Rights fighting

The Trump administration tried to "disappear" Mahmoud Khalil. He is a former college protester.

Let me be clear - disappearing protestors is a bigger threat to civil society than cutting off government funding. Cutting off government funding causes harm - especially to service recipients, community members, and employees. Many nonprofit organizations will close, merge, or otherwise restructure themselves in the face of such cuts. This is all bad. And because those nonprofits are and have long been the masks behind which government hides (to muddle a great quote from Claire Dunning) it is all part of the undisguised effort to spend U.S. taxpayer dollars on only two things: military/police and giveaways to the wealthy. Which makes it vile as well as awful.

But nonprofits are not synonymous with civil society. They matter to democracy, but they are not a prerequisite of our ability to take collective action. Just the opposite, actually. Our rights to collective action - to assemble, to petition (the government for redress), and to express ourselves - are the sine qua non without which nonprofits are nothing more than a bad business model.

Arresting a protestor, removing them from one jurisdiction to another, and threatening to deport them from the country? These actions are tyrannical strikes against our foundational rights to come together and criticize the government (or even a car company). And while it's far from the first awful act of the U.S. government against a resident (especially not against people of color), it's egregious enough that even such purposeful nitwits as Ann Coulter are noting the violation of First Amendment rights.

The nonprofit sector is - like many other industries - fighting for its life in this moment. But in fighting for money and not for the rights that enable, sustain, and protect collective action, the sector is missing the much bigger threat.

And if, as some are predicting, protest is the only thing standing between the U.S.A. and full-blown tyrannical patrimonial governance, then we really need to revere and protect our "right to petition."