you were a teenager that you would NEVER do now. It’s because your brain was like an IKEA kitchen that still had a thousand pieces to connect. Every time I go on Instagram, I see endless “reels” and “stories” of young people doing things that will make them cringe when they are older. You don’t see any 59-year-olds participating in street takeovers or skateboarding off of cliffs. Young brains can be dumb as lizards.
Side Story: When I was a 16-year-old in Stone Mountain, Georgia, one of my favorite TV shows was The Dukes of Hazzard. I would regularly borrow my dad’s 1978 Pontiac Grand Prix to “go to the store,” and end up doing donuts in the field like I was Bo and/or Luke Duke. If I happened to side-swipe a pine tree, I would tell my dad that it got hit in the parking lot. Fortunately, my father won’t read this. But if he does, I’M SORRY DAD! MY LIZARD BRAIN MADE ME DO IT!
If the human lizard brain had a motto, it would be, If it feels good do it. It is the knee jerk reaction that gets us into stupid fights, drives us to be sexual in situations where we shouldn’t, or causes us to completely shut down all normal interaction skills. Basically, our lizard brain gets us into trouble if our prefrontal cortex doesn’t regulate those very primitive impulses. Our brain (and body) gets hijacked by our amygdala. Sometimes, we need to fight or run away or freeze, but usually there’s some “context” to analyze. Bear is brown, lay down. Bear is black, fight back!
As adults, most of us develop the ability to self regulate. We know that throwing a punch ends up hurting our hands and getting the cops called. We know that sexually harassing a workmate gets a call to HR and makes us look like a serious creep. And we know that shutting down emotionally doesn’t really get us what we need, emotionally. In addition, or human brain allows us to develop empathy for others, so there is a greater benefit in centering others than just centering ourselves. But we do know that one of the things that throws the human brain into primitive lizard mode is trauma. Whether it’s something that happened when our brain was still forming, like childhood sexual abuse, or something that happened last week, like experiencing a serious car crash, trauma locks the brain into fight/flight/freeze mode. And it takes a lot of work to get the prefrontal cortex back on line to do the heavy lifting of regulation.
So we all have a lizard brain inside our heads. And we all have varying levels of ability in regulating that lizard brain. Some prefrontal cortexes are hampered by trauma, mental health issues, brain injuries, or substance abuse, but even the most sober “healthy brain” can find itself in a “road rage moment.” Something triggers us and we’re off to the races. And an hour later, we are singing that damn Cher song. “If I could turn back time…”
In my current work on political violence, we see a lot of dis-regulated lizard brains in control. The escalation of violence between protestors on the right and left in Portland is a sad example that has led to people dead on both sides. A case could be made that many of the insurgents at the January 6th riots in Washington DC never intended to storm the Capitol. They just got caught up in the mayhem and their lizard brains took over. It’s so easy to go from sane to insane when our amygdala is activated. We’ve all been there.
Fortunately, there are some well proven strategies to reign in our dino-brains and prevent the need to bust into the Cher song from the county jail (or divorce court). Here are a few:
1. Be aware of your triggers. If the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, avoid the factors that lead to escalation. If you know booze makes you more “lizardy,” moderate. If you know arguing about Trump sends you into the red zone, argue about sports instead. And if you know your crazy Uncle Ernie really likes to push your buttons, try not taking the bait.
2. Regulate when your lizard brain is activated. Uh oh, you’ve been activated and the fight/flight/freeze siren is wailing. What do you do now? You have the ability to insert your prefrontal cortex between the impulse and the action. This could be something as simple as a few deep breaths or a walk around the block. Anything to calm the lizard brain down before it gets your ass in trouble. Meditation is a great way to train your brain to become calm and see your thoughts AS thoughts, and not as orders to act.
3. Get curious. Your prefrontal cortex gave you the potential for radical empathy. That driver who cut you off or that politico who is trying to shove a nutzo conspiracy theory down your throat has a story. They are human beings with something that drives them. Instead of defaulting to fight/flee/freeze mode, get curious about their story. What makes them tick? Maybe you are more alike than different.
We live in fearful and polarizing times so it’s very easy for our lizard brains to be activated. Traffic, news stories about shootings, bizarre weather, people on TV screaming at each other, and the fact that so many of us (myself included) are walking around with scars of trauma, it’s shocking that we’re all not constantly living in fight/flight/freeze mode. But the fact we’re not reflects the triumph of our collective prefrontal cortex. We have the ability to not to be slaves to our impulses. We have the ability to calm our minds and make wise choices. We just need a little practice and thinking about how we think is a good place to start.
Fifty-four years ago this week, the dramatic violence outside the Democratic Convention in Chicago (August 23 to 28, 1968) defined an era of protest. It is now generally viewed as a “police riot.” The Chicago Police violently assaulted peaceful demonstrators, leading to numerous arrests and injuries, escalating the bloody street clashes. The mayhem was mostly broadcast on live TV, with the young protestors chanting, “The whole world is watching!”
In 2011, 43 years later those who studied the carnage from Chicago ’68 put those lessons to work. As the Occupy Wallstreet protests spread across the country, especially here in Portland, police utilized a new tactic – de-escalation. The old method of police knocking hippie heads tended to backfire and bring more civilians into the battle (and spurred increasingly costly lawsuits against police departments). In 2011, I spent many long nights in the three downtown squares claimed by Occupy protestors. The police kept their distance and let the people air their grievances. Eventually the protest ran its course and everyone went home. No teargas. No violence. The opposite was the case in 2020 when federal law enforcement arrived to quash the Black Lives Matter protests and turned downtown Portland into a war zone. I will never forget hiding behind concrete columns as feds, in heavily militarized gear, shot their weapons randomly down 5th Avenue.
Following the January 6th riot, we’ve re-entered the debate about de-escalating the violence. A 2022 University of California, Davis survey found that 1 in 4 Americans think violence against the government is sometimes OK and 1 in 10 feel political violence is justified right now. (Not surprisingly, these numbers are much higher among Republicans.) This call to violence has only escalated in the wake of the FBI’s warranted search (it wasn’t a “raid”) of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound to retrieve stolen classified documents. America suddenly seems close to falling into the tarpit of another civil war. Maybe the country needs to take a massive chill pill.
I’m privileged to be a part of a federally funded project to look at ways to interrupt extremist violence in America called Cure-PDX. The basic idea is that if there are individuals at risk of committing acts of political violence, whether they’re coming from the right or left or somewhere off the charts, there should be a way to get them to “de-escalate” and find a non-violent way to express their, perhaps legitimate, grievances. It’s not about de-radicalization. (As a sociology professor, I like to joke that I’m the radicalization field.) It’s about moving individuals back from the ledge of violence, before they go on a shooting spree, blow something up, or commit a hate crime.
The logic of de-escalation makes sense. Fewer victims of extremist violence seems like an easy sell. But our team ran to some push-back from some activists on both the right and left who argued, given the current state of affairs, this is the exact time TO escalate violence, before things tip over. Political scientists will tell you that extremists movements tend to have an apocalyptic element. The sky is always falling. But these days it’s hard not to share that sentiment. The left thinks democracy is one election away from disappearing and the right thinks the “Biden FBI” is coming to throw patriots into concentration camps. I will admit one thing, a part of me has considered arming up to protect my family from Proud Boys and the unorganized militias of the right.
I reflected on my time this spring in Ukraine. I was not involved in de-escalation. I was helping the Ukrainian army escalate the you-know-what out of things. The stuff I brought in from Poland in the back of a van ended up in the hands of soldiers in Irpin and very likely helped them kill many Russian conscripts as they valiantly reclaimed the city. I may have Russian blood on my hands. How do I sleep at night? Like a baby. I wish there was a non-violent solution but if you had seen what I had, you wouldn’t want de-escalation in that moment either. While there, I kept remembering a Bruce Cockburn song that went, “If I had a rocket launcher…Some son of a bitch would die.”
So who am I to tell other people to de-escalate?
Well, we’re not Ukraine, occupied by a civilian-slaughtering invader. We still have a Constitution and free elections. Despite Trump’s attempt to dismantle our democracy, the house still stands. Everything the left and right want can be addressed without violence. There are political strategies that can build the middle while giving voice to those who feel marginalized, including 70-something straight white cis men who are scared shitless by “woke politics” (whatever that is).
I just watched Netflix’s three-part documentary on Woodstock ’99. (I was briefly a Limp Bizkit fan, shhh.) The violent destruction at the 3-day festival, including the numerous sexual assaults, is a perfect example of the contagious nature of violence. Kids were suddenly burning down buildings. The madness of the moment consumed them. If I had been there (as I had planned to), I could have been one of them. America is at risk of “Woodstock ’22” becoming our descent into political violence as the mob mentality of us versus them sweeps the nation. Libtards versus Nazis. But, there is no us versus them, just us. And we have a brief window in history to de-escalate. If we miss it, it’s gonna make Woodstock ’99 look like Woodstock ’69.
Recent data shows that 80 percent of domestic terrorist plots that have been prevented were stopped because someone known to the potential offender came forward. We all can play the role of “credible messenger” to those at risk of escalating to violence. “Hey Frank, I now you want to storm the capitol, but can we just hang out and watch some cat videos?” Frank just got saved from a world of regret. It is worth pursuing this approach first and save the insanity (and body count) of escalation for another day. Non-violence is still the preferred path.
Watching the Wheels 