Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010 Scholars Nuclear K’s

A2: Pragmatism

The search for peace can be both pragmatic and effective. Our alternative does not abandon violence, but instead rejects the problematic claims of the 1AC.

Steger 2 (Manfred B. Steger teaches political and socialtheory at Illinois State University and the University of Hawai’i-Manoa, Steger, Manfred B. 2002. "Ends, Means, and the Politics of Dissent." Dissent (00123846) 49, no. 4: 73, EBSCOhost )

For two long days and nights, we engaged passers-by and hecklers in heated debates on exactly those tough political and ethical issues that Isaac claims are rarely raised by the pacifist campus left. In our closing statement (published in a local progressive weekly), we emphasized that “any search for peace and justice in response to the attacks of September 11 is a difficult, complicated, and less-thanperfect search. There is no ‘golden’ solution waiting to be found.” Moreover, we explicitly acknowledged the impossibility of adhering to unblemished moral standards. In fact, our preferred practical strategy—to treat the attacks as crimes against humanity and therefore respond with an international criminal investigation and prosecution within the framework of international law—relied on the employment of some violence through the apparatus of international law enforcement. At the same time, however, we consciously evoked the moral and political insights of the Gandhi-King tradition of nonviolence. Isaac’s version of campus left pacifism is a grotesque caricature that works well for rhetorical rhetorical purposes but hardly corresponds to the “real world” he extols in his essay. To be a “pacifist” means to believe that peace is better than war, social justice better than injustice; it does not lock pacifists into an absolutist position. Even the two grand figures of twentieth-century pacifism—Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.—consistently acknowledged the difficulty of reconciling ethical principles with political power. In fact, Gandhi counseled his son to choose violent resistance to evil over indifference and cowardice. He admitted that perfect nonviolence and absolute moral truth remained ultimately unrealizable, but nonetheless emphasized that ahimsa (non-harming) and satya (truth) constituted central ideals that ought to guide political action. King, too, noted that nonviolence always contains a “disruptive dimension.” In a 1967 speech, the civil rights leader coined the phrase “aggressive” or “militant” nonviolence to refer to forms of direct action designed to interrupt the functioning of unjust institutions and social forces. Moreover, King consciously relied on police and federal troops to enforce laws repealing Jim Crow. As he put it, “I believe in the intelligent use of police force….And I think that is all we have in Little Rock. It’s not an army fighting against a nation, or a race….It’s just police…seeking to enforce the law of the land.” And that’s exactly the position taken by many groups on the pacifist campus left: respond to the attacks of September 11 with the intelligent use of police force within the framework of international law. Such alternative strategies consistent with the Gandhi-King tradition are easily distinguishable from the conventional militaristic posture favored by political “realists.”

A2: Perm

Perm Fails – Representations are critical to building movements
Benford 93 (Robert D. Social Forces, Vol. 71, No. 3 (Mar., 1993) Frame Disputes within the Nuclear Disarmament Movement, pp. 677-701 01/07/2010 TBC)

Recent theoretical advances in the social movement literature have stressed the centrality of grievance interpretation and reality construction processes to social movement participation and emergence. The constructionist approach to social movements builds on the contributions of resource mobilization theory by examining the negotiated and interactive processes by which movement actors identify and articulate grievances, fashion collective attributions, and seek to neutralize opponents while persuading other audiences to contribute resources to mobilization campaigns. The present article has sought to contribute empirically to these developments by examining the dynamics of such processes
Empirically – Peace movements which bridge moderate and radical agendas fail
Benford 93 (Robert D. Social Forces, Vol. 71, No. 3 (Mar., 1993) Frame Disputes within the Nuclear Disarmament Movement, pp. 677-701 01/07/2010 TBC)

A total of 51 disagreements were coded as frame disputes. The frame disputes recorded within the Austin nuclear disarmament movement are displayed in Table 1 by the SMOs involved. The Texas Mobe (TM), the oldest local group, engaged in more total frame disputes than any other SMO. Of the 51 frame disputes recorded, Texas Mobe was involved in some fashion in 32 (62.7%) of them. Interviews, documents, and field observations suggest a number of reasons for this finding. Texas Mobe was more active than any other group in terms of numbers of members as well as actions. Consequently, Texas Mobe representatives interacted with other peace movement organizations more frequently. Moreover, as the vanguard group of the movement's radical faction, Texas Mobe often proposed and used tactics that other wings of the movement, especially the moderates, found problematic, counterproductive, or offensive. Several of its members were among the movement's most battle-hardened, experienced radicals. As veterans of nearly two decades of New Left activism, most Texas Mobe activists displayed little patience or tolerance for neophytes or compatriots with more moderate agendas and less confrontational tactical repertoires. Finally, because it was the oldest and most visible group, Texas Mobe was often the target of rhetorical vollies lobbed at it by less well-known challengers who sought to loosen Texas Mobe's hegemonic hold over the local movement.

Representations are crucial to shaping the alternative, if we win a link, the perm goes away
Benford 93 (Robert D. Social Forces, Vol. 71, No. 3 (Mar., 1993) Frame Disputes within the Nuclear Disarmament Movement, pp. 677-701 01/07/2010 TBC)

What is often at stake in such intramural conflicts are meanings. Social movement organizations devote considerable time to constructing particular versions of reality, developing and espousing alternative visions of that reality, attempting to affect various audiences' interpretations, and managing the impressions people form about their movement. Consensus within and among a movement's organizations regarding such interpretive matters is at best tenuous and more often than not absent. Complicating the process further is the fact that movement participants and potential adherents are not tabulae rasae upon which activists may draw any picture of reality they would like. Rather, as Goffinan (1974) suggests, people operate under the guidance of frames or "schemata of interpretation." A frame enables an individual "to locate, perceive, identify and label a seemingly infinite number of concrete occurrences defined in its terms" (21). It "provides a first answer to the question 'What is it that's going on here?"' thereby "rendering what would otherwise be a meaningless aspect of the scene into something that is meaningful" (25, 21). Frames are crucial to social movement dynamics because they serve to guide individual and collective action.