A Non-Violent Response to Violent Times
The primary question of the moment is not about political violence, it is regarding universal values - do we still care about trust, equality, friendship, fairness, and mutual respect among all the peoples and nations of humankind? If the answer is yes, then those values have always been available to us and are waiting for us to reach out and grab them.
To achieve trust, equality, friendship, fairness, and mutual respect among all the peoples is no small feat and will require a strategy, which brings me to my secondary question - are we willing to become larger than our biases, egos, and impulses in order to build bridges with the very people we are fighting for? The very people who we share a future and a planet with?
I agree with Ezra Klein that “we are going to have to live here with each other” and there is a “right way to practice politics”. Where we disagree is the assumption that it is the Shapiros or Kirks that we need to debate. Debate is not what we need at all. What we need is more persuasion along class, racial, and gender lines. We need dialogue with ourselves, amongst ourselves, and with neighbors, acquaintances, colleagues, family members, and broader community members. I wish Ezra, for example, had instead conversed with a major religious leader in Georgia or a beloved community leader in Idaho.
My own story begins with hubris, pivots due to curiosity and pragmatism, and concludes into a more firm commitment to non-violence.
APPETITE FOR DISAGREEMENT
Around 2014-2015 I noticed that among progressive students on Stanford campus there was a growing intolerance for disagreement and an apathy towards persuasion. The cultural shift was gradual. It began as an annoyance towards those that liked to “play devil’s advocate”, but that irritation grew into a logic that I believe is either ubiquitous offline or online. The logic is that the problems we want to solve, such as racial injustice or climate change, are urgent, therefore there is no time to “bring people along”.
The attitude was that people need to simply get onboard or get out which led, as you can imagine, to an ambivalent recruitment strategy. “The right people will find us” was the sentiment, but how would we ever win with people power without the people?
Between 2014-2017, a wrought, tumultuous time in the United States, my social circle became militantly aligned around fundamental political beliefs. Then we extended ourselves into the social media world, an environment designed to profit from our polarization.
During those years, the only social group in which I vocalized doubts or beliefs that ran counter to progressive thought was a friend group I formed through a mandatory class. We bonded by building an iOS application together. We were of different cultural backgrounds, nationalities, genders, and had varied interests and temperaments, and in this truly safe space I continued to debate, but outside of it I lost my appetite which was a shame. There had been a time when I relished a good fight.
2009-2012, PORTLAND, OREGON
I grew up a fighter, raised in a fairly combative household, and this instinct was exacerbated by competitive, Catholic prep-school environments in which I was one of few girls. I quickly learned that, when it comes to dealing with boys, the best defense is an offense and I had no problem playing linebacker.
In my A.P. U.S. History class I shamelessly argued, out loud mind you, that adults over the age of eighty should be euthanized because they were a drain on society. I acknowledged it was a harsh stance, but “someone has to make tough calls” I announced to a classroom of politely aghast Catholics. In Mrs. Harwood’s English class Melissa Murphy brought in the music video “Fifteen” by Taylor Swift for her literary inspiration. I brought in The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.
“Aishwarya is blunt” was a compliment, but would I ever learn the virtue of grace?
2012-2017, STANFORD, CALIFORNIA
Freshman year I came in hot, debating my next-door neighbor Aaron almost daily on the ethics of nuclear weapons, abortion, gun control, and topics of race and gender. However, I soon found myself attracted to activist spaces. I joined the Stanford chapter of the NAACP, began organizing with Black Lives Matter, designed a citizen journalism app (the first software product I ever shipped), sang in an a cappella group dedicated to telling stories about the oppressed, and eventually I moved into a co-operative living house with an arts focus. Like condensation, the knowledge and experiences of those around me formed into a cloud of inspiration. Ayn Rand’s logic fell apart, not because I was any less in pursuit of merit, but because I no longer believed the world was meritocratic. A meritocracy requires fairness, and fairness eludes the world. My new justice-oriented paradigm felt like a righteous rebellion. I could still be a linebacker, but for a team and with a purpose, which was gratifying.
It became clear to me that injustices worldwide were designed and either interconnected or similar in nature. For example, it was a Black student who gave me a weird look when I explained the caste system in India as if it were no big deal. Six years later Isabel Wilkerson would go on to write Caste: The Origins of our Discontents, but by then I had long-examined the origins of my own discontent from childhood. All roads seemed to point towards White supremacy, colonialism, and patriarchy. My trips home during Thanksgiving began to result in my lecturing a family member about misogyny or Modi.
I had swung to an orthogonal set of views, but my instrument was still a bludgeon. There was no art of persuasion in my bones. I was the same combative high schooler underneath, an incapable evangelist.
In 2015 on MLK Jr day when 68 of us Stanford students blocked the San Mateo bridge in Silicon Valley to protest police brutality against Black Americans, the organizers of the protest made a connection between the Black struggle and the Palestinian struggle for liberation. Hence, we carried a Palestinian flag with us and chanted for the freedom of all people oppressed by systems of supremacy. The gag is I had next to no knowledge on the history and politics of Israel-Palestine. Nine years after this event, post-Oct 7th, I spent quite a lot of time learning.
Unfortunately, I had friends who thought it was shameful that I had not yet learned about the issue when I had “the privilege and opportunity to prior”. I was told I needed to form an unequivocal pro-Palestinian opinion else my silence or neutrality was immoral. The mechanics of this shame, as opposed to encouragement and invitation, is the area I hope to dismantle with my writing. Shame is a bad strategy when trying to build coalitions because even if it is temporarily effective, you didn’t really convince the other party to join you. You simply scared them into submission. In truth I think those who oppose us are few, and those who either don’t understand or care are many. But the stakes are too high for us not to debate, discuss, and persuade.
By 2016 I had converted no one and I wanted to burn the majority of institutions down yet even I had questions. For example, when I joined the Stanford NAACP in 2013, at orientation we were encouraged to share our pronouns. I had never heard of this concept, but I also didn’t want to be ostracized, so I didn’t.
Today I am asked certain questions by the Indian community which I find hard to answer: “if trans people are such a small fraction of the population, why should their needs dominate the conversation? What if my child is influenced by a culture that promotes being a they/them, but they’re not trans? Am I supposed to blindly allow them to transition?”
There is not an issue the trans community faces that I oppose solving. I want for their social acceptance, safety, and access to adequate healthcare, employment, and housing, but in order to bring my community along I need to have answers to difficult questions. I need progressive spaces, in other words progressive people, to become safer places to disagree and express doubt.
I have asked two questions of you thus far:
Do we still care about trust, equality, friendship, fairness, and mutual respect among all the peoples and nations of humankind?
Are we willing to become larger than our biases, egos, and impulses in order to build bridges with the very people we are fighting for?
Now I have a third question:
Are people, myself included, welcome in the fight for justice even if there is some misalignment in beliefs?
For example, can I be an ally to the Black Lives Matter movement and believe that Booker T. Washington’s realism might have been a better approach to W.E.B. Du Bois’ idealism? Can I participate in environmentalism in the U.S. and think that China and India need to be held accountable? Can I advocate for the rights, dignity, safety, and sovereignty of Palestinians and believe that demanding the end of Israel is a bad strategy? Can I demand social media and AI regulation from the federal government and want to influence AI labs from within the system? Can I scream for the reinstatement of Roe v. Wade and support the free speech rights of anti-choice activists and respect that, per some belief systems, life begins at conception? Can I decry cruel, inhumane deportations as anti-democratic and admit that border laws need to be enforced? Can I be invested in America and insist the U.S. government re-open treaty negotiations with Indigenous nations?
Lastly, can we rebuild a climate in which I am not nervous to publish these complex, imperfect views?
A good friend of mine recently reminded me that the climate on Stanford campus, or any elite college campus, should not be the measure for the progressive movement. Indeed they are not at all representative of the broader world, but whether it is Stanford campus or Silicon Valley, these are places with immense power and influence. How people behave here impacts the rest of the world. My cousins in India pay attention to California. My design colleagues in Europe follow the work of the Stanford design school. So, what are Bay Area artists, writers, and intellectuals to do if not negotiate, dissent, and reshape the status quo of the American West coast? We are in a certain seat of power are we not? Of course, this will be a gargantuan effort. As a product designer working in Silicon Valley I am only too aware of the ways in which social media technology is a barrier to social cohesion (and social media includes Substack). Yet there is a life-force in me that demands nothing but optimism.
The phrase “conservatives are always looking for converts, whereas liberals are always looking for heretics” comes to mind during times like these, but the real binary is not liberals versus conservatives, White versus people of color, immigrant versus natural born, men versus women, or gay versus straight. The binary is the people versus power. If you are one of the people, welcome to my newsletter. If you are power, well, it’s never too late to do the right thing.
*This article is being reproduced with permission. See the original article on Substack.
