Sunday’s day of Activism turned out to be an incredible experience, making new friends, seeing new faces at the IDP (shout out: Team Timberland!), making tons of amazing bags, doing hilarious street theater, and gathering signatures and handing out pledge cards. Everyone was able to approach the day mindfully in their own way, and truly engage in mindful activism. I leave it to awesome organizers Rafi and Patrick to give you the details.
One question I was left with: Does being mindful always mean being polite? Does being compassionate mean never hurting anyone’s feelings or taking from them, even if they are hurting others; does it mean playing “by the rules”?

I.e. I’ve been studying ACTUP recently, and their methods were confrontational: Busting into the stock exchange and stopping trading, wrapping a giant condom around Jesse Helms house, breaking into the FDA and Drug Companies to steal anti-HIV drug formulas so they could have them made cheaply for those who couldn’t afford them. All of these break at least one of the 8 precepts, yet they brought healthcare to the forefront of national debate, they made HIV treatment a (more) affordable option for those who had the virus, and they saved lives. Thousands of lives.
I was not part of ACTUP but I wonder, could you have engaged in those tactics and practiced mindfulness? Can you break and enter and steal from corporations and do things to politicians homes and still be “Buddhist”, if you are saving lives?
If the answer is yes, then: If we really believe the environment is as badly damaged as we say, which means that (more) people will die if we don’t stop the degradation, are similar tactics against oil companies and factory farms and politicians who refuse to take action justified? If the answer is NO; Does that mean that to be mindful you have to be polite, and watch your friends (or earth, and many people) die? Is there a middle ground I’m missing, and what does that look like in practice?