Preparing for civil unrest

By Claire Wolfe
The most remark­able thing about civil unrest is that there hasn’t been more of it.
Politi­cians are mak­ing a hash of this country—and much of the rest of the civ­i­lized world. We know it. They know it. They know we know it. But we don’t feel we can do any­thing much to stop them.
That right there is the pre-condition for civil unrest—when peo­ple are frus­trated and politi­cians are ner­vous.
Worse, that was how things stood before last fall’s crash. Before pols on both left and right launched the biggest mass trans­fer of wealth in history—transferring our wealth (what we had left of it!) to their friends on Wall Street and in the bank­ing indus­try. In other words, that’s how things were before things got bad!
Now everybody’s talk­ing about the ongo­ing cat­a­stro­phe (even if we are in a momen­tar­ily sunny mood). But almost nobody is talk­ing about the logical—maybe even inevitable—consequences of cyn­i­cal or des­per­ate politi­cians abus­ing an already fed-up pop­u­lace: civil unrest.
I mean peo­ple tak­ing to the streets. Or mass resis­tance. Or crack­downs because the gov­ern­ment fears we might do some­thing to upset its apple cart. It’s going to hap­pen. Some­where. At some time. It’s going to.
One of the few VIPs to men­tion the mat­ter openly was Zbig­niew Brzezin­ski, for­mer National Secu­rity Advi­sor and the ulti­mate insider’s insider. He com­mented on the mil­lions of unem­ployed or soon-to-be-unemployed and the “…pub­lic aware­ness of this extra­or­di­nary wealth that was trans­ferred to a few indi­vid­u­als at lev­els with­out his­tor­i­cal prece­dent in Amer­ica.” He told “Morn­ing Joe” Scar­bor­ough, “Hell, there could be even riots.” I’d say that’s an under­state­ment.
Although few in power are talk­ing about it, rumors abound that gov­ern­ments at many lev­els are plan­ning for civil unrest. One rumor is about a doc­u­ment sup­pos­edly being cir­cu­lated right now among top fed­eral offi­cials. It’s called the “C&R Document”—with C&R stand­ing for “con­flict & rev­o­lu­tion.” The much-storied paper is said to be a plan for con­trol­ling the Amer­i­can peo­ple when we get out of hand. True? Who knows. But the very rumor tells us a lot about these times.
Other things are not mere rumor. When the fed­eral gov­ern­ment estab­lished a North Amer­i­can Army com­mand in 2002, its pur­pose wasn’t to repel for­eign invaders. It was domes­tic operations—something long and rightly for­bid­den by the Posse Comi­ta­tus Act. In Feb­ru­ary of 2009, when mil­i­tary com­man­ders in Canada and the U.S. signed a pact allow­ing their armies to oper­ate inside each other’s coun­try they didn’t even bother to get autho­riza­tion from Congress—an ille­gal and unprece­dented move. And once again, the pur­pose was han­dling “domes­tic civil emer­gen­cies.”
For sev­eral years, the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol tried to get states to adopt some­thing called the Model State Emer­gency Health Pow­ers Act (MEHPA). This act would allow state gov­ern­ments to become police-state dic­ta­tor­ships in event of any ill-defined health emergency—vaccinating peo­ple by force, destroy­ing or seiz­ing prop­erty with­out com­pen­sa­tion, and rationing med­ical sup­plies, food, and fuel. To their credit, most state gov­ern­ments rejected the act. A few adopted por­tions of it before a fer­vent oppo­si­tion cam­paign caused the CDC to back off. How­ever, the con­cept of a health dic­ta­tor­ship hasn’t gone away. Not hardly. Within days of the news that a new strain of swine flu had arisen in Mex­ico in April 2009, states were again con­sid­er­ing leg­is­la­tion to give them­selves martial-law pow­ers in event of an epi­demic.
And what of the dozens and dozens of fed­eral agen­cies that now have SWAT teams? Seri­ously, what jus­ti­fies the Bureau of Land Man­age­ment or the Depart­ment of Hous­ing and Urban Devel­op­ment hav­ing para­mil­i­tary units?
Now maybe you like the idea of an Army that watches over its own cit­i­zens. Maybe it makes sense to have a gov­ern­ment seize total dic­ta­to­r­ial power in event of a health emer­gency. Maybe you believe SWAT teams will never be used except against bad guys. But do you really trust these peo­ple?
After all, these are the same folks, and this is the same men­tal­ity, that not only spent $325,000 to pro­duce a sou­venir photo of a pres­i­den­tial 747 zoom­ing low over the Statue of Lib­erty, but ordered the New York Police Depart­ment, the FBI, the Secret Ser­vice, and the New York mayor’s office not to tell the pub­lic. Never mind that they real­ized full well that pas­sen­ger jets and mil­i­tary planes plung­ing low over Man­hat­tan would evoke panic.
Still, peace reigns. Mostly. At least here in North Amer­ica. But not every­where. Not long ago, France was brought to its knees by night after night of riot­ing. In that coun­try it’s become almost com­mon for work­ers to hold their bosses hostage in hopes of win­ning eco­nomic con­ces­sions. Greece, too, saw its nor­mal life and busi­ness shut down by days of riot­ing. So did Iceland—a coun­try that’s nor­mally the pic­ture of civil­ity.
Can the U.S. be for­ever immune?
It might not take much—and it could be some­thing out of the blue, some­thing impos­si­ble to anticipate—to set us against each other and against the “Trust us; we’ll fix it” polit­i­cal crowd.
In a way, this national silence on a mat­ter so many peo­ple are afraid of is sim­i­lar to the silence about gen­eral pre­pared­ness issues before 9–11 or Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina. Only Mor­mons and us wingnuts spoke of pre­pared­ness way back when. Since then, of course, advice on pre­pared­ness is main­stream and com­mon.
In another sense, this silence is dif­fer­ent. Because when unrest finally erupts, it’s not going to be us merely tak­ing care of our­selves. It’s going to be “us against them.” It might be work­ers against bosses. Or the poor against bankers. Or blacks against His­pan­ics. Or lit­tle folk against Big Men in pub­lic office. Or farm­ers against the USDA. Or xeno­phobes against xenophiles. But how­ever it hap­pens, the impli­ca­tions aren’t as Boy-Scoutish as just tak­ing care of our­selves in an emer­gency.
Defin­ing civil unrest
Look up “prepa­ra­tions for civil unrest” on Google and…What’s that echo I hear?—you’ll find noth­ing that’s going to help you. In fact, you won’t even eas­ily turn up a good def­i­n­i­tion of what civil unrest is.
Like “inde­cency,” the def­i­n­i­tion seems to be in the eye of the beholder.
I wouldn’t con­sider a peace­ful anti-war march to be civil unrest, for instance, but a police chief might. Sim­i­larly, I wouldn’t con­sider acts of local­ized non-violent law­break­ing (like envi­ron­men­tal activists chain­ing them­selves to a tree) to be civil unrest; but a tim­ber com­pany offi­cial prob­a­bly believes oth­er­wise.
Civil unrest occurs when anger, frus­tra­tion, or fear turn dis­rup­tive on a mass scale. Or when gov­ern­ment offi­cials crack down because they antic­i­pate such dis­rup­tions. Crack­downs can lead to fur­ther frus­tra­tion, lead­ing to fur­ther crack­downs and so on—especially when the crack­downs look unwar­ranted and tyran­ni­cal.
In other words, civil unrest can arise from the anger of peo­ple or the folly of gov­ern­ment or both together.
Anger over an unpop­u­lar pol­icy, a new war, a col­lapse of the cur­rency, panic over a pan­demic, a food short­age, a bank run—anything like that could cause civil unrest, espe­cially in a pop­u­la­tion that’s already on edge and no longer trusts its author­ity fig­ures.
Another thing you won’t find via Google is how var­i­ous types or lev­els of unrest are likely to affect us and how we should respond, if we’re affected. Again, although the men and women at the top are quite con­cerned for their own sakes, they (and their media mouth­pieces) would rather not talk about what we should do in event of civil panic.
But that’s not good enough for we independent-minded peo­ple, is it?
Here are my def­i­n­i­tions of lev­els of civil unrest and a lit­tle bit about how they might affect us:
LEVEL ONE: The low­est level of civil unrest is when peo­ple turn on their own neighborhoods—as hap­pened dur­ing the race riots of the 1960s and the Rod­ney King riots in Los Ange­les. Level One civil unrest can be deadly and destruc­tive, but pri­mar­ily to peo­ple who live, work, or must travel in the imme­di­ate area. Level One unrest is spon­ta­neous, Dionysian, is con­fined to a nar­row geo­graph­i­cal zone where the pro­tes­tors live. Police response may be harsh, but it’s local­ized. Unless you’re in the mid­dle of it, you’re unaf­fected.
LEVEL TWO: Level Two civil unrest may also be focused on a sin­gle area. But in this case, riot­ers or pro­test­ers have delib­er­ately tar­geted a busi­ness dis­trict, a facil­ity, a trans­porta­tion sys­tem, or an orga­ni­za­tion to impose max­i­mum dis­rup­tion. One exam­ple: the World Trade Orga­ni­za­tion protests in Seat­tle in 1999; young peo­ple with vio­lence in mind and rage in their hearts attacked an entire down­town, affect­ing hun­dreds of busi­nesses and tens of thou­sands of work­ers who hardly knew what hit them. Another exam­ple: This spring, pro­test­ers in Thai­land shut down the Bangkok air­port, affect­ing who knows how many indi­vid­u­als and busi­nesses. Level Two unrest is usu­ally planned or semi-planned. The tar­get is cho­sen delib­er­ately. Although still focused in one area, Level Two can dis­rupt nor­mal life and busi­ness in a whole region or coun­try.
LEVEL THREE: Level Three comes when mass unrest or author­i­tar­ian crack­down causes dis­rup­tion at state or regional level. Then, no mat­ter what the orig­i­nal cause or loca­tion of the trou­ble, every­one in the region is affected. Effects might include travel restric­tions, ran­dom ID checks, mass arrests, food and fuel rationing, con­trols on money and bank­ing, road­blocks, and other harsh “emer­gency” restric­tions.
LEVEL FOUR: Level Four is Level Three—but on a national or even inter­na­tional scale. It’s mar­tial law. If things ever get this bad, it’s likely that the gov­ern­ment itself will be a far big­ger threat to everyone’s well being than what­ever the orig­i­nal cause of the clam­p­down was.
And of course, any level of civil unrest can lead to laws, reg­u­la­tions, and harsher police poli­cies that end up affect­ing every­body in the long run.
Yes, it can involve us
We make a mis­take if we think civil unrest is strictly an urban phe­nom­ena. It can hap­pen any­where.
When 400 gov­ern­ment agents and sol­diers descended on one iso­lated fam­ily in the Idaho moun­tains, the road­blocks, heli­copters, Humvees, media pres­ence, and furi­ous pro­tes­tors sur­rounded the Randy Weaver fam­ily and brought the nor­mal life of Bound­ary County, Idaho, to a halt. The siege against the Branch David­ian church in Waco, Texas, wasn’t con­ducted in the inner-city, either. Yet both of these were large scale cat­a­stro­phes with all the hall­marks of civil unrest—individuals or groups resist­ing, gov­ern­ment insist­ing.
I can eas­ily envi­sion strictly rural-based unrest that urban dwellers will never even hear about (except per­haps in highly dis­torted reports). What hap­pens, for instance, if farm­ers, 4H fam­i­lies, own­ers of sad­dle horses, and hold­ers of small chicken flocks decide to resist en masse the National Ani­mal Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Sys­tem (NAIS)? It’s easy to imag­ine, in these crazy days, USDA SWAT teams descend­ing on the coun­try­side to make arrests, forcibly reg­is­ter or destroy non-compliant ani­mals, and burn down non-registered facil­i­ties.
The future could see rural resis­tance to inva­sive census-taking, forced vac­ci­na­tion pro­grams, land tak­ings, water-rights poli­cies, or the destruc­tion of herds for real or bogus health rea­sons. As coun­try peo­ple increas­ingly see gov­ern­ments as for­eign orga­ni­za­tions dri­ven by the inter­ests of city dwellers, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies, and mega-agri-business, it wouldn’t sur­prise me.
If we ever have seri­ous food short­ages, expect rural areas to be besieged.
Even when civil unrest con­fines itself to the cities, air­ports, or high­ways it can affect us in crazy ways. Here’s a funny exam­ple of unpre­dictable (in this case mild) con­se­quences. A friend was due to have her first book pub­lished in Canada. She was very excited—then dis­ap­pointed when weeks dragged by and the book didn’t appear. Turns out that a band of Indi­ans was block­ing a high­way bridge the printer’s truck had to cross. The union truck­ers, in sol­i­dar­ity, refused to route around the protest. Just one small con­se­quence. But you can see the unpre­dictabil­ity.
The sim­ple truth is that we don’t know what kinds of unrest to antic­i­pate. We don’t know when, or if, we’ll see civil unrest. But think­ing about the prob­lem and prepar­ing our­selves men­tally and phys­i­cally to deal with it should be just another aspect of our per­sonal pre­pared­ness.
What we can do
1. Keep stan­dard emer­gency preps up to date. First thing to do is make sure all our typ­i­cal house­hold pre­pared­ness sup­plies and plans are cur­rent. As BHM read­ers know, backup food, water, and other sup­plies are our main­stay for every­thing from bad storms to long-term unem­ploy­ment, from power out­ages to social break­downs. Dur­ing civil unrest, espe­cially at Level Three or Four, we might not be able to get out to buy things we need—or we might con­sider it more pru­dent to stay at home. On the other hand, if we our­selves are part of the unrest, we may need those sup­plies to sit out a siege.
2. Don’t fall into fool­ish com­pla­cency. We who live in the coun­try tend to have an “it can’t hap­pen here” atti­tude toward polit­i­cal vio­lence or social upheaval. We see those things as urban pheonom­ena. And mostly, they are. But there’s no iron­clad rule that says they have to be. If any­thing dis­rupts the sup­ply chain, for instance, rural areas could be the first to be cut off from food, med­i­cines, fuel, or other neces­si­ties. If gov­ern­ment breaks down to the point where it can’t deliver food stamps, hous­ing vouch­ers, social secu­rity, or bureau­crats’ pay, the rural poor and unem­ployed could become just as restive as their urban coun­ter­parts.
3. Watch your health. As I write this, the air­waves are shrilling about swine flu. This out­break may fiz­zle; after all, per­fectly nor­mal flu kills many every year with­out caus­ing panic, mar­tial law, or inces­sant media cov­er­age. On the other hand, it’s cer­tain that one day some ill­ness will ram­page across the globe. Few things inspire pub­lic panic more quickly than con­ta­gious dis­ease, and once again rural areas are not immune. Take all the stan­dard rec­om­mended pre­cau­tions like fre­quent hand­wash­ing. Make sure your pre­pared­ness kit includes sur­gi­cal masks and dis­pos­able gloves as well as a selec­tion of fre­quently updated med­ica­tions. And be ready to lay low at home for a long time in the event a seri­ous plague gets loose.
4. Make com­mon cause with your neigh­bors. I’ve said it before, but estab­lish­ing a strong bond with peo­ple in your community—right now—is vital to every sort of emer­gency pre­pared­ness. In event of a Level One or Two emer­gency, these are the folks who could come to your house to make sure you’re okay. They might give you a ride out or a place to sleep if you acci­den­tally end up in a “hot zone” of riot or protest. In a deeper or more long-term emer­gency, they could pool resources with you to make sup­ply runs. They can advise you if they’ve spot­ted a road­block. They might let you cross their land to avoid a route that has become dan­ger­ous.
5. If you grow crops or raise food ani­mals and the unrest is due to a food short­age (or some­thing has dri­ven city peo­ple out into the coun­try­side), pre­pare to pro­tect your resources day and night. Here again neigh­bors can do each other valu­able ser­vices, like tak­ing shifts guard­ing fields, barns, pri­vate roads, and gar­dens. Yes, this is an apoc­a­lyp­tic sce­nario. Not a likely one. But if it hap­pens, it’s a Level Three or Level Four emergency—delivered to your own front yard.
6. Get advance word on local con­di­tions when trav­el­ing. We’re used to hop­ping into our vehi­cles or onto air­planes and going wher­ever we want to go. But as the world­wide econ­omy dete­ri­o­rates, it’s wise to keep an eye on our des­ti­na­tion. Right now, this warn­ing per­tains more to over­seas travel than jaunts within the U.S. If you plan to go abroad, visit online sites like Travelfish.org. They’ll have bul­letins about adverse con­di­tions in areas you plan to visit; you may even be able to receive alerts via email that will warn you about any­thing from polit­i­cal protests to dis­ease out­breaks in places you plan to go.
7. Watch for signs of trou­ble when in an unfa­mil­iar area. Some­times the only advance notice you get is the notice your own senses give you. When walk­ing, dri­ving, bik­ing, or oth­er­wise trav­el­ing in unfa­mil­iar places, stay in what gun­folk call “con­di­tion yel­low.” This is dif­fer­ent than the mean­ing­less col­ored threat lev­els the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity puts out. It just means “be alert!” Never sim­ply allow your­self to slouch along obliv­i­ously. Always be aware of who’s nearby and what’s going on around you. If you spot trou­ble devel­op­ing, turn. Avoid it if at all pos­si­ble.
8. If you stum­ble into a “hot zone” of unrest, be pre­pared to think on your feet. Not many peo­ple are qual­i­fied to give you advice about how to behave if you unavoid­ably find your­self in the midst of trouble—a riot, a mass protest that sud­denly engulfs your famil­iar down­town, a spot where police are bash­ing heads or hurl­ing tear gas seem­ingly at ran­dom. That’s because not many peo­ple have ever been there and every cat­a­stro­phe is dif­fer­ent. If street-level chaos sur­rounds you, do your best to keep a cool head, move away from the worst of it if you get the chance, and get inside if pos­si­ble.
9. If you’re swept up in mass arrests dur­ing a riot or demon­stra­tion, the offi­cers prob­a­bly aren’t going to be lis­ten­ing to your protes­ta­tions of being an inno­cent bystander. You’ll only tick them off and pos­si­bly get a charge of resist­ing arrest. The best advice I’ve received from my friends who’ve been busted dur­ing out-of-hand protests: Go along as best you can. Usu­ally, all charges in such cases are either dropped or reduced once calm is restored. Only if we’ve reached the extreme point where police are round­ing peo­ple up and throw­ing them into deten­tion camps or “dis­ap­pear­ing” them is fight­ing cops on the street likely to be worth it; then…fight like a demon.
10. Have a good lawyer and carry his or her card with you. Once again, in the heat of chaos it may not do you much good. But that card will come in handy later. Besides, if you and a police offi­cer have an encounter in calmer cir­cum­stances, a lawyer’s card, along with your calm asser­tion of your legal rights, will help you to be taken seri­ously. Police offi­cers are like any­body else; they’re more likely to go after easy tar­gets than ones who are obvi­ously knowl­edge­able and pre­pared. My lawyer has a help­ful lit­tle list on the back of his card of the things you should do—nor not do when accosted by a police offi­cer. I’d trust that more than my own nerves in a tight sit­u­a­tion.
11. Be care­ful of road­blocks. This is a hard one. If we reach Level Three or Four of unrest, we may not only see the obnox­ious police “check­points” we’re bur­dened with today. We might also see two other things. One would be expanded police road­blocks, with war­rant­less searches, harsh ques­tion­ing, and pos­si­bly mass arrests. Another could be “free­lance” roadblocks—roadblocks set up by any­body from polit­i­cal pro­test­ers to high­way­men. (Just as gangs of home invaders now mas­quer­ade as SWAT teams, high­way­men might mas­quer­ade as gov­ern­ment offi­cials to rob the unwary.) If it’s humanly pos­si­ble, avoid road­blocks. It’s not ille­gal to turn away from them, as long as you don’t dis­obey any traf­fic laws. Police do con­sider it sus­pi­cious behav­ior and may come after you, even if you’ve done noth­ing wrong; but in a time of civil unrest, avoid­ing a road­block could save your skin. Of course, both police and free­lancers will set up their block­ades to make them as hard as pos­si­ble to avoid—all the more rea­son to be alert, know where road­blocks are likely to be, and have a men­tal map of alter­nate routes. If, in a time and place of unrest, you’re in a line approach­ing a road­block, watch what hap­pens to the peo­ple ahead of you. If you see any sign that the motorists ahead are being abused, get out of there.
So far, we’ve talked mostly as if civil unrest is some­thing apart from us—something we might have to be wary of, some­thing we might stum­ble acci­den­tally into. But the fact is that as our coun­try becomes less free, we might of course be the civil unrest.
We might resist hav­ing our premises tagged for NAIS or hav­ing our herds slaugh­tered for real or bogus health rea­sons. We might end up fight­ing evic­tions (as farm­ers and many rural dwellers have for cen­turies dur­ing hard times). We might be the ones who say, “Hell no, we won’t go!” when the mobile vac­ci­na­tion van comes to town, or the ones who try to keep our neigh­bors from being rounded up and sent to camps. Times are uncer­tain. We sim­ply don’t know.
But in every case, pre­pared­ness, fore­knowl­edge, and a cool head will come in handy.
Some of us already have lines in the sand that would inspire us to resist abuses of author­ity. And that, right there, is some­thing our would-be mas­ters fear—our dis­obe­di­ence. What will hap­pen? And when? Nobody has a crys­tal ball. But the com­bi­na­tion of pub­lic frus­tra­tion and gov­ern­men­tal appre­hen­sion is an explo­sive one. Some­day, some­body will light the match.