Things That Can and Cannot Be Said

by John Cusack

JC: The first time you spoke at the World Social Forum . . . when was that? AR: In 2003, in Porto Alegre . . . just before the US invasion of Iraq.4 JC: And then you went the next year in Mumbai and it was . . . AR: . . . totally NGO-ized.5 So many major activists had turned into travel agents, just having to organize tickets and money, flying people up and down. The forum suddenly declared, “Only nonviolence, no armed struggles . . .” They had turned Gandhian. JC: So anyone involved in armed resistance . . . AR: All out, all out. Many of the radical struggles were out. And I thought, fuck this. My question is, if, let’s say, there are people who live in villages deep in the forest, four days’ walk from anywhere, and a thousand soldiers arrive and burn their villages and kill and rape people to scare them off their land because mining companies want it—what brand of nonviolence would the stalwarts of the establishment recommend? Nonviolence is radical political theater. JC: Effective only when there’s an audience . . .