Peacekeepers,Cred,and the Street

Abstract

Drawing upon qualitative data gathered during protests at the 2008 Republican National Convention, secondary sources of Black Lives Matter, and Trump and anti-Trump rallies, I examine the collective interests, ideology, and role performances of a seldom studied group involved in demonstrations—“peacekeepers.” My findings suggest that as members of this group attempt to create a peaceful order between police and protesters on the street, their activities are marked by a unique set of contradictions. These contradictions emerge as a result of two primary roles—those of crisis workers and “human involvement shields”—performed by peacekeepers, as they attempt to build and leverage credibility with both protesters and police. I theorize this process by outlining phases of interaction—milling, miming, and crossing—between peacekeepers and these groups once peacekeepers are out on the street.

Keywords

peacekeepers police conflict management protesters mass demonstrations

Reflexive Statement

From participating in peace activism to antipoverty organizing to active engagement in the labor movement, I, like other sociologists, have a keen interest in collective action as my students now join in political protests. As a set of observations on the staging of protests and the suppression of dissent, the article that follows reflects both the concern and sociological curiosity I share with others for democratic practice at a time when constitutional rights appear to be under siege in the Era of Trump.

In the analysis that follows, I explore the ways in which a relatively little-studied, small band of individuals known as “peacekeepers” seek to influence both police and protesters during major demonstrations in accomplishing “peaceful order” on the street. As an interaction order situated in protest, “peace” appears increasingly tenuous as current police practices across the United States approximate the zero-tolerance, “escalated force” model of policing witnessed in the 1960s (McPhail, Schweingruber, and McCarthy 1997). In recent analyses of state repression, scholars have debated the origin, nature, and consequences of contemporary “repertoires of control” that are used during demonstrations (Boykoff 2007; Fernandez 2008; Gillham, Edwards, and Noakes 2013; Starr, Fernandez, and Scholl 2011). All acknowledge that tactics of “hard repression”—where police use of water cannons, concussion grenades, preemptive and mass arrests, pepper spray, tear gas, tasings, beatings, and live ammo against protesters—appear oddly similar to those deployed during Civil Rights and Vietnam antiwar demonstrations. Throughout the remainder of the article, I theorize the social and strategic adjustments made by members of peace teams, as they attempt to enhance their credibility with both police and demonstrators, maneuvering through the social context of protest where the potential use of state tactics and technologies is ever-present.

Peace Teams

Media images of peace teams provide evidence of the variety of domestic contexts in which peacekeepers have sought to mediate conflictual relations including political rallies between pro-Trump and anti-Trump protesters (Carcamo and Queally 2016), confrontations between police and Black Lives Matter (BLM) protesters (Maxwell 2016; Rakia 2014), and between police and demonstrators at both Republican and Democratic National Conventions (Graves 2016; Wojtan 2008). The appearance of peacekeepers at BLM protests in Ferguson, Missouri (Rakia 2014) as well as at mass demonstrations prior to the shooting of Michael Brown by police in Ferguson brought to light the conflicts and contradictions that peacekeepers themselves face even as they attempt to forge peaceful relations out on the street.

Members of current peace teams within the United States are the cultural progenies of a variety of religious traditions, organizationally drawing upon vocabularies of nonviolent resistance derived from Gandhian (Burrowes 1996; Chabot 2002), Quaker (Bacon 1985; Dymond 1962), Catholic (Nepstad 2002, 2004), and Southern Christian Leadership traditions (Fairclough 2001).¹ As one peace team, Peace Brigades International (PBI), initiated its efforts in 1981, activists sought to interpose themselves in foreign and international conflicts by shielding unarmed, peaceful protesters against violent reprisal by state actors. Coy (2003:85) describes the organization as “pioneering”:

…a model of international non-violent accompaniment to protect the human rights of those threatened by political violence. Relying on small teams of international observers deployed where political violence is rampant…PBI attempts to deter violence and open up safer political space for local activists under threat from both state forces and para-state organizations. PBI’s international observers are trained in non-violence and equipped with cameras, notebooks, cell phones, extensive diplomatic contacts, and a cross-cutting, international advocacy network.

Based on similar principles, peace teams in the United States began to appear at demonstrations in 1993 as the domestic equivalent of PBI. However, while shielding protesters from violence by state actors is the focus of PBI, peace teams in the United States seek a peaceful order in which police are reciprocally shielded from the occasional, untoward, and/or violent behavior of activists. On this point, one of the first domestic groups—the Michigan Peace Team (MPT) while sharing core principles of nonviolence with PBI (Singer 2009)—differs significantly from its international counterpart.² As a central organizing and training cell for other peacekeepers, the MPT explained its modus operandi: “MPT most often responds to invitations by credible local organizations committed to nonviolent solutions. Once invited, we meet key players, including commanders from opposing sides, local police, religious, business, and civil society leaders” (Nonviolent Peaceforce 2013:1). Anticipating violence during the 2008 Republican National Convention (RNC) held in St. Paul, members of the Minneapolis peace community attended training workshops held by the MPT, adopting their mission, objectives, and strategies as an ideological and organizational blueprint for peacekeeping (Wojtan 2008). In light of the vast array of affinity groups in attendance at the RNC, at BLM protests, and at Trump and anti-Trump rallies, peacekeepers rhetorically separated themselves from both protest groups and police, claiming nonpartisanship—a philosophical allegiance that was structurally maintained by the fact that the overwhelming number of peacekeepers lacked direct network ties to either groups of demonstrators or police.³

The Study

The initial phase of the study discussed in this article began in 2008 when I first encountered members of the Minnesota Peace Team on the street during demonstrations of the RNC. I observed the activities of police, protesters, and peacekeepers, interviewing the latter two groups after protest activities had concluded. Three primary questions guided the present project beyond my interviews with peacekeepers in 2008, as I followed reports of other peacekeepers at BLM demonstrations as well as at Trump and anti-Trump rallies. First, I wanted to know how peacekeepers positioned themselves ideologically, politically, and spatially with respect to protesters and police during demonstrations. If they sought to serve as shields against physical harm for protesters, would they also shield riot police or members of the national guard at whom protesters might hurl rocks, bottles, or unspent tear gas canisters? Essentially, I wanted to know what the social, political, and practical limits of their shielding might be and how they constructed and/or negotiated such limits. Second, I wanted to learn about the social processes through which peace teams established their credibility with protesters and police, the obstacles they faced even as they did so, and the strategies they used to overcome such obstacles. By contrast, I also wanted to learn about the social forces that precluded peacekeepers from developing street credibility and the dynamics that ultimately led to their discreditation. Finally, I wanted to know what, if any, paradoxes peacekeepers faced because of their ideological and relational work with police and protesters, their attempts at negotiation between these two groups on the street, and their actual practices on the street relative to their perceived mission, objectives, and organizational ideology.

The study was initiated with observation of the Minnesota Peace Team,⁴ as I tracked their activities through the week immediately preceding and then following protests at the 2008 RNC in St. Paul. It concluded, as I collected news articles, followed Facebook postings, and visited peacekeeper webpages for other peace teams preparing for, participating in, and concluding their peacekeeping activities in Ferguson, Missouri and, to a lesser extent, at Trump and anti-Trump rallies during the 2015–2016 presidential election cycle.⁵ Early days in the field were spent conducting interviews with activists, “protest marshals,” and peacekeepers. In advance of the 2008 RNC demonstrations, preemptive raids by police of local homes housing activists and indymedia reporters⁶ as well as a raid of the “RNC Welcoming Center” (the main convergence space used by protest groups) initially dampened my attempts to conduct street interviews with members of most protest and peacekeeper groups. However, over the course of the week activists sent over 500 e-mails (N = 504) to each other through the convergence center, representing digital data to which I was granted full access for the purpose of analysis. In addition to activists’ e-mails, I collected audio, video, and digital imagery data of protests, and conducted participant observation of protesters and peacekeepers during the actual demonstration marches as well as their “downtime” on the street. My data collection was renewed through the BLM protests and Trump rallies, as I collected news and blog reports, community newsletters and church bulletins, Internet postings, and webcasts of peace teams identified by national news sources. I searched for postdemonstration reports containing reflective pieces written by peacekeepers about their experiences on the street, about events they considered to be successes or failures, or about lessons learned and actions prescribed for future interventions.

The purposive samples varied significantly. On the street during the RNC in 2008, I encountered a group of white, middle-class, and mostly middle-aged adults (N = 20) whose personal experience with mass protest varied significantly.⁷ Published interviews with peacekeepers at BLM protests were collected from largely middle-aged and older African American participants (N = 10), while Trump and anti-Trump rallies were visited by peacekeepers whose backgrounds and ethnicities appeared to be wide ranging (N = 10). Following the methodological prescriptions of grounded theory (Charmaz 2006; Glaser and Strauss 1967; Strauss 1987), I open-coded my field notes, interview transcripts, Internet data, and electronically mediated communications as well as newsletters, bulletins, promotional material, and training notices. I searched for themes emerging from the data as well as situations, events, relationships, and activities discussed by peacekeepers that represented “deviant cases,” attempting to capture the range of peacekeepers’ experience. At least two different issues underlie the analysis given the “constant comparative method” (Glaser and Strauss 1967) I used. They are identified by Abrams (1982:240) as “the problem of generations…the calendar of the life cycle and the calendar of the historical experience.” The first issue presents itself in the question of whether the collective identity and social character of RNC and Ferguson peacekeepers can be compared. The second issue emerges in comparing peacekeeper activities—specifically, those in a mass demonstration protesting war, rising inequality, and the class consolidation of political power to those situated in a context marked by extreme police brutality (Ferguson).⁸

Peacekeeping and Street Influence

In his book, Code of the Street, Anderson (2000) observed that African American youths seeking to achieve and maintain a prized position in the status hierarchy of the street must deliver performances that embody an image of dominance. These performances are important, insofar as they enhance the respect granted these youths by other street actors:

A person’s public bearing must send the unmistakable, if sometimes subtle, message that one is capable of violence, and possibly mayhem, when the situation requires it, that one can take care of oneself. The nature of this communication is determined by the demands of the circumstances but can involve facial expressions, gait, and direct talk—all geared mainly to deterring aggression. (Anderson 2000:72-73).

Peacekeepers, like youths inhabiting the street in Anderson’s study, share both personal and collective interests in warding off aggression, though they differ radically in terms of the repertoire they draw upon for realizing their interests. For youths living according to the “code of the street,” a known history of violence and the will to use it may be publicly dressed in expressive cues and social posturing that gives one “juice.” Here, juice as street influence is based upon respect that serves to deter challenges by others and/or conscripts them into the service of a more powerful actor as a matter of fealty. For peacekeepers, influence is an interactional outcome observed as peace is brokered between warring parties—namely, police and demonstrators. Influence with police is evidenced in deterring the escalated force that will otherwise be directed toward protesters. This accomplishment demands a dual performance. In performances given for police, peacekeepers must demonstrate the ability to extract from protesters compliance with the demonstration’s march permit and/or police directives—a performance that lends credibility to peacekeepers by virtue of an orderly, peaceful march. Simultaneously, members of peace teams must deliver performances to demonstrators convincing them of the peacekeepers’ influence with police—a level of influence that will deter or at least delay police in clearing streets, making arrests, or using other “hard tactics” (Boykoff 2007) in their repertoire of control.

For peacekeepers, then, street influence with police and activists must be cultivated within relations balanced upon competing demands for loyalty between adversaries often embroiled in escalating conflict. A negotiated peaceful order between police and protesters during a mass protest is by its very nature fragile, precarious, and easily shattered by either actor. While police legally claim jurisdiction over the streets and a monopoly on the use of force, activists commonly dispute the claim—“Whose streets? Our streets!” Moreover, while police may adhere to “crowd control” protocol in the policing of protests, the high degree of discretion granted them as a “street-level bureaucracy” ensures that use of force will likely appear arbitrary (Lipsky 2010). Peacekeepers’ ideological commitment to nonpartisanship, in light of these features, is one seldom appreciated by protesters or police. Rather, where “nonpartisanship” is claimed by peacekeepers, it is differentially assessed by police and activists as complicity with the enemy. At BLM protests, this dynamic was revealed in the statement of one activist (African American male, age 79) who explained:

Why aren’t they (peacekeepers) talking about the police not being peaceful? But instead, when the demonstrators sitting in the streets, or however way they express themselves, it always looks like the burden of peacefulness is always on the people that are protesting and never on the folks [police] that are trying to prevent the protest. (Rakia 2014:2)

Peacekeepers may come to be seen by police or demonstrators as having “street cred” but only insofar as their performances appear to embody the ideological and pragmatic expectations of their respective audiences. The meaning of shared laughter between peacekeepers and police, or of peacekeepers sharing food with protesters, may be widely divergent depending upon whether the audience is that of activists or riot police. The performances through which peacekeepers build credibility with these respective audiences are both situated in the events at hand—conflicts between police and protesters, mass arrests, tear gassing, or downtime at protest events—and shaped by both peacekeeper ideology and the roles that peacekeepers play on the street through which it is enacted.

Peacekeeper Ideology

Unlike protest marshals, who are members of protest groups selected by fellow activists for the purpose of self-policing, the white, middle-aged peacekeepers I interviewed claimed a collective identity that was independent of both protesters and police—that of “nonpartisan.” Maintaining this identity demands that individual peacekeepers set aside any personal relationships they may have with police or protesters, remaining neutral arbiters as they pursue their primary objective—peaceful order on the street. As one peacekeeper stated, “When you put on the Minnesota Peace Team vest, you are taking on a role as a non-partisan. In that role, we were going to try to protect demonstrator, counter-demonstrator, police, and bystander alike” (Clemens 2008:1). The collective identity of white, nonpartisan peacekeepers contrasted significantly with peacekeepers in attendance at BLM protests—particularly those whose organizational affiliations included Black Lawyers for Justice, the New Black Panther Party, the Nation of Islam, and local black power groups. Accompanying peacekeeping representatives from these groups were a variety of ministers, pastors, and religious leaders previously involved with issues of racial justice (Goodman 2014; Sistrunk 2014).

The shared objective among all peacekeepers, white and black, is one undergirded by a humanistic philosophy emphasizing that all humans, regardless of their position or resources, are bound to one another by a broader set of moral obligations. As one peacekeeper, Jan (white, middle aged), stated, “Our job as newly trained peacekeepers was to remind those we encountered—police, protesters, counter-protesters, and bystander—of the humanity and inherent worth of each other.” Reflecting on the presence of highly militarized riot police, another peacekeeper, Pamela, observed:

When I was looking at the faces of those fully-armed police officers I had to remind myself that they are children of God—sons, daughters; fathers, mothers; humans—hot, tired, possibly hungry, bored, scared, equipped to the gills and following orders. I had to remind myself of the many respectful acts [they engaged in]—warning people, letting peacekeepers know how people could exit, choosing restraint when disrespected.

Black peacekeepers similarly emphasized that in committing oneself to principles of peace one may not only transcend racial, class, and ideological divides but do so in collaboration with unanticipated allies:

Pastor White: And he [police officer] said, “But the reality is there’s bad protesters on your side and there’s bad cops on my side. But if you and I quit, they are going to clash.” And right there in the middle of the street, right here on West Florraisant, he and I came to tears, and we promised each other that we were going to stand through to the end (CNN 2014).

The statement of Pastor White, above, appears as the deviant case. Interviews with Ferguson peacekeepers reveal a generation of mostly black but also white adults, older than most protesters, with previous experience in peace activism, pastoral work, or both (Goodman 2014). Where peacekeepers recruited from black power groups might be ideologically predisposed to the interests of BLM protesters given their own lived experience—and logically attempt to shield them from escalated force on the part of police (Sistrunk 2014)—this was certainly not the case for all white peacekeepers at the RNC.⁹ Revealed in the accounts of peacekeepers across all of the contexts under consideration was the theme of being custodians of democracy. Specifically, peacekeepers cast the larger implications of their actions in terms of upholding the constitutional rights of protesters—a central feature of democracy, they argue, that can be maintained only within a wider, lawful, peaceful order. Monitoring protests in Ferguson, black peacekeepers defined peacekeeping and peace activism as twinborn practices sharing a common intellectual and moral heritage, diverging only pragmatically in activities on the street. According to one black minister (Reverend McBride):

We raise the kids to be Martin Luther King. We show them all of the videos of the civil rights movement, and they are practicing the legacy of civil rights and resistance in this country. And they are being met with tactics that are only shown on TV in other countries who are struggling to become a democracy. It is outrageous. (Goodman 2014:1)

During interviews, white peacekeepers explained that their own decision-making was anchored in a consensus model—reflecting their allegiance to democratic principles and an affirmation of group solidarity in the face of chaotic activity during demonstrations. However, when I inquired into specific conflicts between protesters and police marked by extreme urgency, some peace team members explained that, in all rapidly escalating situations demanding a quick response, the consensus model had to be abandoned as a matter of practicality. Organized into cadres of three or four peacekeepers that could be deployed to “hot spots,” these smaller teams varied in the amount of time they needed to improvise a plan of action. To decrease their response time, some groups shifted the model of their decision-making to voting, violating the primary tenet of consensus that they had earlier affirmed.¹⁰

When asked about this contradiction, members emphasized the overarching, unifying principle of their work that superseded all else. As one male member, Brad (white, mid-40s), noted: “That is quite simple, it’s nonviolence. What does that mean? It means a rejection of hatred, animosity or violence of the spirit, as well as refusal to commit physical violence.” Seliger (1976) suggested that, more than simply meanings justifying arrangements of inequality, ideologies are action-oriented systems of coherent beliefs tethered to a set of values through moral commitment. Ideologies are, as Fine and Sandstrom (1993) argued, practical accomplishments of interaction. To understand how peacekeepers maintain their ideology, one must understand how the primary tenets of peace team ideology—nonpartisanship, democracy, consensus, and nonviolence—are woven into practical action out on the streets, how some actions are negated or constrained because of this ideology, and what paradoxes are produced even as it is enacted.

Role Performances

Having no official, legal standing on the street beyond that of ordinary citizens, peacekeepers are structurally as well as ideologically constrained in their role performances, as the temporal, spatial, and functional boundaries of their activities are ultimately established by police. Indeed, at most mass demonstrations, peacekeepers are granted right-of-way by authorities for soft-selling police directives with protesters—clearing intersections, dispensing information regarding curfews, notifying demonstrators of territorial restrictions—and in assuming this responsibility, may suffer loss of credibility with protesters. As order in the street begins to dissolve, any quasi-official recognition granted peacekeepers by police may be immediately revoked, making any lasting influence that peacekeepers may have with either protesters or police “sociologically ambivalent” (Merton 1976). For peacekeepers, then, credibility on the street can only be solidified through interpersonal influence demanding political skill in the delivery of a performance (Treadway et al. 2013). During the period of my observations, and in subsequent news accounts, peacekeepers appeared to perform two primary roles—those of crisis negotiators and human involvement shields—hoping to establish street cred through effective performances while out on the street.

Crisis Negotiators

In their role as crisis negotiators, peacekeepers seek to prevent, deescalate, and provide remedy for violent situations. While violence during demonstrations at the BLM protests, pro-Trump, and anti-Trump rallies commonly involved police and protesters, peacekeepers at the 2008 RNC were particularly critical of anarchist groups to whom they attributed escalating patterns of conflict. RNC peacekeeper accounts of civil disorder commonly defined protestors, in general, and anarchists, in particular, as the source of conflict. During an interview, one peacekeeper, “Keith” (white, male, age 42), told me…

A man who was wearing a jacket that said U.S. Treasury came over to Margaret who was the overall coordinator of what we were doing, and he said, “Margaret I have been talking with these people [protesters] and they won’t listen to me, and they don’t seem to get that the permit expires at five o’clock and that the permit was to march from the Capitol Mall to the Excel Energy Center.” Then he asked if she would go and talk with them. She said she would. And Harrison, who was also one of the senior peace team guys, went along with Margaret and this Treasury guy. And they came back ten minutes later and said the folks who were in charge of the demonstration have agreed with us that they will tell the demonstrators on the Capitol Mall that they have a permit that is only good until 5 o’clock. The streets were then closed to pedestrians after five o’clock. And we were all like, “Yea! Victory for the peace team!” We had negotiated something with these folks.

Above, Keith highlights a settlement between police and demonstrators that is brokered and then celebrated by the peacekeepers. Left unmentioned in Keith’s account is that while the march permit forbade activists the right to occupy the streets after five o’clock, activists claimed it guaranteed them the right to use the capitol mall area for two more hours. The police, supported by peacekeepers, demanded that protesters vacate all areas and go home. Angry at the contractual violation by police, activists took to the streets, leading enforcement officials to deploy the use of snowplows, horses, pepper spray, teargas, concussion grenades, and rubber bullets. Rather than defining this resulting conflict as a failure, the peacekeepers with whom I talked took credit for initially brokering peace and then blamed activists for the melee that followed. In the course of in-depth interviews, both peace activists and anarchists offered definitions counter to those of both peacekeepers and police. From their view, peacekeepers were ignorant of the details of the march permit and, lacking this knowledge, had become unwitting tools of the police. Curiously, the characterizations offered of peacekeepers by activists in 2008 reemerged in the Ferguson demonstrations. According to the BLM activist previously cited, “You get some people [peacekeepers] to say that violence will get you nowhere. ‘Don’t engage in violent demonstrations.’ But yet, still the establishment will perpetuate violence against you in an attempt to stop it. Now what sense does that make? It doesn’t make any sense” (Rakia 2014:2).

Human Involvement Shields

The role most lauded by peacekeepers is that of “human involvement shield.” By using the term, I refer to those instances in which peacekeepers literally insert themselves into potential or ongoing interaction as a shield or barrier on behalf of a party deemed in need of defense. As I have described elsewhere (Martin 2013a:77) this type of shielding differs from the creative strategies used by individual actors, as they deploy physical, nonhuman props to minimize their involvement in interaction (Goffman 1963). Here, I am referring to interactions in which peacekeepers strive to protect police, protesters, and/or bystanders from violence by literally shielding them from some perceived threat. “June” (white, female, middle aged) recalled one instance, emphasizing the importance of this function:

The young people/students in black wore hoods and bandannas to protect their identity and to protect themselves from the tear gas and pepper spray. Congregated on a parking space near the Capitol, they had been dispersed by the police for attempting an illegal march (after the 5 p.m. permit) by the “No Peace for the War-Makers” March. Their stance was menacing. Across from them were about 20 police on bikes—no riot gear. We positioned ourselves between the police and the youth. Remembering the afternoon before, the vulnerability of the young people released from jail, I approached the group and suggested lightly—why not just leave?

Similarly, Teri, a peacekeeper in her early 50s, observed:

Many of the demonstrators told us, “They won’t tear gas if you are here.” So they thought of us both as agents of the police and their own agents. I think we were probably more, like, there to protect them and stand in between them.

However, the presence of peacekeepers ultimately does not stave off tear gassing or arrests by police…even of peacekeepers. As one observer at the Ferguson protests reported, “Inside that jail is nothing but peacekeepers,” (NBC News 2014). Such experiences add to the salience of the role of peace team members. As “Ellie” (white, middle aged) explained,

We alerted marchers, protesters and bystanders of potential risks and of the police-approved “escape route.” One of us accompanied a bystander, a delegate, to the hospital after she was tear gassed. My mantra was “I am a mother—I will not move.”

Ellie indicates that, as shields, peacekeepers are resolute not only in maintaining the peace team directive of nonpartisanship but also in standing their ground on the street. She cogently avows the identity of a protector (“I am a mother”) that commits her to actions designed to shield others from harm. This type of identity work and ideological work affirms peacekeepers’ primary collective interest in maintaining a peaceful order during street demonstrations. When queried about what actually constitutes a peaceful order, peacekeepers responded in terms suggesting the absence of physical confrontation between protesters and police. Achieving such an arrangement, of course, becomes problematic, insofar as protesters view police as guardians of an abusive, exploitive order that is the source of their grievances.

When I asked RNC peacekeepers how police and protesters might generally achieve peace in light of their differing views and objectives, they uniformly suggested that police should allow more time for protesters to clear intersections, vacate the capitol mall area, or allow protesters to occupy other portions of public space for purposes of meetings or demonstrations. Essentially, the peaceful order that peacekeepers hoped to broker was one premised on the flexibility of police in granting spatial privileges. Indeed, most but not all peacekeepers criticized police use of pepper spray, teargas, concussion grenades, and preemptive arrests as discrediting symbols of a despotic regime. Yet peacekeepers emphasized that protesters also shared responsibility in maintaining peace. When asked for what, exactly, protesters were responsible, peacekeepers almost uniformly stated, “following the rules”—that is following the directives regarding times, activities, and use of space negotiated within the march permit and laid down by police. As Roxanne (white, middle aged) stated,

If there’s going to be anything in your research that is going to come to some conclusions about the responsibility of the protesters. <pause> We have pretty much defined the responsibilities and negatives for the police but I think we have come to a time now where there just has to be, ya’ know, <pause> heavy pressure has to be put on people [protesters] who go in [to demonstrations] with the intent of disruption, disturbance and perhaps violence.

The brokering of a peaceful order during demonstrations demands that peacekeepers must engage in the tactical enterprise of “cultivating relationships” (Prus 1999:177), however fleeting, with police and protesters. The interaction through which this occurs takes place in a series of phases, as peacekeepers seek to create and maintain credibility in their relations on the street. The processes, however, are not without contradictions that plague peace work—paradoxes that will be explored throughout the remainder of the article.

Contradictions in the Acquisition of Street Cred

The influence that peacekeepers may wield on the street is created through relational work that takes place prior to protests in gatherings with activists or police and in situ during mass demonstrations. The activities I discuss below are those formulated by peacekeepers, as they attempt to enhance their credibility anterior to and during their time on the street. Through these activities, peacekeepers seek to establish and maintain open lines of communication with both police and protesters in hopes that adjustments in the timing and spatial arrangements of police and protest activity can be readily negotiated throughout the course of demonstrations. This process commonly begins with relational work at meetings that serves as preconditioning.

Preconditioning

Prior to demonstrations, peacekeepers commonly hold meetings with both police and various affinity groups participating in the demonstration.¹¹ With police, peacekeepers hope to establish amiable relations that will remain operable once on the street:

Sarah (white, peacekeeper in her mid-50s): We soon came to the conclusion that it would be helpful if the police know who we are and know our purpose that it’s nonpartisan but that our purpose is to try to prevent harm—mainly to prevent harm to individuals. I think at that point we were getting our uniforms and I sent a photo and circulated it with the police department hoping that they would recognize us so that we could be pals. They kept assuring us frankly that they would. I think in many cases they did respect that.

As “Sarah” observes, recognition of peacekeepers by police is both literal—that is, involving physical recognition of peacekeepers in their bright yellow patrol vests—but more importantly, positional.¹² In establishing relations with police, peacekeepers hope to gain “positional control” (Prus 1999:221). Here, such control is realized, insofar as the perspective of peacekeepers is adopted as a point of reference for both police and protesters. To the extent that “referent power” (Raven 1990:502) can be created and leveraged by peacekeepers with both groups on the street, coercive means of compliance by police remain unnecessary. However, peacekeepers face two crucial contradictions seeking to build a strong, influential relationship with police, the first is indicated by Frida (white, late 50s) below, as she describes the group’s interaction with police:

The police were trying to set up a dialogue, it was a public relations effort…The officers were very evasive. We asked them very specific questions. The officer…was very evasive. We would ask him, “What is it exactly you want?” and he would answer, “Well we don’t exactly know. We really want your help—we really want information,” that didn’t set well with us.

As Frida indicates, the dialogue between peacekeepers and police—one taking place before the protests ever began—was filled with competing agendas. Anticipating that police would share their interest in brokering peace out on the street, peacekeepers found that police used such meetings as occasions for gathering information on protesters, most notably anarchists. Thus, the more peacekeepers cooperated with police the greater they risked loss of control over the direction of information flow, control over how information would be used, and, most importantly, credibility with protesters. Notably, there is little evidence suggesting that providing officers with information increased peacekeepers’ credibility with police. By contrast, neither did refusing to supply police with information appear to increase peacekeeper credibility with protesters:

Maggie (white, early 40s): I think that giving information [to protest groups] is amazingly fine but it does not necessarily mean that they were open to communication because, as I said earlier, when we tried to talk with them or tried to go to their meetings, we were told to leave. That is a tough way to build community relations.

Above, Maggie describes an inhospitable reception at an organizing session. What the account omits is that news of the meetings between the peacekeepers and police had already been shared extensively through activist networks. The result was a pall of suspicion cast upon peacekeepers by activist groups who defined them as “stooges” of the police. While pursuing its primary objective brokering “peace through nonpartisanship” required that peacekeepers do relational work, that work was regarded as an alliance with the enemy by the opposing audiences—that is, by both police and protesters.

Milling

In contrast to meetings, commonly held in advance of demonstrations, a second set of interactions begin as peacekeepers arrive out on the street to monitor a variety of anticipated hot spots. Once on the street, peacekeepers can be seen to engage in milling, the activity of moving between groups of police and protesters, preassembled, or “pre-organized” for the demonstration. Whereas meetings between peacekeepers and police or protesters commonly take place in space providing a degree of semiprivacy—schools, community centers, church sanctuaries and basements, private homes—the phase of milling provides none. Rather, relations between peacekeepers and other groups out on the street may be scrutinized by all actors. During the milling phase, peacekeepers attempt to assuage police and protester discontent in a way that reduces the tension, frustration, and potential for violence that may be carried into future encounters. When asked about how peacekeepers attempt to deescalate conflict, Aaron (white, male, early 40s) explained:

You learn some cleaver techniques like shuttling for disarming your opponent, techniques you can have in your toolbox and choose to use. Not of all them work all of the time, so it’s good to have a lot of them. Such as when it looks like you are getting into a shouting match with the police or a counterprotestor to lower your voice so they have to really tone down their voices and lean in and try to listen to you <pause> it is a disarming technique. To do something completely unexpected, like asking for the time or offering them a cookie. So those kinds of clever tricks we talk about. We talk about the importance of a posture that shows your resolve and also your nonviolence, so to stand straight up and have your hands at your side and not to conceal your hands. To be aware of some of the things that might scare police because of the violent situations that they’ve been in, and hands in pockets is definitely one thing that makes them nervous. The rest of us might not notice that. Also, remember to introduce yourself to them. And then when it comes to actual physical violence we practice specific postures that people can use that are disarming, not very threatening, but can also protect you or people around you to make sure to turn your back on the attacker, never hide your hands, crouching positions to protect your neck and important organs those types of things, which is a scary thing to talk about because you don’t want to think that would ever happen in a demonstration.

In characterizing their activities during this milling phase, Aaron cites practices that more generally might be recognized as a process of personalization through which peacekeepers can “cool the mark out” (Goffman 1952) in their interactions with police. In the milling phase, the strategy is decidedly preemptive. One peacekeeper, David, talks of a cooling process similar to the one above that he used with young men he considered to be tourist demonstrators:

They gave no indication of being part of the Anarchist group. The kids who walked up a few hours earlier around four o’clock were just there as tourist demonstrators. They heard something is going on in St. Paul, “Let’s go and tell the cops that it’s our streets!” [David impersonates what the kids might have thought]. It was just kids wanting to show their defiance of authority. My job is for peace so I offered him apple slices again. I said, “Hey I am serious, have some apples.” And then he looked down and saw this bag of apple slices in front of him and said, “Okay.” Then he started chomping them down and said, “Wow those are good, can I have some more of those?” And then when he said “Can I have some more of those?” it was like…he just seemed to wake up. He shook his head and thought like “Wow, how did I get here?” So I told him he could take all he wanted, and I started to walk with him to move him away from the police line. And he walked with me and that was the end of that for him. I don’t know where he went. He just stopped his little rage attack. And the cops, to their credit, never moved a muscle. He was getting in their face and they were just disciplined, they held their line.

In the quotes of both Aaron and David, above, several dynamics mark the complexities of negotiating peace in the ever-changing social landscape of street demonstrations. Like the nomadic urbanites of Lofland’s (1973) “world of strangers,” peacekeepers are continually “taking a reading” of the social context in which they find themselves. However, more than simply taking a reading, peacekeepers must exercise street acuity (Martin 2013a:3), learning the corners, streets, and other locales of the march routes that may prove to be hot spots during demonstrations because of their spatial, symbolic, or strategic value to police and protesters alike. Above, Aaron and David, mention gift giving as a primary strategy for defusing the escalation of conflict. Here, the simple offering of a cookie or apple is used in creating a norm of reciprocity (Gouldner 1960; Mauss and Evans-Pritchard 1967)—a reward in exchange for “situated compliance.”¹³ Along with this strategy, peacekeepers cite other devices that any salesperson might recognize including the texturing of voice, the reduction of physical space to create the semblance of intimacy, and the “cooling out” activity mentioned by Goffman (1952). As a tactic for creating street cred, “milling” largely appears as a form of shuttle diplomacy on the street, as peacekeepers attempt to realize their own collective interest brokering peace. As with meetings, milling represents a form of relational work through which peacekeepers attempt to establish credibility. Yet milling also runs the risk of differential assessment between the adversarial parties in play. In Ferguson, protesters noted that, in a context marked by police hostility, amiable interactions between officers and peacekeepers at the local McDonald’s naturally raised suspicion: (Charlene) “I saw several folks who had on orange shirts that said ‘clergy’ in black letters talking to the police, and I also saw some of them getting into the car, voluntarily with the police officer” (Raki 2014). Consequently, as the process of milling plays host to claims for loyalty on the part of peacekeepers by both police and protesters, it is a tenuous loyalty given peacekeepers’ insistence on nonpartisanship. This contradiction is exacerbated in the process of miming, a process used to allay fears of misplaced loyalty.

Miming

Whereas milling refers to the shuttle diplomacy of peacekeepers while on the street, miming is a tactic in the peace team repertoire used to enhance identification with peacekeepers. When miming, peacekeepers adopt the language, dress, or style of police or protesters in an attempt to gain their confidence. On the street, miming is designed to ingratiate peacekeepers with police as well as activists. As Raven (1990:499) notes, “Ingratiation is one means for establishing personal reward” and may thus serve as a precondition for gaining influence. When performed effectively, miming may produce the impression that political and professional identities, interests, and objectives are shared, increasing the influence that peacekeepers might potentially bring to bear in their roles as crisis negotiators.

As a tactic for increasing street credibility with police and activists, peacekeepers held a differential affinity for the task. While many peacekeepers had themselves formerly been involved in demonstrations as protesters, and some Ferguson peacekeepers held ministerial positions with black churches, a small number of RNC peacekeepers had family members who were police officers. Thus, while peacekeepers hoped that police and activists would identify with the mission of the peace team, it was just as likely that peacekeepers identified with the objectives and ideological interests of those they hoped to influence. As Becky, a peacekeeper in her mid-40s, explained, “I’ve been at protests all my life, peaceful protests. I felt very sympathetic with the peaceful protesters. It’s still a very, very fine line not to be sympathetic with either one of the parties.” Other peacekeepers, like Joe (a white male in his mid-40s), spoke of his personal associations with police in a tone that revealed both sympathy and dissonance:

I should probably say parenthetically, even though I have had a lot of experience with police over the years and have been arrested 30 times, and also I have a brother-in-law who is a retired chief of police, I don’t see police officers as a monolithic force either for good or bad. Some of them are really good folks but others have control issues and domination issues. So I try to engage police officers and try to recognize the humanity within them and connect with that part of them. And I have some police officers who I have great relationships with and others that it seems like it would be a huge challenge to have even a decent conversation with them. So, I don’t see them as a monolithic group one way or the other.

Unlike Joe, few peacekeepers had familial ties to officers on the street. During the period of demonstration activities at the RNC, I encountered only one other member of the peace team who held such relations—Everett, a white male in his late 60s, whose daughter had been assigned the duty of crowd control by her local precinct. He remarked:

Before we started, I was pro-police to start with because my daughter is a cop and my other kid works for I.C.E. [U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement] now. My daughter was a K9 [canine] officer in St. Paul. And I also have another daughter who works highway patrol. My whole life I have known a lot of cops and had a lot of respect for the cops. Growing up on the west side, there were always good ones and bad ones of course. But I think cops do their job, but do get out of hand sometimes. You gotta try to understand their philosophy. And you know some of them and you know what kind of people they are. But I was one of the minorities in this whole thing being pro-police. As far as the protestors, I am not against protesting. I think that is good as long as it doesn’t cause harm.

Familial and friendly relations such as those described by Everett, above, seemingly increase the probability that the primary, organizational directive of a peace team may be violated. Mason, a peacekeeper who had worked all of the demonstrations during the weeklong convention, emphasized:

We are nonviolent. You don’t make people do things physically or anything like that. By showing that you are non-partisan, you don’t sit and hang out with the cops or the other people. You try and stay neutral all along. That was the biggest thing—to show that you were not on one side or the other.

Yet because the acquisition of street cred by peacekeepers is accomplished through relational work and not the threat of violence reported by Anderson (2000), peacekeepers must engage both police and protesters in at least amiable interaction. However, interaction with police is by necessity not only amiable but deferential, designed to secure a “courtesy status” by virtue of practical alignment with the directives of the state. As Brian, a white, male peacekeeper in his early 40s, observed when describing his dealings with the heavily militarized riot police:

The police had basically barricaded this area of downtown off and were marching up the street and all of that. So two of us clearly marked with our lime green vests and hats went up and asked if we could talk with the police that were marching toward us. And actually the police stopped and four different police officers came up and took off their helmets so we could talk to them. So the two of us were able to go up to those police and say, “Hey we are not here to do your job but could you tell us what you want the crowd to do so we can tell the crowd in a non-threatening way what you would like to see done because people would like to try to get to their cars and apartments.” And they said, “We need to have this intersection cleared. Once this intersection is cleared, our unit will stand down and people can go down to their cars and things like that.” So we turned around and walked back to the crowd and explained that we were not police ourselves but we were trying to communicate what the police wanted so they could choose what they wanted to do…And, within half an hour people were able to get to their cars and it kind of de-escalated the whole situation.

Brian’s account depicts peace team activity as a seemingly neutral form of work where its members are primarily messengers. Yet, in the situation above, peacekeepers sought to engineer the social conditions under which compliance on the part of protesters might be manufactured in advance of enforcement activities. Peacekeepers were aware that their collective identity as humanistic, nonpartisan champions of democracy was not a definition necessarily shared by all—or even most—protest groups. Of all the e-mails collected from activists (N = 504) at the RNC, only one referenced peacekeepers:

Central Presbyterian Church near downtown St. Paul is hosting “peaceful presence” from 8 am to 8 p.m. each day during the convention. This is supposed to be a place where people who have been under stress from convention protest or work detail can come find solace, but in fact the church is partnering with the Dept of Homeland Security. Peacemaker teams are going to be wearing yellow hats with orange vests, something for folks to keep in mind while gathering materials.

The exact meaning of peacekeepers constructed in the e-mail was one I was unable to discover in my interviews with activists. Curiously, their reference is situated in a communication revealing that a “church is partnering with the Department of Homeland Security”—a state actor regarded as an adversary by demonstrators. Without knowing what “materials” activists were gathering, the text indicates that protesters should know how to identify peacekeepers, suggesting a degree of mistrust with the peace team. This suspicion was later confirmed by “Dustin” (white, male, in his mid-30s) a peacekeeper who told me during an interview,

If there is ever anything with this much danger involved, I think we should talk about a way that we could be more involved with the police. The marchers are going to think we are with the police anyway because we had uniforms and were pretty much involved in [maintaining] order…¹⁴

Throughout the phases discussed thus far—preconditioning, milling, and miming—peacekeepers seek to enact the roles of crisis negotiators and human involvement shields, leveraging various forms of interpersonal power for the sake of a peaceful order. While the credibility of peacekeepers on the street is accomplished through the performance of these roles, it is enabled and constrained and therefore pegged to official recognition by police. Consequently, sustaining definitions of themselves as nonpartisans in this endeavor is a precarious venture. Dustin’s comment suggests one final, tactical maneuver through which credibility may ultimately be gained with one group (police or protester) at the expense of forfeiting it with the other—that of “crossing.”

Crossing

While peacekeepers regard nonpartisanship as the sine qua non of their work brokering peace, a closer inspection of their practice during the demonstrations reveals a nuanced commitment to this principle. During interviews, several RNC peacekeepers indicated that they had “crossed” from peacekeeping to protesting after learning of preemptive police raids or observing what they considered to be “overly militarized” responses on the part of police toward peaceful protesters, including the use of batons, teargas, pepper spray, and mass arrests. The concept of crossing as I use it here refers to the transition, at least temporarily, from the role of peacekeeper to partisan.

Sue, a long-term peace activist, described the sense of injustice that she and other peacekeepers felt because of preemptive police raids: “We had people who wanted to protest one day so obviously they took off their vests and were a part of their own protest.” Other members, such as Eli, spoke of embracing and enacting prior commitments:

I was involved in a march to the RNC. So I was not a member of the Peace team then, I was a part of the Vets for Peace March. Um, then I was arrested that day and I was planning on doing civil disobedience that day. We were released after about three or four hours in custody and then…After I got home that night I kind of changed from protestor to Peacekeeper so, for the rest of the week, I was there with the lime green vests and the yellow hats that said “Minnesota Peace Team.”

Within the context of demonstrations, prior ideological commitments and subjectively defined injustices led some peacekeepers to identify with protesters or police. Above, Eli describes the role transition from peacekeeper to protester and back again, revealing several notable dimensions when compared to those whose ideological tilt was toward police. Of the peacekeepers I interviewed, crossing took two primary forms- one which was purely ideological, the other represented in practical activity. Ideological crossing is revealed conversationally in the attitudes of peacekeepers that may or may not be hidden from their colleagues. An earlier quote from “Becky” exemplifies this dimension: “I’ve been at protests all my life, peaceful protests. I felt very sympathetic with the peaceful protesters.” From interviews and field conversations in the street, it was apparent that this ideological crossing from nonpartisan to partisan also occurred among those having sympathies for police. In talking about this aspect of peace work, one RNC peacekeeper, Troy (white male in his early 40s) revealed an almost derisive attitude toward protesters:

The people that were organizing the demonstrations were really about making a statement…<pause> I will tell you the truth, I get annoyed with these true believer people [protesters] who are all about making a statement, at least in my opinion they are all about making a statement, and letting the small things slide. (My emphasis)

As I investigated Troy’s statement during the interview, he revealed that he was upset with anarchists who smashed a department store window as well as the windshield of a police car during the protests. These were activists, in his estimation, who had not paid proper attention to maintaining peace out on the street. As I queried anarchists about these activities in the course of my interviews with them, they acknowledged that they were, indeed, “making a statement” and that aim was precisely the point of protest.

For members of the peace team, crossing as a practical and ideological activity fully established street cred with the group perceiving the alliance but simultaneously sacrificed it with the group’s adversary. Moreover, crossing as a practical activity was shaped by differential opportunities for peacekeepers on the street. Where peacekeepers were ideologically predisposed to participate in protests during the convention, they could do so unrestrained. Similarly, some of the peacekeepers present at demonstrations against Michael Brown’s shooting by police in Ferguson, Missouri indicated that moral guidance during protests began with active engagement:

(African American minister, male, middle-aged): We could not sit on the sideline, and we had to come to Ferguson to make every effort to try and help support, but also bring a moral imperative to end what we believe is an overaggressive policing of a group of people who have already been traumatized by the death of Mike Brown…And I’m not going to sit on the sideline. The clergy are not going to sit on the sideline. The parents are not going to sit on the sideline. People wondering why folks are so outraged? Because we have children. What parent would not be outraged that their children are being killed by people who we pay with our tax dollars? (Goodman 2014)

In contrast to the attributions made by activists of peacekeepers as allies of police, peacekeepers themselves assigned a different meaning to their activities. Requests made of protesters to vacate the streets or cease demonstrating, as well as amiable interactions with police, were defined by peace team members as necessary for ensuring protester safety and thus represented a form of caretaking (Rakia 2014). While peacekeepers who crossed over to join protesters could actively disidentify with these negative attributions, this kind of role transition was not possible for peacekeepers holding sympathies for police. Rather, directives issued down the chain of police command commonly ignored or disregarded peacekeepers, viewing them largely as irrelevant or obstructing police in the performance of their duties. Consequently, peacekeepers meeting with “police dialogue officers” to negotiate their involvement in demonstrations, commonly found that, once on the street, police ridiculed their presence and mocked their claim as legitimate “peace negotiators.” Claudia (a white female in her late 50s) shared the details of such an encounter:

As we proceeded down the street, we observed a crowd of police with bikes and on foot. They appeared to be taking a break. Chatting and relaxed. Propped against the building a young man [was] laying in a twisted position with handcuffs. He looked stunned, staring straight ahead. It appeared he had blood running down the side of his face. He was obviously hurt but was being ignored by the police. I offered a cop at the edge of the crowd our card as the police were staring at us as we passed. The police officer took the card, read it and laughed, then took it to show the other officers.

Claudia’s account suggests that at least some police regarded the peace team as an amusement rather than an authentic partner with whom they might collaborate in achieving public order. Whether or not her account depicts the modal response among all officers we do not know. However, there is reason to suggest that this may be the case. Elsewhere, I have observed the contrasting meanings of demonstrators who view public streets as “democratic space” and police who define these same streets as “jurisdictional space” (Martin 2013b). Moreover, contemporary police framing of mass protests in the United States is one identifying all demonstrations as rife with the potential for terrorism. This frame is prominent in discussions of new policing models (Fernandez 2008; Gillham et al. 2013; Starr et al. 2011). Recent reports reveal significant trends in the militarization of police forces across the United States following policy and spending set by the Department of Homeland Security (Appuzo 2014; Bauer 2014; Tileva 2014). As one activist during the protests told me, “I talk with cops all the time. They ask us to leave our backpacks at home because they have been told by their superiors that a bomb could be in any one of them. They seem pretty paranoid, so I left mine at home.” Given the present national context of heightened fear (Engelhardt 2011) whereby all protesters may be regarded as potential terrorists, it is significant that peacekeepers reported having any influence with police. Consequently, Claudia’s account above—reporting the exclusion of peacekeepers from police encounters with protesters—is not surprising.

Discussion

Like protest action on the street, peacekeeper activities are ultimately shaped by the ways in which police assert their jurisdiction—the degrees and nature of force used by police that enable and constrain peacekeeper intervention. Achieving a peaceful order on the street demands performances from peacekeepers that are rife with paradoxes. Peacekeepers in Ferguson as well as those whom I interviewed in St. Paul suggested that they were forced to live with the contradictions of their work, taking comfort in those successes they believed exemplified their mission, ideology, and collective identity—rescuing bystanders from tear gas; dissuading protesters from engaging in destructive actions; convincing police to allow peacekeepers to clear protesters from intersections, so that force would not be used. Across venues, peacekeepers remained troubled by their lack of credibility with demonstrators, claiming that inadequate planning, training, and public relations work was responsible for misunderstandings on the part of the protesters. For many activists, peacekeepers appeared to reinforce the power arrangements between protesters and police. The exception to this dynamic appeared at rallies where peacekeepers placed themselves between pro-Trump and anti-Trump protesters, while police remained spectators until violence culminated in an arrestable offense (Queally, Carcamo, and Do 2016).

The collective ideology of peacekeepers—supporting democracy through humanistic intervention—logically demands the dismantling of preemptive practices and hard repression by police. Indeed, most peacekeepers expressed anger at these practices in postdemonstration interviews. In sustaining their collective identity as nonpartisans, peacekeepers across demonstration contexts rejected protester definitions casting them as stooges of the police. A very small number of RNC peacekeepers I interviewed lived in a state of cognitive and emotional discomfiture both during and after the protests, viewing the assessment by activists as accurate. This group of peacekeepers had been detained during a mass sweep where police were indiscriminate in their arrests. Observing police raids, having friends subjected to the use of rubber bullets, pepper spray, and teargas, led these members to question whether their time on the street might not better be served as protesters rather than peacekeepers. One might expect that those peacekeepers jailed by police in Ferguson might similarly construct this definition of their own activities.

Most peacekeepers shared a devout adherence to peaceful order as well as a strong desire to be officially recognized during demonstrations—conditions they touted as requisites for keeping people from harm. Some peacekeepers concluded that, for the most part, they had no alternative but to simply reiterate police orders, justifying their position by emphasizing the sanctity of peace and the responsibility of protesters to help maintain it. Through both my interviews and news reports collected in Ferguson, Los Angeles, and Charlotte, it appears that the role cherished most by peacekeepers was that of being a “human involvement shield.” Yet in no situations I observed during my time on the street, nor reported in later news interviews, were peacekeepers successful in preventing the beating, pepper spraying, or tear gassing of protesters. At the RNC, concerns for potential danger led peacekeepers like those previously cited (Dustin) to the conclusion that “If there is ever anything with this much danger involved, I think we should talk about a way that we could be more involved with the police.” In Ferguson, some peacekeepers shuttled protesters out of zones heavily tear gassed by police, providing aid for the sake of reengagement, while others admonished them to cease protesting altogether.

The activities of peacekeepers across demonstrations at the 2008 RNC protests, BLM protests and Trump rallies represent involvements that are precariously contingent—partial, conditional, and ancillary to police. Peacekeepers are granted license to consult with protesters on behalf of police but only when police determine that their immediate objective—such as clearing an intersection—is achieved more expeditiously with rather than without them. The operation of peace teams, then, displays features of what Althusser (2008), referred to as an “ideological state apparatus.” For Althusser, political economies may exist as peaceful order because they are maintained by repressive state apparatuses such as the military or police or by an ideological state apparatus—an institution exerting ideological social control. Such control may be peaceful, compelling, and lead people to gain a sense of agency even as they reproduce the conditions of their own domination. Believing that police “are children of God—sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, humans—hot, tired, possibly hungry, bored, scared…” and one has a moral imperative to serve as a shield for a group granted a legal monopoly on killing—a group whom peacekeepers themselves defined as overly militarized—poignantly reveals this feature.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Janelle Wilson, Kent Sandstrom, and Peter Hall for reading an earlier draft of this article. Much appreciation as well to Michael Borer, Dean Johnson and Daina Harvey for the insightful suggestions they made during revisions of the draft.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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