What Would Gandhi Do?
This question has been running through my head a lot lately, not because I’m feeling mystical, but because Gandhi was a superb tactician, and particularly good when the other side had more guns. He had an excellent instinct for finding and using pressure points, without ever hurting anyone, and – what’s essentially the same thing – without ever relinquishing the moral high ground. That seems to me like the sort of person we need in these peculiar times.
For instance, how would Gandhi deal with extra-legal deportations? How would he deal with an administration that ignores due process, and court orders, and just hustles people it doesn’t like onto planes and ships them off to a hellhole administered by a compliant foreign dictator?
A key problem is that the courts, including the Supreme Court, lack an enforcement mechanism. When the judicial branch makes a ruling, the executive branch is supposed to enforce it, but what happens if the executive branch goes rogue? My suggestion is that the people – ordinary American citizens – act as the enforcement mechanism: a peaceful, polite, friendly enforcement mechanism, but one that is numerous, persistent, and takes a lot of video.
For instance, suppose a court orders that, for now, no Venezuelans be deported under the Alien Enemies Act from the Bluebonnet Detention Center in Anson, Texas. (In case you didn’t know, the Supreme Court of the United States recently issued exactly that order.) The White House has indicated it will comply, but, um, how can we be sure? These past few months, the administration’s pattern has been to do what it wants, and then, when directed to reverse an improper action, say “Oops – too late.” How can we be sure this won’t happen again?
Gandhi would probably encourage a whole lot of citizens – the more the better – to go down to Anson and make sure no buses roll out of those gates. These citizens would be provided with copies of the Supreme Court’s order, so they can make sure the officers at the facility know exactly what the current state of the law is. The citizens should not yell at the officers. They should not make them feel afraid, or even disliked. I would suggest somebody bake them banana bread. There may well be a number of officers at that detention center who are already feeling uncomfortable about what they are being ordered to do, and we should sympathize with such people – they probably need their jobs, after all – and treat them as friends, or at least as potential friends. If the officers behave in an unfriendly way towards the citizens, we should be very, very patient. After all, they’re under a lot of stress.
The elements of such a project already exist. Many, many groups are rallying for protests, including our own group, We Stand United Missouri. Can we coordinate these groups, and get them to where they would do the most good? Along with Gandhi, we need the people who handled logistics for Gandhi, who seem also to have been extremely competent.
That’s the sort of thing I imagine Gandhi would be working on. If we put our heads together, I bet we can think of more.
~ STUDEBAKER (Studebaker@studebakerguy.bsky.social)
