?When the nonviolent tactics have been exhausted

Posted by jesuslewis on August 17th, 2017

The night before the April 15 Patriots’ Day protest, Mr. Lawrence stayed up most of the night making sandwiches. Before he headed out to meet up with other anti-fascists, he grabbed a box of matzos, too — it was Passover. The Antifa wanted to show up en masse to demonstrate opposition at an alt-right free-speech rally. Announcements on fliers around campus called for a Defend the Bay Bloc Party and Cookout, with a request to “Bring friends, a mask and food to share if ya can.”

“Nobody wanted a street fight,” Mr. Lawrence said.

When the Antifa got there, some with makeshift weapons and M-80 firecrackers, fighting broke out (each side blames the other). Mr. Lawrence didn’t engage. “I’m 5 feet 2. I know what my assets are in this movement, and being able to throw down physically isn’t one of them.” His role: “There’s power to being a body in the mass.”

Mr. Lawrence has been involved with the anarcho-punk scene since high school. His first black bloc protest was last winter. “Violence is frightening,” he said. “I get it. Violence is messy. It’s not elegant.” But he argues that today’s high political stakes justify violence. “Whatever you can do to throw a wrench in the gears is valuable.”

Mr. Lawrence allowed his full name to be used to bolster his credibility in explaining a movement he believes is misrepresented in the media. In particular, he wants his experiences as a trans student to illustrate its increasing diversity. “That is who the hammer falls on,” he said. “That’s whose existence in public is being criminalized in so many state legislatures right now. I never felt like a target walking down the street until the climate shifted so radically in the age of Trump.”

Mr. Lawrence is graduating this summer, nearly a year early, a decision reinforced by how Berkeley has dealt with the turmoil. “I don’t want to be on a campus where I’m looking over my shoulder all the time, but the people I’m constantly looking over my shoulder for can stand on the steps of Sproul” — where the Free Speech Movement was born, in 1964 — “and give a press conference.”

“Everyone just kind of wants to keep their head down, and the administration is really hypocritical about what’s going on, for all their talk about wellness and campus climate. A pretty big part of me feeling safe on my campus, it doesn’t seem crazy to say, is that there not be any Nazis here.”

For More HR Software Video