Megan Kamerick talks with Brian Gruber, co-author, Surmountable:
How Citizens From Selma To Seoul Changed The World

MK: How did you choose which movements you would explore in the book?

BG:  We started with this original idea; is there a playbook for determining what is successful. We looked across media eras, the newspaper era, radio, TV, social media over the course of the last 100 years. We looked at a geographic spread and then we looked at a spread of a broad range of different subjects so that it can be fairly universal.

From that we came up with 13 including the Arab Spring starting in Tunisia, the Candlelight Revolution overthrowing President Park Geun-hye in South Korea and the Euromaidan Revolution in Ukraine. We felt that these 13 movements would provide a breadth and depth that can provide a lot of answers.

MK: You focused on some that many of us know, the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War protests. You also write about Alice Paul and the battle for suffrage in the U.S. She learned a great deal under the British suffragists, the Pankhurst’s who willing to be a bit more radical than their American counterparts. How did Alice Paul help bring the battle more into the streets in the U.S.?

BG: She was a Quaker. Back in the day, you had a social responsibility if you were a Quaker to find what was your calling or what they call “your concern.” She actually had an epiphany while speaking to Christine Pankhurst, the younger Pankhurst that this was what she needed to do.
           
Because she went to school in London, she became active with the Pankhurst’s and really got an education there with the level of ferocity and determination that carry through where many of the suffragists in the United States felt she was too aggressive. But she felt, if we go state by state, which was the Susan B. Anthony strategy, it will take 200 years to do this, and we want this now.

MK: They did pay a steep price sometimes for that.

BG: They were tortured. They would force feed them when they went on hunger strikes. Not only that, they were constantly humiliated. They’d be protesting in front of the White House and take President Woodrow Wilson’s speeches about democracy and burn them in trash cans. It was very provocative. Of course, men who after 5,000 years of patriarchy thought that wasn’t a very lady-like thing to do would approach them and spit on them and slap them and humiliate them.

MK: Alice Paul actually wrote the text for the Equal Rights Amendment which has yet to become part of the Constitution. Is this an example of success and failure?

BG: The notion of success is discussed over and over in the book. There were two assumptions that we had that were constantly smacked down by thought leaders and by social movement leaders. One, that there is a playbook; if you do these things, you’ll be successful. The converse is true. Actually, you have to be willing to fail.
           
Some of these struggles are multigenerational. Often there is violence perpetrated against the protestors. The idea of success might take a while. I talked to a fellow Sam Walker at the Voting Rights Museum at the foot of the Edmund Pettus bright in Selma Alabama. He talked about his work with young because the work to be done in an area like racism in the United States can take generations.

MK: Brian Gruber, you and your coauthor of Surmountable, Adam Monier Edwards also explored the Bonus Army. Here are these veterans from WWI, they come to Washington to ask for pretty basic things; a bonus to their really low pay while in the war before they die.
           
Eventually, you have Douglas MacArthur calling the traitors, George Patton leading the eviction of them from their camp that they set up in Washington, D.C. burning down shacks and gassing them. That seems like a failure at first.

BG: Yes, and it was only when Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a liberal sent these remaining protestors down to the Florida Keys and there was a massive hurricane. Ernest Hemmingway happened to be at the bar in Key West when all this happened and when all these guys were flooded and killed, he saw their dead bodies floating in the water, and he wrote this story in a leftist publication that became a national outrage.

Finally, two things happened. One was really transformational. One, finally the veterans got their bonuses after all those years. The things that you think you do to be successful are failing but yet suddenly, serendipitously or through people seeing an injustice publicly, often when protestors were beating or killed, that happened.
           
Another thing that happened which really transformed American society is that WWII had so many more soldiers that there was a feeling in the ruling class, in the elite of the political class, that if we screw these soldiers this time, there is going to be a real revolution in the country.
           
What they decided to do was to do something fair for the soldiers. They created something called the GI Bill. The money that was put in the hands of the soldiers during the Depression was a major turning point, particularly among ethnic minorities and poor people where suddenly, you could buy a house and you could buy a car and it revitalized the economy.
           
In WWII, as you know, the GI Bill really was to some degree responsible for the explosive growth of the middle class and the health of the American economy.

MK: You also go from mass protests to the dogged persistence of one person, Gregory Watson in amending the Constitution. In short, the amendment states that a sitting Congress can’t give itself a raise or cut its pay during its current session. Any raises or cuts can only take effect for the sitting Congress that follows. Is he an outlier? Why did you want to include him?

BG: Well, this was Adam’s guy. Adam was not obsessed with this guy but fascinated with him. The fact that one American with no budget, not a small budget, but no budget using stamps, a telephone and a fax machine went out to all 50 state legislators because he got a C grade in his university class and he was pissed off about that because he was writing about how to change the Constitution, so he went out and did it singlehandedly.
           
I flew to Austin from Stanley Rock and had dinner with him. He’s a very eccentric guy. He has all kinds of opinions that I won’t necessarily share on air, but he showed that one person who is determined and focused, over time can do something dramatic.
           
He was inspired by his mom who was an Equal Rights Amendment activist. He would see all the mailings and watch the example of his mom trying to change that amendment. This one person changed the United States Constitution.

MK: She should have used him to help us pass the ERA.

BG: No kidding. Well, I’ll give him a call.

MK: You explore the Arab Spring. Let’s quickly remind listeners what we mean by the phrase. It begins in 2010 in Tunisia with one man.

BG:  There was a fruit vendor in a small Tunisian town who was so frustrated with bureaucracy and hopelessness and after being bullied by a policewoman, he took two cans of paint thinner in front of the municipal government building and set himself on fire.

There were a series of things after that how the then President Ben Ali visited him in a hotel room in this ghoulish scene that outraged people and gradually, people like this woman who I met just walking around this protest. So many of these people I met serendipitously, people who were apolitical and watching this guy for 23 years but afraid to come out in the street. They would see protestors and think these people are idiots. Why are they doing this?

But finally, there was a spark. There is a Korea professor who I interview who talks about the political opportunity theory. It’s a little frustrating because it’s outside of your control and that is that you do all these things to bring the body of politic to a certain point of awareness of solidarity and then there is an unexpected external event that happens and it’s often unforced like this one guy setting himself on fire.

Or this TV news reporter in Seoul finding the Tablet computer of the aid to the president or one Afghan Ukrainian who sent out a Facebook post saying, “This guy is corrupt. We’ve got to do something about it. Let’s all take the subway and meet in the maiden in the main central square and protest.”

People showed up. There were only 200 people, but the next day, there were a lot more. The police beat them up. All these parents are watching student demonstrators being beaten and suddenly you have 100,000 people. Then they send more violent thugs to beat people up.
           
These are examples where people are apolitical and it gets back to that Alice Paul transcendent moment where she has this epiphany or what she calls a “concern,” and after that people are willing to die for their cause. There is something in the human condition.
           
I think the founders of our country, as many of them were slave owners and misogynists and racist embedded in the Constitution certain ideals that speak to this yearning for people to govern themselves, to be free, to have justice, to have freedom on expression. In all these different situations those things happened.

I thought it was especially instructive to see how these things happen, things that we think are American and in our Constitution which did influence the rest of the world, usually in a positive way, these are universal yearnings that are true everywhere.

MK: It seemed so hopeful with the Arab Spring, but it also opened up a Pandora’s Box, chaos in Libya, horrible repression in Syria, also the intrusion of ISIS. How would you ultimately say it was successful or not successful?

BG:  Again, you can look at that from two points of view. One, if you do a scorecard, the Arab Spring was not very successful outside of Tunisia, even some problems in Tunisia.
           
You also have created a culture among young people in Tunisia and throughout the Arab world who are very tied into the internet and to social media who had a sense that they could do something. Again, political opportunity theory, in the future in those countries through an interim period of struggle and even more repression, there may be dramatic changes in each of those countries.

MK: You talked to Todd Gitlin of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. He has some interesting thoughts on what is a protest and how the outcome you see from it depends on the timeframe, as we were just saying, days, months, years.

Even Martin Luther King said on his last night of life that he may not get to the Promised Land with his followers. How do the folks that you spoke with reconcile that it may be a very long time before they see change?

BG: I think it’s one of the reasons we need leadership. In Albany Georgia when their voting drive fell on its face, you needed a Martin Luther King or a John Lewis or various people to say, “Let’s learn from this failure and go to Selma and take it to the next step.”
          
Do people get discouraged? Absolutely. Can these things be multigenerational? Sometimes yes, so it is frustrating. That’s where I think when you look at the commonalities through some of these protests, someone with a vision who can help to perpetuate that vision, a brand or concept of vision that is imbued throughout the organization is valuable.

If the messaging is not quite right or the leadership is not quite right, the logistics on the ground are not quite right, then you’ll be less successful. For example, we know that people were very inspired in 1963 when Martin Luther King gave his speech on the Lincoln Memorial steps, but what we don’t know as much is that there were a bunch of ladies in a room making 60,000 cheese sandwiches so that those protestors could stay out there all day. Logistical things can be as important as vision. It can be frustrating.

It gets back to the first chapter in the book, that this thesis, which I didn’t hold when I started this project, but which so many of the interviewees shared that there is a transcendent desire for truth, justice and freedom. People, even at the risk of their lives or putting their bodies on the line are willing to keep up that fight because there is something deep inside that they feel where they know that’s right. Sometimes that means that they want a different life for their children or grandchildren and do not want things to continue the way they are continuing.

Megan Kamerick talks with Marianna King, author,  The Crisis of School Violence: A New Perspective

KAMERICK:  What are the primary drivers of school violence?

KING: Schools are becoming more hierarchical. The Columbine shooters brought to light the fact that the jocks and preps formed elites which got away with displays of power through bullying, even to the point of torment.
                       
However, I point out that the current standard practices of conflict mediation, target hardening, surveillance, peer mediation, conflict resolution, they don’t work. Some do, it depends on the quality, but they don’t work because they don’t address the route problems. They don’t talk about social injustice in terms of the hierarchy. They don’t talk about the powerful influence of electronic entertainment media, especially violent video games.
                       
I think that the reason that they don’t is because there is a lot of information and disinformation about the studies, 70 years of studies, first into violent television and then in more recent times, in the last 20 years or so, hundreds of studies about the psychological and neurological effects of being exposed to violent video games.
                       
The disinformation includes of course the electronic software ratings board, which supposedly monitors violent video game content and appraises it, they claim that the great majority of video games are not violent. Eighty-five percent of video games are violent. They’re more graphic, more immersive, more realistic and more influential.
                       
A prime example of misinformation is that many people cite the 2011 court decision which concluded that the research is not sufficient to support an argument that violent video games are harmful.
                       
However, the problem is that the Supreme Court chose researchers who had an average number of about 3.9 peer-reviewed articles. They did not cite the research of the larger group of research who had an average of 39.1 peer-reviewed articles. The Supreme Court made a decision based on bad research or at least inadequate research. Many people cite that as the Bible as to why violent video games should not be curtailed.

Video game researchers also talk about triple entitlement. Most rampaged shooters are white heterosexual males who within the ideology of American exceptionalism, they feel that they are entitled to exceptional treatment. When they’re bullied, over time, one of the responses of these white heterosexual males is to really overreact to the building and the cumulative effects of the bullying.
                       
Also, a key part of this and an overlooked contributing factor, a key factor is first person shooter games. First person shooter games became widely popular in 1992. Youth violence, bullying and rampage shootings all increased dramatically in 1993 and raised the threshold.

KAMERICK:  How can we be sure that this isn’t the statistical mistake of correlation versus causation because there are other factors that work into school violence.

KING: Well scientifically, looking at the data of school violence and youth violence since 1992 when first person shooter games were introduced. Also, in 1992, for some inexplicable reason, violent entertainment media content doubled. There is a synergistic effect in 1992 of these two primary forms of violent entertainment colliding.
                       
If you look at the method, the way that rampage shooters do it, most of them wear combat military clothing. They have multiple weapons. They have assault riffles and the combat strategy they used in killing as many people as possible in as short of a period of time, they use what they’ve learned by being the first-person shooter in these games.
                       
Dr. Ron Slaby is a Senior Research Scientist at Harvard University and Boston Hospital for Children. He has concluded that violent video games are trainers as much as they are teachers.
                       
As far as correlation, I’m going to let the 400 studies speak for themselves that the psychologists and the neuroscientists have done which show that exposure to violent entertainment media causes increased aggression and violence.
                       
My book takes it one step further by linking exposure to especially first-person shooter games, combat games with rampage shootings. The most notorious rampage shooters were the most addicted to violent video games.
                       
I’m writing a book now called Rampage Shootings. I’m doing more case study research. Breivik in Norway. He used video games as training simulators but also, in his jail cell, he’s insisting on an update of his X-box Play Station because he’s still addicted to violent video games.
                       
Lanza, notorious for the Newtown, Connecticut shooting of so many young children, he had a military video game room in his mothers’ basement. Look at the Columbine shooters. They were addicted to the video game Doom, which was a first-person shooter game. It’s beyond correlation at this point.
                       
Also, the sense of self-aggrandizement that comes with being the number one master in the universe and the ability to kill with impunity. There is a sense of self-aggrandizement and grandiosity.
                       
Eric Harris, the Columbine shooter said “Ich bin Gott,” meaning I am God. There is a sense of self-aggrandizement that adds to the already present sense of triple entitlement. There is this combustive factor.

My argument is that rampage shootings would not have occurred on the scale that they have, and that they are, without the catalytic factor of expose to first-person shooter games.

KAMERICK:  Marianna King, can I ask you though, just to play devil’s advocate, there are millions of people who play these games who don’t go out and shoot people or bully people. What are the other things that can tip them over? Is it family? Is it socioeconomic class?

KING: Well, most rampage shooters tend to be blue collar and more tend to be middle class. That differentiates them from adult shooters who tend to be more working class. They tend to come from what one researcher calls subtly dysfunctional families. There are many subtly dysfunctional families.
                       
Some of the shooters have been exposed to horrendous life experiences life Jeffrey Weise of the Chippewa tribe. His father was in a shootout with police and killed himself. His mother was an abusive alcoholic woman who abandoned him repeatedly. The anger builds up.

The anger is present in all rampage shooters, this rage, this uncontrollable rage and also this sense of justification. It seems that rampage shooters particularly have something called rejection sensitivity. They are more sensitized to being bullied or mistreated in the family but especially being mistreated in school. They’re more sensitive.
                       
A lot of rampage shooters tend to keep journals. They tend to have more of a sensitive artistic side. Because of that, they are more susceptible to reacting more emotionally strongly to being rejected or being mistreated by other young people.

The Secret Service and the FBI 20 years after Columbine still say that there is no useful profile of the rampage shooter. The current book I’m writing is working to close that gap.

KAMERICK:  Marianna King, in your book Crisis of School Violence, you do highlight several programs that are designed to decrease bullying. How do they work and how effective are they?

KING: The Southern Poverty Law Center started a program called Mix It Up at Lunch in which school children are encouraged to have lunch with different groups of kids so that there is a sense of inclusion. A lot of rampage shooters have been rejected repeatedly over time and rejection is really contrary to human nature.
                       
My book also has a chapter about human nature. It concludes that humans by nature are compassionate, cooperative, egalitarian and justice-loving. Justice-loving is important because that’s one of the primary motivations for rampage shootings, these young men want justice. The schools, by not providing adequate bullying prevention programs, haven’t done their job and do not provide a route for justice, so the shooters create their own sense of justice. Revenge is a mutated form of justice.

KAMERICK:  Did you find any anti-bullying programs that seem to be promising or that might work well?

KING: Tutoring and mentoring by an adult, peer mediation works if the peers are really trained, but peers tend not to be trained. Counseling programs can work to some extent the research shows, but the main thing is to help create a peaceful school. Schools that do not have adequate bullying prevention programs are violent schools.

KAMERICK:  What are other ways to create peaceful schools?

KING: I think to more openly include democracy in the curricula in a variety of subjects and for teachers to model that and talk about that and to talk about hierarchy, to hold the jocks and preps accountable. A lot of times, they are higher status students, and they get away with more and they set the norm for cruel behavior. Bullying is a public display of power, and the school elites want to maintain their power.
                       
We need to learn how to empower students in real tangible ways within schools, giving them voting rights within schools for example, have them decide how to hold bullies accountable. Hold student forums about bullying. Hold the bullies to task.

The problem when bullies are not held accountable, they tend to become domestic violence people and they tend to become criminals and engage in future violence because they’re not held accountable. In that way, schools can be crucibles for future violence.