Disobedient Trajectories, Biographical Consequences, Vulnerability: High and Low Risk/Cost Activism as a Spectrum

These past few decades, civil disobedience in the United States has become if not fully institutionalized, at least widely accepted by the polity as a democratic practice – even elected officials participate in actions where they publicly break the law. The arrests have taken on a certain routine: most of the time activists are jailed together and separated from common-law prisoners, they only spend six to eight hours in custody and then leave the police precinct with a desk-appearance ticket (as opposed to being taken to arraignment after being “put through the system” for up to 24 hours) and are greeted by friends with cheers, snacks and hugs. In cities such as New York, their charges get resolved in Adjournments in Contemplation of Dismissal, a disposition that dismisses and seals cases if defendants do not engage in further criminal conduct in the following six months. This helps explain why some people have been arrested over 50 times in the past 40 years and do not have criminal records. In light of this, one could think that disobedient actions do not fall within the categories of high risk/cost activism, since there seem to be no severe consequences for movement participants. However, if one looks at the practice of disobedience as an activist trajectory that evolves over time, one can observe two things: even if it remains nonviolent, it shares many similarities with radicalization processes (polarization, isolation, competition, martyrdom, changes in how activists self-identify); and interlocking factors (race, gender, class, ability, age, sexuality) make that activists’ individual, specific and overlapping vulnerabilities ultimately puts them in a precarious place.1 Furthermore, arrests might have unforeseen consequences over time for activists who were at some point able to bear the cost of a disobedient action (difficulties to adopt children, problems to switch careers and work in the public sector). This paper offers to reexamine McAdam’s four-fold typology of distinct categories of activism (high/low risk/cost). Using the disobedient trajectories of New York City activists as a case study, it will propose to rethink these dichotomous categories as spectrums that are influenced by time, in order to make them more inclusive, fluid, and intersectional. Employing the tools of social movement studies and political sociology, the paper will make McAdam’s structural categories dialogue with the current French school that studies the biographical consequences of activism and the processual dimensions of political engagement. It will use data collected during a 24-month ethnography in New York City from October 2016 to December 2019 amongst direct action groups, interviews conducted with cause lawyers, active activists and veterans of grassroots organizations such as NYC Shut it Down, Rise and Resist, Extinction Rebellion NYC, as well as data from Sarah Schulman and Jim Hubbard’s Act Up Oral History Project.