The importance of nonviolent direct action in movement-building

October 31, 2022

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As many readers know, Kellie-Jay Keen (a.k.a., Posie Parker) is a British women’s rights campaigner who is currently in the U.S. doing a series of events called Let Women Speak. She founded the organization Standing for Women. The purpose of these events is to give women an opportunity to speak out about, well, anything they want to, but the speeches typically center on the threats that “gender identity” poses to women and girls as a sex class. She has held events in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Tacoma (WA), Austin (TX), and most recently, Chicago. She was scheduled to hold events in Portland and Seattle, but those were canceled after some men threatened to kill her and started a crowdfunder to raise money for weapons to accomplish that objective. She is planning additional events in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington DC (I’m organizing that one). 

During the event in Tacoma, a woman sprayed what may have been pepper spray or bear spray at a protester, and a discussion about it erupted on social media. During most of these discussions, the question seems to be whether she was morally justified in doing this. I think that’s the wrong question to be asking.