Fathers
4 Justice (F4J) – a pressure group that originated in Britain to
crusade for father's rights, especially child custody and access
rights in divorce – has just landed on American shores with the
creation of
Fathers4Justice-US. What happens next may tell us as much about
society's post-9/11 attitude toward social reform as it does about
father's rights.
What do F4J and its international chapters demand?
F4J essentially seeks the removal of any anti-male bias from the
family court system. The specifics include a wide range of measures,
including the court enforcement of visitation orders and the linking
of child support payments to visitation rights.
Why would the repetition of well-aired demands tell
us anything new about society's post-9/11 attitudes? Because the
strategy F4J favors hasn't been really tested here since then.
Father's rights advocates and their opponents have
waged a public strategy war, to be sure. But their weapons of choice
have generally been a flood of contradictory studies, re-interpreted
data, personal tales of injustice, accusations, and blasts of fury.
F4J advocates "peaceful non-violent direct action
based on the Greenpeace model with a dash of humour thrown in for
good measure." In Britain, the group is famous for high-profile
stunts that taunt and disrupt authority. For example, last September
an F4Jer dressed as Batman scaled Buckingham Palace. Standing for
over 5-hours on a ledge next to the Palace's main balcony, he
unfurled a huge banner reading "Super Dads of Fathers 4 Justice."
Batman was arrested "for suspicion of causing criminal damage."
Plans for similar but unspecified "guerrilla" acts
in the United States have been announced. It is not clear how
aggressive the Stateside actions will be.
Jamil Jabr, head of F4J-US, has been quoted in the
Telegraph as saying, "We will try to maintain the audacity of the
stunts... but if anyone tried that [the batman stunt] at the White
House, they would be shot."
But the same article quotes Matt O'Connor, F4J's
founder, as declaring, "We are planning a massive stunt in New York
which will catch everyone by surprise... It will be more spectacular
than anything we've done in the UK so far and if all goes well we
will hopefully be catapulted into infamy."
Given past action in the UK, that's quite a
statement.
Last May, for example, two F4Jers threw condoms full
of unidentified powder at Tony Blair, hitting the Prime Minister as
he addressed the House of Commons. The substance was later
identified as flour that had been dyed purple; the men were charged
with the relatively mild offence of "using threatening, abusive or
insulting words or behaviour." They were fined but served no time in
prison. In the U.S., the two might have been shot on the spot.
Not just the American authorities but the American
public is likely to respond more harshly as well. It is not likely
that New Yorkers would tolerate a re-run of the London publicity
stunt by which "Spiderman" occupied a crane that "caused" police to
stop traffic flowing across the heavily-traveled Tower Bridge from
early October 31st to November 4th. A British court later cleared
Spiderman of charges because the closing had resulted from police
decisions and not his actions. In the U.S., outraged New Yorkers
might not let a Spiderman who closed the Brooklyn Bridge reach the
court system at all.
It is not that civil disobedience or non-violent
resistance have deeper roots in Britain than in North America. The
United States was born through acts of both. Throughout American
history, reformers and radicals have addressed social problems
through civil disobedience and non-violent resistance.
Anti-slavery activists flouted the law by harboring
run-aways; the most famous of them (William Lloyd Garrison) called
the Constitution's sanction of slavery "an agreement with hell, a
covenant with death" and urged non-violent resistance. 19th century
labor advocates staged strikes that paralyzed entire regions and
industries; they burned factory owners in effigy. Black civil rights
activists sat at "whites only" lunch counters. During Vietnam, the
anti-war movement barraged the "system" with flamboyant tactics.
Perhaps the most famous one occurred when the Yippies threw dollar
bills from the balcony of the New York Stock Exchange and
effectively closed down trading as brokers scrambled for the money.
It is an open question: will civil disobedience and
non-violent resistance be allowed to shape American society as it
has in the past? Or will such strategies be forced to operate within
narrower and less effective limits?
F4J-US may provide the answer.
Or, rather, reaction by authorities may be the
answer.
That reaction can be gauged, in part, by an incident
in January. Two members of the British group visited NYC to help
organize F4J-US and to scout the city for possible actions. They
were followed everywhere. Jabr described one member of the
surveillance team, "We learned later that he was the head of New
York's terrorism intelligence branch. He had FBI connections and
orders to make sure that there would be no Buckingham Palace-type
incidents."
On the other hand, the father's rights radicals
apparently went out for a beer with the men assigned to watch them.
I wish F4J-US well; I believe its cause is just. I
also wish it prudence because I believe post-9/11 America is likely
to stomp on anything that vaguely hints of violence against an
official or the disruption of infrastructure.
Wendy McElroy © 200
