The second in a continuing series introducing the work of Dorothy Day. This week, we’ll work out of order, asking what contemporary protests happening across college campuses over Israel and Palestine have to do with her.
The Appropriation of an Icon
Dorothy Day is, we’ve said already, a bit of a Rorschach symbol: as a ubiquitous figure, she finds herself dragged in wherever something like nonviolent protest or poverty get mentioned. Case in point.
In recent weeks, protests have broken out all over the country surrounding the Palestinian conflict, with diffuse demands being made by protesters at various university campuses. At one level, the demands are fairly similar: a permanent ceasefire in Palestine. Some, at Princeton, are demanding divestment of university investments from Israeli companies. Some, at Emory University, are linking Palestine to the “City Cop” program, connecting policing efforts in Atlanta somehow to Palestinian politics. Some, such as Columbia, have taken only not just a pro-Palestinian approach, but an anti-Israeli approach.
But all of them, in one way or another, link the conflict in Palestine with a constellation of other struggles and questions. My concern with Day’s inevitable name-checking at this point has less to do with gatekeeping than it does with how she does and doesn’t comport with the present spate of protests.
If all we see when we see Day is the practice of nonviolent protest, then it’s no wonder she winds up being the figurehead of whatever movement is afoot. But when we attend to the specifics of Day’s writings about her protest involvement, a much more interesting kind of politics emerges.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Christian Ethics in the Wild to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.