Protest Occupations and Thinking Tactically as a Democratic Practice

Other examples of protest occupations include a right-wing militia’s occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon to protest federal land policies in 2016, and the 1990 Kahnawake Warrior Society’s armed protest against a plan by the town of Oka, Quebec, to expand a golf course onto land claimed by the Mohawk Nation. Protest occupations make use of what I call a “protest dramaturgy of endurance,” which performs activism over time.1 Examples include extended protests that perform physical, mental, and political commitments to a cause and enact an embodied persistence of belief; for example, camps, hunger strikes, long marches, or letter-writing campaigns. Unlike what Baz Kershaw terms a “volcanic” dramaturgy of protest, which relies upon brief, explosive, and disruptive actions to grab headlines and foster support,2 a protest dramaturgy of endurance employs extended or repeated actions to communicate perseverance in the face of opposition. Because the dramaturgy of endurance is focused on longevity and continuation, it only sparingly uses the carnivalesque.