On the Meaning of Dissent

Photo via Washington Post - “Members of the Army, Marines and National Guard in the District remained on patrol in the capital until April 16. (UPI)”

Revolution seems ever more daunting as I learn the language of politics. My head feels heavy on my shoulders, with migraines spurred on by the latest newscycle. I think about my place in this world and feel small. I feel scared. So many of us are. Some of us are immediately threatened by state violence, and many of us feel powerless to protect them. Many more are conditioned to turn away rather than face the violence with us. I try hoping that they are afraid too. I try including them in a vision of peace, peace I strive towards in my actions and choices.

I’ve drafted this many times in journals and scrapbooks – on the margins of papers through three years of activism. Some of those little notes taught me more than I know now.

Please bear with me, some of these topics are difficult to simplify. I urge you to ask these same questions to yourself. This essay is only a compassionate call to action.

Dissenting is the last decision someone makes as an individual. Not that any action of disagreement is a rejection of self interest, nor abandonment of your own needs. Being an individual is not a terrible thing, but what I mean to describe here is a decision to act and think collectively, rather than move through the world as if you were not a part of it.

Easier to point out than to accept. We need more time. This goes against school policy. I’m not risking my degree. We can’t force people to participate. Nobody is going to listen. I don’t do politics. I wouldn’t know how to do that. Someone else would be better. This isn’t an issue here.

There are a lot of ways to say “I can’t.” I have to say “I can’t” too, sometimes, when the strain is too much on my spirit. After all, some of us are more at risk than others. It is the greatest trap of capitalism: Who has the time, who has the money, who has the energy, who has the ability, or the patience, or the bandwidth, and on and on.

Revolutionaries throughout history have struggled to solve this problem: “the means” with which we keep fighting. Not a lot of us have them, that much is not our fault.

This is a good moment to recall our emotions after Trump’s first, and now second, term in office. How often American liberals (a majority being white) treated oppressed minorities as if we were responsible for Trump’s power.

Narratives are popular about the Arab communities in Michigan, or Haitian immigrants in the major cities or Latino Trump supporters in the blue states. 

A slanted headline can kill someone, and it has. Our oppression must be our responsibility because white ignorance of reality is easier that way.

So, what about the poor whites, or the moderate white women, or the millions of young, white, non-voters in urban centers? What about the ones with the means to vote, means to eat and means to speak freely? “I get it.” Wrote Isaac J. Bailey, in his 2020 book “Why Didn’t We Riot?”

“None of us is above reproach on an issue so emotional, complex, vexing, and ever evolving as race in the United States of America.” Bailey’s capacity for care shows through the conversations he has with cops, whites and politicians in this book.

He does not make the mistake of admonishing white Americans from their complicity in Trump’s racist authoritarianism.

“Black people are imperfect, too. But there are some racial lines black voters would not cross.” Bailey writes, “To make a bigoted man president is to inflict his bigotry upon black and brown communities, no matter the reason you choose to support him.”

Bailey explores his own anger after Trump, anger which we repress and replace with respectability to survive in a white America in denial about its oppressive conditions.

White Americans, obviously, did not dissent from the racial order in 2016, nor did they in 2024. I say all this to make a key point about individualism. Suffering and exploitation continues because of unwillingness to abandon capitalism’s sparse privileges.

“This simplistic, individualistic notion of responsibility, that denies the impact of history, is precisely the reason so many historical [events] have been defined by racial explosions.” says Angela Y. Davis, speaking to a crowded cultural centre in Barcelona, Spain.

We don’t have time here to talk about neoliberalism but understand it as the dominant social order.

The neoliberal definition of ‘individual’ dehumanizes us as people. An individual is no more than a collection of skills to sell in a market for their own financial interest.  Community members are reduced to businesses competing for survival against each other.

Davis draws our attention to the way individualism makes excuses for systemic racism today, “We have never seriously considered the irreparable damage done by the enslavement of African descendent people and the genocidal colonization of indigenous people.”

Davis’s thoughts developed from her many confrontations within our capitalist system. She says, “Revolutionary change is not possible as long as we do not address the extent to which repressive apparatus preserves these racist histories.”

Revolutionaries are always in conversation with each other throughout the world, but also throughout time. Robin D.G Kelley, an abolitionist scholar from whom I have learned much of my politics, has studied extensively the intersections of race, class, gender and revolutionary struggle.

“One, race and gender are not incidental or accidental features of the global capitalist order,” he explains. Kelley asserts that race “is a structure of power,” and names race as “a means of structuring power through difference.”

Kelley led a seminar with students at the Haven Wright Center for Social Justice, fittingly named “Where Do We Go From Here?” A student asked him “the means” question, asking Kelley how to go from talking about change to engaging in change. I ask myself this question a lot. His answer?

“What I can tell you is who I learned from. I think it’s important for students, for people to come together and actually talk, and read together… to be able to figure things out together.” Kelley said.

“We get defeated all the time because we get placed in isolation you know,” said Kelley, “as opposed to being in struggle together.”

Let me clear up a misconception. Struggle is not the same as endurance. Endurance means “uninterrupted or lasting existence,” endurance is Black survival in White America. Enduring is the bottled emotions, the swallowed response to a racist classmate; endurance is dealing with it, because racism isn’t going to go away tomorrow.

Struggle is an active verb. We struggle because we can’t wait for a hopeful tomorrow anymore. We struggle when we use the last of our energy to defy violent systems. Struggle is not a deep breath of air – but every thrash, kick and grasp towards the surface that keeps you from drowning. That is the struggle we all must engage with.

Davis said one more thing I think finds its relevance here. She asked us to continually challenge our perceived normal, and to develop a wider understanding of revolution.

What do I mean by dissent, then? ‘Dissent’ is political opposition to a government or its policies. Dissent is more than to disagree – revolutionaries' express defiance with words, with actions and with choices.

Dissent is the last individual choice you will make. It means to join the struggle locally and globally. In turn, our solidarity gives us strength. Commitment to collective struggle gives us the means to resist oppression, even when state violence reaches its worst. When we act with the needs of our community in mind, we pursue a society free from imperialism, racial capitalism and colonialism.

Dissent. We can’t wait for action anymore.