Strategy 3: Direct Action

Over the past few weeks, I’ve introduced you to the three strategies of the National Campaign: Education, Lobbying, and Direct Action. After we introduce these strategies to the assembled leaders of the Minneapolis Convergence, we’ll develop and practice them in monthly Strategy Team calls facilitated by CTA Staff and Team Leaders. 

It’s important to remember that no one strategy can exist without the others: Lobbying, Education, and Direct Action are strategically woven together in the National Campaign

- Abby Rampone, Communications & Activities Coordinator

Jenn Reyes Lay at a CTA protest in 2015

Direct Action in the National Campaign

Direct Action broadly describes the use of disruptive public protest to achieve a movement’s demands. It can take many forms. Familiar examples of nonviolent direct action include strikes, sit-ins, marches, and banner drops. As I write, indigenous activists have shut down major rail networks across Canada in solidarity with the Wet'suwet'en people, who are fighting to keep a natural gas pipeline off their unceded land. The point is to disrupt business as usual because the status quo is hurting people. Marginalized peoples throughout history have employed direct action to demand or force system change. 

For the National Campaign, our primary form of direct action will be occupation of religious spaces. These may include churches, seminaries, shrines, or church offices. Occupations are both a literal and symbolic reclamation of space. For people who are excluded from sacraments, roles within the church, or even Catholic spaces, occupation can become a spiritual act which needs no further demands. 

And yet, the mere threat of occupation can be a powerful catalyst for change. Occupations disrupt business as usual in more powerful and poignant ways than other forms of direct action. Any direct action, particularly an occupation, must be an intentional choice for both the individual participants and for the larger movement. Participants must be fully aware of the potential consequences of an occupation, since it can be one of the riskiest forms of nonviolent direct action. And the movement must discern where and when direct actions are called for in a campaign. This means knowing how other strategies can maximize the changemaking power of an occupation. In our case, it means knowing how to coordinate and leverage our efforts in lobbying, education, and direct action. 

We’re incorporating confrontational strategies into our campaign because even though some bishops are more receptive than others, the USCCB has made a habit of ignoring the needs and suppressing the voices of progressive Catholics. Both scripture and the lives of the saints are full of holy confrontation, demonstrating how it is an essential piece of our divine call to action. 

Long-time activists are surely familiar with debates around the efficacy of different forms of direct action. Misogynists will “feminize” nonviolent direct action as symbolic and ineffective. Others have a hard time moving beyond debates about the definition of “nonviolence.” Different activists have different understandings of what constitutes acceptable action: is property destruction wrong, even if that property is a cage which holds children? 

Catholic activists for social justice employ countless forms of direct action, from sit-ins and walkouts at Catholic schools to Plowshares actions that risk years of prison time to creative, symbolic protests that make a point without risking arrest. In every form, effective direct action is rarely spontaneous -- it requires serious planning and trust among participants. 

At the end of the day, different people are able to take varying levels of risk during direct actions. Justice-centered movements are attentive to the compoundinding ways that participants are oppressed, conscious, for example, to how people of color face racialized police violence when risking arrest in the U.S. 

Personal Experiences

As a young activist, I have participated in many relatively low-risk forms of direct action. When we were freshmen in college, my friends and I got up at 1 am to chalk sidewalks all over campus in protest of Michael Bloomberg, who was set to give the commencement speech at our school. We were scared (although, realistically, we didn’t risk any serious repercussions), but we were also exhilarated. 

Throughout college, I joined low-risk rallies on a range of racial and environmental justice issues. After Trump’s 2016 election, I helped organize a day-long occupation of the student center. In the classroom and through our own activism, my friends and I learned about direct actions around the world. Hoping to leverage our privilege during the Standing Rock protests, we raised money to support indigenous activists on the front lines. 

In the fall of 2018, Call To Action sent me to Rome to participate in educational events and a direct action that Women’s Ordination Conference had organized around the start of the Synod on Young People, the Faith, and Vocational Discernment. This was the first time that I’d participated in a specifically Catholic protest. WOC and allies from around the world stood outside the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, chanting, singing, and praying as the prelates entered the hall. Our specific demand was that women be granted the right to vote in the synod (a demand which still hasn’t been won!). We yelled until our throats were hoarse. Some bishops stopped to talk to us. Others walked past us. 

Before long, police surrounded us and demanded our passports. Tourists surrounded the scene, taking pictures. A young protestor from a Christian feminist group in the Czech Republic was shoved by a policeman, who demanded that she surrender her phone. By the time that some police showed up on horseback, the protest had mostly dissipated. The protest was widely publicized, as photos circulated of a plainclothes Italian policeman grabbing WOC’s executive director. Even this relatively nondisruptive direct action was a powerful tool for demanding attention and rallying our base.

The national campaign will try to build on the potential we see in the many examples of direct action in our Catholic reform movement. When we catch people’s attention through direct action, we’ll be able to guide them toward the events and resources organized by the education team. And the power and conviction demonstrated by direct actions will serve as leverage for the lobby team’s efforts. Coordinated and intentional direct action is the teeth of our campaign.