Fugitivity and Nonviolence

Editor’s Note: Longtime readers will perhaps recall the times my friend and neighbor Lynne McFarland has honored us by letting me publish posts she’s shared on the Book of Faces. She gave us “Let’s Break Free” and “Interaction” and “The Other Side of Rage.” And now it seems we’re following a pattern. I start stressing over not having said something publicly about something that’s occurred and then I spy on God’s internet Lynne saying—with words I prefer over my own—something akin to what I wanted to get around to saying. “Fugitivity” names a thing for which I did not have a word until now. Please read and consider what Lynne’s set down so beautifully. I hope it energizes you as much as it energizes me. I’ll have more to say about Rev. Lawson soon.

Rev. James Lawson has passed. David Dark wrote that Rev. Lawson quoted the poem “Meaning” by Czeslaw Milosz at the funerals of both Rev. Will Campbell and Rep. John Robert Lewis. Now we read it for him.

The poem ends with these lines: “A word wakened by lips that perish/A tireless messenger who runs and runs/Through interstellar fields, through the revolving galaxies/And calls out, protests, screams.”

These must have been important words to Rev. Lawson.

We are all recommitting ourselves to the long-haul work of nonviolent lives and action as he told us to do. We are finding nonviolent work to do in ourselves, our homes, our neighborhoods, our cities and states. We are quoting the principles of nonviolence like a mantra, and the skills of nonviolence like an organizer’s field manual.

I expect some really creative work to come out of this! Yet some really creative work has already come down to us as his message has been heard now by several generations.

In one of his Saturday morning talks, Rev. Lawson talked about why the liberation movement for Black people, slaves at one time, did not become a violent movement, but has remained almost entirely a nonviolent movement. For the causes of this remarkable, nonviolent, way, he credited two features of Black slave life: the Underground Railroad and slave songs/Black music. They instilled hope and liberation grounded in creative community and spirituality that have remained the hallmark of the movement.

The nonviolent movement has formally embraced the music part. Generations of liberators have sung the songs of freedom and new generations have added to the repertoire. But as for formal development of the liberating spirit of the Underground Railroad and the saga of slave escape--the embrace of this has fallen mostly to the exploration of fugitivity in social research and in the arts.

Why has this element of liberation, that of the Underground Railroad and other community practices (like marronage, the creation of free communities below the radar) not found more expression in the nonviolent movement in the same way as the music of freedom, despite Rev. Lawson’s recognition of the role it played? I may have some thoughts.

Starting way back with Gandhi’s nonviolent movement, the purpose of the work was the appeal to the members of the ruling colonial class, the British Empire. The principles, strategies, and disciplines were all designed to create situations in which the ruling class would come to see that their actions were morally wrong, their power over another people was impossible to maintain, and a new structuring of community and society was necessary to build. The focus was on trying to change the systems of oppression.

Yes, Gandhi discussed the needs of the Indian participants in nonviolent action, focusing mostly on the discipline and order and courage it took to succeed, but methods to inculcate the spirit of freedom and joy generally were not a part of his curriculum. He did address the need of the participant when he advocated for the necessity of refusal to cooperate with a colonialist who humiliated an Indian, saying that dignity required refusal. But, additionally, Indian culture had a long tradition of meditation centered in love, and Gandhi publicly engaged in meditative practices to strengthen his own ability to do the work. This truly undergirded the work.

When Rev. Lawson and Dr. King and others brought Gandhian nonviolence to the Southern US, again the focus was on how to build a movement that would change the racist attitudes and structures that existed. When that movement expanded to other parts of the US and into other countries, the goals remained focused on changing the hearts, minds, policies, and social structures of the dominant system.

Nonviolent resistance participants gained much training and practice in actions that achieved these ends, but as with Gandhi’s movement, how the life-sustaining strength and joy (Black Joy) were to be developed was to some extent unsaid and untaught, though expressed powerfully in freedom music. The addition of meditation to the personal and community practices of nonviolent resistance participants has grown in recent years, and offers much-needed support. The spirit-sustaining liberation narrative of the Underground Railroad always was there, but sometimes implicit.

But what happens when we let fugitivity explicitly enter the nonviolent realm of training and action? To become an integral part of the movement as a nonviolent principle? I think this already has happened but I would like to call attention to it and see it be enlarged.

The concept of fugitivity began in its concrete form as the narrative of the escaped slave, a form of literature that told an exciting story of literal escape from the confines of slavery by a man, woman, or group. It might involve running through the woods, hiding in the daytime, hiding aboard a boat, taking a horse, and it often involved the assistance of others who provided supplies, ran interference, showed the way, and led the escapee, the fugitive, to a safe new home.

Other than the voice of music that could not be silenced although the message was often disguised (think of the escape song, Follow the Drinking Gourd)-- a slave had no voice; he/she was unable to speak for him/herself. But as the slave escaped and then told the story of the escape, that silenced one became not only the teller of an exciting challenge to oppression, but a free speaker, a liberated voice. In the form of the powerful metaphor that it has become, fugitivity is the ability to speak openly about things that the dominant, oppressive system has forbidden to be spoken.

So yes, fugitivity still refers to literal escape, as refugees attest, but fugitivity refers also, and especially so now in the US, to the ability to break through the proscribed forms of interaction, of speech, of norms imposed by the rulers. In particular, it refers to the ability to seek liberation by escaping the bonds of the rules, norms, proscriptions, foreclosures of what can be brought into the space.

Governor Lee frequently called for civility in the TN Capitol. We know that “civility” generally favors the dominant class members in the room. But “speaking truth to power” or “truth to insanity,” as the case may be, breaks that rule/boundary and frees the one who so speaks. This creative energy strengthens and innervates the speaker. The escape from bonds.

Fugitivity gives voice to the nonviolent participant and stirs his/her lifeforce. A necessary tonic.

When Rev. Lawson told Gov. Bill Lee “You have a hole in the middle of your soul,” he engaged in a fugitive action. In a ceremonial day dedicated to honoring Rep. John Lewis in Nashville, the polite norms of the dominant class required everyone to smile sweetly and pretend all was well. But Rev. Lawson spoke. Even on that day-- no--especially on that day, rules and norms that support domination had no place.

When the Tennessee Three went to the well of the TN State House to speak about gun safety after the GOP majority proscribed the discussion, they engaged in a fugitive action. When the citizens in the balcony of the State House refused to abide by the unjust seating rules imposed upon them by the GOP supermajority, they engaged in a fugitive action.

While the nonviolent strategy and action plan is focused on changing the behaviors of the dominant class, the fugitive action is aimed at giving voice to the silenced. The nonviolent strategy focuses on the opponent and how to change the oppressive system. The fugitive action focuses on the nonviolent participants and how to strengthen and enliven their spirits. Liberate them.

Rev. Lawson showed us both. There is room in the nonviolent movement for fugitivity. There must be room for fugitivity. According to Rev. Lawson, the liberating actions of the Underground Railroad set a tone for Black freedom-seeking, which along with the music of freedom, worked to prevent a violent turn.

We must explicitly incorporate the spirit of the Underground Railroad into the nonviolent movement. It is the spirit of the flight to freedom, the voice that tells the story of liberation, an escape made possible by a vision of a way of being and an agile community that appears in the darkness to support and guide the fugitive. Black Joy is a fugitive action.

We have evidence in the poem by Czeslaw Milosz that Rev. Lawson appreciated the fugitive figure, breaker of boundaries formed by oppression, one who seeks to be free and gives voice to liberation. What he said about Rep. Lewis and Rev. Campbell also of course describes his words and work: “A tireless messenger who runs and runs... and calls out, protests, screams.”

(Thanks to David Dark for his post and to Jane Felts Osgerby, always, for her insights.)