In Defense of Vomit

Two weeks ago, Harvard witnessed one of the most unusual acts of protest I’ve ever heard of. As representatives of the Central Intellgence Agency (CIA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) urged Harvard students to join up, a student forced himself to vomit into a bag. This act—supposed to symbolize the student’s disgust with the shoddy human rights record of America’s intelligence community—has become the subject of more discussion than any other puke in Harvard’s history. One man’s vomit has become a symbol of all that is supposedly wrong with campus activism. Critics have accused the Progressive Puker of distracting Harvard from the issues, making the Left look bad, and denying the CIA its right to free speech.

Like most people, I am uncomfortable with vomit. But what made the CIA/DHS protest so brilliantly appropriate is exactly that it was so inappropriate. The vomit jolted students into paying attention. A quiet rally outside the event would not have had this effect. Vomit may not be pretty, but vomit works.

April is a good month for protest. Roughly four years before the Progressive Puker opened his mouth, the Progressive Student Labor Movement (PSLM) spent 21 days “occupying” Mass. Hall to compel Harvard to pay its workers a living wage. The criticism of PSLM’s act sounded a lot like the criticism of the Puker. The Crimson, which supported a living wage, argued that the occupation was “unjustified and inappropriate.” A majority of students supported a living wage, but less than a third supported the occupation. The University claimed that the occupation was counterproductive. Yet shortly after the occupation ended, Harvard agreed to PSLM’s central demand: they raised the pay of every Harvard employee above $10.25. Harvard hasn’t admitted that it caved in to PSLM’s pressure, but it looks kind of suspicious that they just happened to drastically change their bargaining stance after the occupation. By employing radical, and unpopular, tactics, PSLM brought their issue to center stage and forced the Administration to act.

But PSLM’s exploits aren’t the most interesting example of what unpopular tactics can do. Forty-four years and three days before the Puker, Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote a letter that would become famous. He was not attacking Southern mobs or Northern politicians. The targets of King’s letter were the liberal ministers and rabbis who had previously been some of his most powerful supporters. When King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference had moved into Birmingham to stage a civil disobedience campaign, the liberal clergy objected to King’s tactics. At the time, the civil rights movement was focused on the courts. King’s direct action was considered radical, dangerous, and possibly harmful to the cause. The more conservative leaders of the movement feared that King would turn public opinion against integration by making civil rights activists look like a gang of law breakers.

But King’s actions made the civil rights movement the most talked about struggle of the early 1960s. The NAACP had been fighting in the courts for decades when King and others began their activism. It had won substantial victories. But not until King and others began to use radical tactics did the country begin to focus on civil rights. The liberal clergy King chastised in his letter wanted integration, but they wanted a cautious approach. The problem, as King points out, is that when nobody directly demands changed policies, officials feel free to continually put off doing the right thing. It is always easy to ignore the problems with the status quo; even if it’s deeply flawed, we’re used to it. Sometimes activists have to do something shocking to get people to look critically at the world as it is.

Of course, the Progressive Puker is not Martin Luther King, Jr., and vomiting is not sitting in. But King’s story reminds us that some of the most effective protests were originally considered radical to the point of being counterproductive.

Some argue that the Progressive Puker distracted the campus from the CIA’s brutal history. According to this line of thought, we were all sitting around politely discussing ways to end torture before some crazy radical came and puked in our faces. This argument has some legitimacy. Vomit is more newsworthy than the CIA’s history, just like PSLM’s sit in was more newsworthy than the poverty of Harvard’s workers and civil disobedience was more newsworthy than the brutality of Jim Crow. The fact that these tactics generate more discussion than the issues that prompt them demonstrates their effectiveness. In the real word, most people don’t talk about issues—at least not with the prospect of immediate action—unless some activist has forced them to. I have spent far more time talking about vomit over the last two weeks than I’ve spent discussing torture. But, to be honest, I wasn’t really talking about torture before the protest, and neither were my friends. Any discussion I’ve heard of this issue in the last two weeks has been a direct result of the protest.

That doesn’t mean this protest was perfect. The activists’ goals were not served by making it impossible for the CIA or the DHS to recruit. After they made their point, they should have let the event happen. They gained nothing by continuing to disrupt, and their actions were disrespectful. Even worse, the protesters were so incoherent in their objectives (in contrast to PSLM and King) that they hindered their own ability to prompt serious discussion or action.

Nonetheless, future protesters should recognize that radical tactics can be an important part of political action. So support vomit. You’ll feel better in the morning.

Sam M. Simon ’06 is a social studies concentrator in Eliot House. His column appears on alternate Wednesdays.