peaceful protest the only option essay

Are peaceful protests more effective than violent ones?

Search Search

As unrest erupts across the world after the killing of a Black man, George Floyd, by a white police officer, even some peaceful protests have descended into chaos, calling into question the efficacy of violence when it comes to spurring social change.

“There’s certainly more evidence that peaceful protests are more successful because they build a wider coalition,” says Gordana Rabrenovic , associate professor of sociology and director of the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict.

Gordana Rabrenovic is an associate professor of sociology and director of the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict. Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University

Who’s responsible for inciting this violence—the protesters or the police—is another debate entirely. But, Rabrenovic says, one thing is clear: in order for a movement to gain support and inspire lasting change, peace and consensus are essential.

“Violence can scare away your potential allies. You need the people on the sidelines to say, ‘This is my issue, too,’” she says. “For the people who say, ‘All lives matter,’ that’s true, but not all lives are in danger. You need to convince them.”

Still, it’s not always easy, or even feasible, for groups of oppressed people to take this moral high road, Rabrenovic says.

“The system doesn’t work for them,” she says. “They may think the only way to deal with the system is to destroy it.”

Black people in the U.S. are not only three times more likely to be killed by police than white people, but they’re also less likely to be armed than white people during these interactions with police.

For Black people who experience violence at the hands of the people and institutions that are supposed to protect them, the question becomes: “If they use violence, why shouldn’t we use violence?” Rabrenovic says. “They know that violence works, otherwise they wouldn’t use it.”

Exactly how that violence manifests is another matter entirely, but, Rabrenovic says, one thing is almost always true: violence is the spark that ignites the movement.

The civil rights movement of the 1960s is one example. The overall ethos of Martin Luther King Jr.’s movement was peace. But the catalyst was violence—hundreds of years of lynchings, lawful inequality, and oppression.

In fact, peace was strategically used during the civil rights movement to emphasize the violence Black people in the U.S. endured. Protesters were intentionally peaceful to prevent any question of who started the violence and whether it was justified. The results were inarguable visuals of peaceful Black protesters being attacked by dogs and beaten by police.

“Even peaceful civil rights movements are violent because it’s violence that motivates people to take action,” Rabrenovic says. Translating a violent history into a peaceful future is the hard part.

“Violence might be the quickest way to achieve your goals, but in order to sustain your victory, you would need to use coercion and have some kind of apparatus in place that keeps people in constant fear of punishment,” she says. “And nobody wants to live like that.”

While the George Floyd protests are a good starting point, the protests alone aren’t enough to sustain an entire movement, Rabrenovic says. “We need to give people other tools.”

Voting is one example. “We need to vote,” she says. “The government is us.”

One could argue that for Black and other disenfranchised people in the U.S., voting seems futile . But Rabrenovic counters, “If voting didn’t work, there wouldn’t be voter suppression.”

“You can’t suppress everyone,” she says. “That’s why it’s important to build a wide coalition, to bring in as many people as you can.”

We can’t keep living with only ourselves in mind. We need each other, she says. And protests are only the beginning.

For media inquiries , please contact [email protected] .

Editor's Picks

Shotspotter improves detection and response to gunfire, but doesn’t reduce crime, northeastern research finds, you may have heard of his boston hot spots, but this restaurateur’s menu includes a finance degree from northeastern, desert locusts’ jaws sharpen themselves, northeastern materials scientist discovers, from the operating room to pediatrics, northeastern co-op says work in spanish medical clinic cemented his career goal, british prime minister rishi sunak has gambled the house on a july election. northeastern experts explain what might be behind his thinking, featured stories, .ngn-magazine__shapes {fill: var(--wp--custom--color--emphasize, #000) } .ngn-magazine__arrow {fill: var(--wp--custom--color--accent, #cf2b28) } ngn magazine fiona howard’s body was collapsing. now she’s a world-ranked dressage rider aiming for the paris paralympics, .ngn-magazine__shapes {fill: var(--wp--custom--color--emphasize, #000) } .ngn-magazine__arrow {fill: var(--wp--custom--color--accent, #cf2b28) } ngn magazine why james corden is looking to use tax breaks to build on barbie’s success and woo more hollywood filming to britain, extremist communities continue to rely on youtube for hosting, but most videos are viewed off-site, northeastern research finds, can scarlett johansson sue openai over its voice assistant northeastern intellectual property law experts weigh in.

Recent Stories

Featured Topics

Featured series.

A series of random questions answered by Harvard experts.

Explore the Gazette

Read the latest.

Footnote leads to exploration of start of for-profit prisons in N.Y.

Moderator David E. Sanger (from left) with Ivo Daalder, Karen Donfried, and Stephen Hadley.

Should NATO step up role in Russia-Ukraine war?

It’s on Facebook, and it’s complicated

In her book, “Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict,” Harvard Professor Erica Chenoweth explains why civil resistance campaigns attract more absolute numbers of people.

Photo by Hossam el-Hamalawy

Nonviolent resistance proves potent weapon

Michelle Nicholasen

Weatherhead Center Communications

Erica Chenoweth discovers it is more successful in effecting change than violent campaigns

Recent research suggests that nonviolent civil resistance is far more successful in creating broad-based change than violent campaigns are, a somewhat surprising finding with a story behind it.

When Erica Chenoweth started her predoctoral fellowship at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs in 2006, she believed in the strategic logic of armed resistance. She had studied terrorism, civil war, and major revolutions — Russian, French, Algerian, and American — and suspected that only violent force had achieved major social and political change. But then a workshop led her to consider proving that violent resistance was more successful than the nonviolent kind. Since the question had never been addressed systematically, she and colleague Maria J. Stephan began a research project.

For the next two years, Chenoweth and Stephan collected data on all violent and nonviolent campaigns from 1900 to 2006 that resulted in the overthrow of a government or in territorial liberation. They created a data set of 323 mass actions. Chenoweth analyzed nearly 160 variables related to success criteria, participant categories, state capacity, and more. The results turned her earlier paradigm on its head — in the aggregate, nonviolent civil resistance was far more effective in producing change.

The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs (WCFIA) sat down with Chenoweth, a new faculty associate who returned to the Harvard Kennedy School this year as professor of public policy, and asked her to explain her findings and share her goals for future research. Chenoweth is also the Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

Erica Chenoweth

WCFIA: In your co-authored book, “ Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict ,” you explain clearly why civil resistance campaigns attract more absolute numbers of people — in part it’s because there’s a much lower barrier to participation compared with picking up a weapon. Based on the cases you have studied, what are the key elements necessary for a successful nonviolent campaign?

CHENOWETH: I think it really boils down to four different things. The first is a large and diverse participation that’s sustained.

The second thing is that [the movement] needs to elicit loyalty shifts among security forces in particular, but also other elites. Security forces are important because they ultimately are the agents of repression, and their actions largely decide how violent the confrontation with — and reaction to — the nonviolent campaign is going to be in the end. But there are other security elites, economic and business elites, state media. There are lots of different pillars that support the status quo, and if they can be disrupted or coerced into noncooperation, then that’s a decisive factor.

The third thing is that the campaigns need to be able to have more than just protests; there needs to be a lot of variation in the methods they use.

The fourth thing is that when campaigns are repressed — which is basically inevitable for those calling for major changes — they don’t either descend into chaos or opt for using violence themselves. If campaigns allow their repression to throw the movement into total disarray or they use it as a pretext to militarize their campaign, then they’re essentially co-signing what the regime wants — for the resisters to play on its own playing field. And they’re probably going to get totally crushed.

In 2006, Erica Chenoweth believed in the strategic logic of armed resistance. Then she was challenged to prove it.

Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer

WCFIA: Is there any way to resist or protest without making yourself more vulnerable?

CHENOWETH: People have done things like bang pots and pans or go on electricity strikes or something otherwise disruptive that imposes costs on the regime even while people aren’t outside. Staying inside for an extended period equates to a general strike. Even limited strikes are very effective. There were limited and general strikes in Tunisia and Egypt during their uprisings and they were critical.

WCFIA: A general strike seems like a personally costly way to protest, especially if you just stop working or stop buying things. Why are they effective?

CHENOWETH: This is why preparation is so essential. Where campaigns have used strikes or economic noncooperation successfully, they’ve often spent months preparing by stockpiling food, coming up with strike funds, or finding ways to engage in community mutual aid while the strike is underway. One good example of that comes from South Africa. The anti-apartheid movement organized a total boycott of white businesses, which meant that black community members were still going to work and getting a paycheck from white businesses but were not buying their products. Several months of that and the white business elites were in total crisis. They demanded that the apartheid government do something to alleviate the economic strain. With the rise of the reformist Frederik Willem de Klerk within the ruling party, South African leader P.W. Botha resigned. De Klerk was installed as president in 1989, leading to negotiations with the African National Congress [ANC] and then to free elections, where the ANC won overwhelmingly. The reason I bring the case up is because organizers in the black townships had to prepare for the long term by making sure that there were plenty of food and necessities internally to get people by, and that there were provisions for things like Christmas gifts and holidays.

WCFIA: How important is the overall number of participants in a nonviolent campaign?

CHENOWETH: One of the things that isn’t in our book, but that I analyzed later and presented in a TEDx Boulder talk in 2013 , is that a surprisingly small proportion of the population guarantees a successful campaign: just 3.5 percent. That sounds like a really small number, but in absolute terms it’s really an impressive number of people. In the U.S., it would be around 11.5 million people today. Could you imagine if 11.5 million people — that’s about three times the size of the 2017 Women’s March — were doing something like mass noncooperation in a sustained way for nine to 18 months? Things would be totally different in this country.

“Countries in which there were nonviolent campaigns were about 10 times likelier to transition to democracies within a five-year period compared to countries in which there were violent campaigns — whether the campaigns succeeded or failed.” Erica Chenoweth

WCFIA: Is there anything about our current time that dictates the need for a change in tactics?

CHENOWETH: Mobilizing without a long-term strategy or plan seems to be happening a lot right now, and that’s not what’s worked in the past. However, there’s nothing about the age we’re in that undermines the basic principles of success. I don’t think that the factors that influence success or failure are fundamentally different. Part of the reason I say that is because they’re basically the same things we observed when Gandhi was organizing in India as we do today. There are just some characteristics of our age that complicate things a bit.

WCFIA: You make the surprising claim that even when they fail, civil resistance campaigns often lead to longer-term reforms than violent campaigns do. How does that work?

CHENOWETH: The finding is that civil resistance campaigns often lead to longer-term reforms and changes that bring about democratization compared with violent campaigns. Countries in which there were nonviolent campaigns were about 10 times likelier to transition to democracies within a five-year period compared to countries in which there were violent campaigns — whether the campaigns succeeded or failed. This is because even though they “failed” in the short term, the nonviolent campaigns tended to empower moderates or reformers within the ruling elites who gradually began to initiate changes and liberalize the polity.

One of the best examples of this is the Kefaya movement in the early 2000s in Egypt. Although it failed in the short term, the experiences of different activists during that movement surely informed the ability to effectively organize during the 2011 uprisings in Egypt. Another example is the 2007 Saffron Revolution in Myanmar, which was brutally suppressed at the time but which ultimately led to voluntary democratic reforms by the government by 2012. Of course, this doesn’t mean that nonviolent campaigns always lead to democracies — or even that democracy is a cure-all for political strife. As we know, in Myanmar, relative democratization in the country’s institutions has been accompanied by extreme violence against the Rohingya community there. But it’s important to note that such cases are the exceptions rather than the norm. And democratization processes tend to be much bumpier when they occur after large-scale armed conflict instead of civil resistance campaigns, as was the case in Myanmar.

WCFIA: What are your current projects?

CHENOWETH: I’m still collecting data on nonviolent campaigns around the world. And I’m also collecting data on the nonviolent actions that are happening every day in the United States through a project called the Crowd Counting Consortium , with Jeremy Pressman of the University of Connecticut. It began in 2017, when Jeremy and I were collecting data during the Women’s March. Someone tweeted a link to our spreadsheet, and then we got tons of emails overnight from people writing in to say, “Oh, your number in Portland is too low; our protest hasn’t made the newspapers yet, but we had this many people.” There were the most incredible appeals. There was a nursing home in Encinitas, Calif., where 50 octogenarians organized an indoor women’s march with their granddaughters. Their local news had shot a video of them and they asked to be counted, and we put them in the sheet. People are very active and it’s not part of the broader public discourse about where we are as a country. I think it’s important to tell that story.

This originally appeared on the Weatherhead Center website . Part two of the series is now online.

The artwork, “Love and Revolution,” revolutionary graffiti at Saleh Selim Street on the island of Zamalek, Cairo, was photographed by Hossam el-Hamalawy on Oct. 23, 2011.

Share this article

Six receive honorary degrees

Harvard recognizes educator, conductor, theoretical physicist, advocate for elderly, writer, and Nobel laureate

Everything counts!

New study finds step-count and time are equally valid in reducing health risks

Five alumni elected to the Board of Overseers

Six others join Alumni Association board

Nonviolence

As a theologian, Martin Luther King reflected often on his understanding of nonviolence. He described his own “pilgrimage to nonviolence” in his first book, Stride Toward Freedom , and in subsequent books and articles. “True pacifism,” or “nonviolent resistance,” King wrote, is “a courageous confrontation of evil by the power of love” (King, Stride , 80). Both “morally and practically” committed to nonviolence, King believed that “the Christian doctrine of love operating through the Gandhian method of nonviolence was one of the most potent weapons available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom” (King, Stride , 79; Papers 5:422 ).

King was first introduced to the concept of nonviolence when he read Henry David Thoreau’s Essay on Civil Disobedience as a freshman at Morehouse College . Having grown up in Atlanta and witnessed segregation and racism every day, King was “fascinated by the idea of refusing to cooperate with an evil system” (King, Stride , 73).

In 1950, as a student at Crozer Theological Seminary , King heard a talk by Dr. Mordecai Johnson , president of Howard University. Dr. Johnson, who had recently traveled to India , spoke about the life and teachings of Mohandas K. Gandhi . Gandhi, King later wrote, was the first person to transform Christian love into a powerful force for social change. Gandhi’s stress on love and nonviolence gave King “the method for social reform that I had been seeking” (King, Stride , 79).

While intellectually committed to nonviolence, King did not experience the power of nonviolent direct action first-hand until the start of the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955. During the boycott, King personally enacted Gandhian principles. With guidance from black pacifist Bayard Rustin and Glenn Smiley of the Fellowship of Reconciliation , King eventually decided not to use armed bodyguards despite threats on his life, and reacted to violent experiences, such as the bombing of his home, with compassion. Through the practical experience of leading nonviolent protest, King came to understand how nonviolence could become a way of life, applicable to all situations. King called the principle of nonviolent resistance the “guiding light of our movement. Christ furnished the spirit and motivation while Gandhi furnished the method” ( Papers 5:423 ).

King’s notion of nonviolence had six key principles. First, one can resist evil without resorting to violence. Second, nonviolence seeks to win the “friendship and understanding” of the opponent, not to humiliate him (King, Stride , 84). Third, evil itself, not the people committing evil acts, should be opposed. Fourth, those committed to nonviolence must be willing to suffer without retaliation as suffering itself can be redemptive. Fifth, nonviolent resistance avoids “external physical violence” and “internal violence of spirit” as well: “The nonviolent resister not only refuses to shoot his opponent but he also refuses to hate him” (King, Stride , 85). The resister should be motivated by love in the sense of the Greek word agape , which means “understanding,” or “redeeming good will for all men” (King, Stride , 86). The sixth principle is that the nonviolent resister must have a “deep faith in the future,” stemming from the conviction that “The universe is on the side of justice” (King, Stride , 88).

During the years after the bus boycott, King grew increasingly committed to nonviolence. An India trip in 1959 helped him connect more intimately with Gandhi’s legacy. King began to advocate nonviolence not just in a national sphere, but internationally as well: “the potential destructiveness of modern weapons” convinced King that “the choice today is no longer between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence” ( Papers 5:424 ).

After Black Power advocates such as Stokely Carmichael began to reject nonviolence, King lamented that some African Americans had lost hope, and reaffirmed his own commitment to nonviolence: “Occasionally in life one develops a conviction so precious and meaningful that he will stand on it till the end. This is what I have found in nonviolence” (King, Where , 63–64). He wrote in his 1967 book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? : “We maintained the hope while transforming the hate of traditional revolutions into positive nonviolent power. As long as the hope was fulfilled there was little questioning of nonviolence. But when the hopes were blasted, when people came to see that in spite of progress their conditions were still insufferable … despair began to set in” (King, Where , 45). Arguing that violent revolution was impractical in the context of a multiracial society, he concluded: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. The beauty of nonviolence is that in its own way and in its own time it seeks to break the chain reaction of evil” (King, Where , 62–63).

King, “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence,” 13 April 1960, in Papers 5:419–425 .

King, Stride Toward Freedom , 1958.

King, Where Do We Go from Here , 1967.

Subscribe to BBC Science Focus Magazine
Previous Issues
Future tech
Everyday science
Planet Earth
Newsletters

Peaceful protests: Are non-violent demonstrations an effective way to achieve change?

From Extinction Rebellion to anti-government protests, many demonstrations rely on peaceful tactics to achieve their goals. But are nonviolent campaigns the best way to raise public awareness of a cause?

In August 2018, 15-year-old Greta Thunberg sat in front of the Swedish parliament building to protest for greater action on the climate crisis. She wanted the government to pledge to reduce carbon emissions.

A month later, on the day before the Swedish general election, Greta announced that she would continue to strike every Friday until the country’s policy changed. Her slogan was FridaysForFuture, which went on to represent the global school’s strike for climate.

Share this article

Science journalist and author

Terms & Conditions
Privacy policy
Cookies policy
Code of conduct
Magazine subscriptions
Manage preferences

Martin Luther King and Gandhi Weren’t the Only Ones Inspired By Thoreau’s ‘Civil Disobedience’

Thoreau’s essay became a cornerstone of 20th-century protest

Kat Eschner

Henry David Thoreau was born on this day 200 years ago. A few decades later, aged 32, he wrote an essay that fundamentally influenced twentieth-century protest.

"Civil Disobedience," originally titled "Resistance to Civil Government," was written after Thoreau spent a night in the unsavory confines of the Concord, Massachusetts jail–an activity likely to inspire anyone to civil disobedience. The cause of his incarceration was something which the philosopher found to be equally galling: he hadn’t paid his poll tax , a regular tax that everyone had to pay, in six years.

But Thoreau wasn’t just shirking. “He withheld the tax to protest the existence of slavery and what he saw as an imperialistic war with Mexico,” writes the Library of Congress. He was released when a relative paid the tax for him, and went on to write the eminently quotable essay that included the line “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.”

While another line in the essay–"I heartily accept the motto, ‘That government is best which governs least’”–is also well known, it was his line of thinking about justice, when he argued that conscience can be a higher authority than government, that stuck with civil-rights leaders Martin Luther King and Mohandas Gandhi.

“Thoreau was the first American to define and use civil disobedience as a means of protest,” Brent Powell wrote for the magazine of the Organization of American Historians. He began the tradition of non-violent protest that King is best known for continuing domestically. But there was an intermediary in their contact: Gandhi, who said that Thoreau’s ideas “greatly influenced” his ideas about protest.

But it wasn’t just these famous figures who rallied around Thoreau’s battle cry, writes Thoreau Society member Richard Lenat: the essay “ has more history than many suspect,” he writes.

Thoreau’s ideas about civil disobedience were first spread in the late 1900s by Henry Salt, an English social reformer who introduced them to Gandhi . And Russian author Leo Tolstoy was important to spreading those ideas in continental Europe, wrote literature scholar Walter Harding.

“During World War II, many of the anti-Nazi resisters, particularly in Denmark, adopted Thoreau’s essay as a manual of arms and used it very effectively,” he writes.

In America, anarchists like Emma Goldman used Thoreau’s tactics to oppose the World War I draft, he writes, and those tactics were used again by World War II-era pacificists. But it wasn’t until King came along that the essay became truly prominent in the U.S., Harding wrote. Vietnam War protestors also came to use its ideas, and others.

Despite this later global influence, writes Harding, Thoreau was “ignored in his own lifetime.” It’s not even known exactly who paid his taxes for him, wrote scholar Barbara L. Packer. In an interview 50 years after the incident, the writer’s jailer recalled that he had just reached home for the evening when a messenger told him that a woman, wearing a veil, had appeared with “Mr. Thoreau’s tax.”

“Unwilling to go to the trouble of unlocking the prisoners he had just locked up, [the jailer] waited till morning to release Thoreau–who, he remembered, was ‘mad as the devil when I turned him loose,'” Packer wrote.

Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

Kat Eschner | | READ MORE

Kat Eschner is a freelance science and culture journalist based in Toronto.

Why Martin Luther King Jr.’s Lessons About Peaceful Protests Are Still Relevant

The following feature is excerpted from TIME Martin Luther King, Jr.: His Life and Legacy , available at retailers and at the Time Shop

Revolutions tend to be measured in blood. From Lexington and the Bastille to the streets of Algiers, the toll on a repressed people seeking freedom is steep. But what does it take for a people to absorb degrading insults, physical attack and political repression in hopes that their oppressors will see the error in their ways? For Martin Luther King Jr. , it was a dream.

Over the course of a decade, King became synonymous with nonviolent direct action as he worked to overturn systemic segregation and racism across the southern United States. The civil rights movement formed the guidebook for a new era of protest. Whether it be responding to wars or protesting an unpopular administration at home, or the “color revolutions” across Europe and elsewhere overseas, the legacy of moral victory begetting actual change has been borne out time and again. The movement’s enduring influence is a far cry from its humble beginnings.

In March 1956, 90 defendants stood in wait in an aging Greek-revival courthouse in Montgomery, Ala. They faced the same charge: an obscure, decades-old anti-union law making it a misdemeanor to plot to interfere with a company’s business “without a just cause or legal excuse.” Their offense? Boycotting the city’s buses.

Step Into History: Learn how to experience the 1963 March on Washington in virtual reality

Young, old and from all walks of life—24 were clergymen—what united them was their dark skin and their act of quiet rebellion. First to face the judge was Martin Luther King Jr., 27, the youthful pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery. Almost four months earlier, a black seamstress named Rosa Parks had sparked a boycott of the city’s privately owned bus services after she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white patron. Within days, the Montgomery Improvement Association was formed to organize private carpools to compete with the buses. King, who had moved to the city only two years earlier, was quickly elected its leader.

For 381 days, thousands of black residents trudged through chilling rain and oppressive heat, ignoring buses as they passed by. They endured death threats, violence and legal prosecution. King’s home was bombed. But instead of responding in kind, the members of the movement took to the pews, praying and rallying in churches in protest of the discrimination they suffered. In the courthouse, 31 testified to the harassment they endured on the city’s segregated buses, not so much a legal strategy as a moral one. Unsurprisingly in a city whose white–supremacist “White Citizens’ Council” membership skyrocketed after the boycott, King was found guilty and jailed for two weeks. As he said later, “It was the crime of joining my people in a non-violent protest against injustice.”

The boycott ended on Dec. 20, 1956, after the Supreme Court ruled that the racial segregation of buses was unconstitutional. But the enduring victory of Montgomery belonged not to the lawyers but to King and his fellow pastors—and the tens of thousands who followed them. Their protest shone a spotlight on the absurd lengths (enforcing an arcane and rarely invoked law) to which an entrenched power would go to protect a system designed to rob citizens of their worth solely because of their skin color.

“The strong man is the man who will not hit back, who can stand up for his rights and yet not hit back,” King told thousands of Montgomery Improvement Association supporters at the city’s Holt Street Baptist Church on Nov. 14, 1956. The black citizens of Montgomery would demonstrate their humanity while victims of a broken society. Nonviolence was the “testing point” of the burgeoning civil rights movement, King explained. “If we as Negroes succumb to the temptation of using violence in our struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and bitter night of—a long and desolate night of bitterness. And our only legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.”

King had made the plight of the nation’s oppressed black citizens too plain to ignore, and it was a sharp blow to the “Christian conscience” of the white South. “They’ve become tortured souls,” Baptist minister William Finlator of Raleigh, N.C., told TIME then of his colleagues. “King has been working on the guilt conscience of the South. If he can bring us to contrition, that is our hope.”

Read more: John Lewis: Why Getting Into Trouble Is Necessary to Make Change

King became the symbol of nonviolent protest that had come to the fore in Montgomery. Inundated with speaking requests and interviews, and beset by threats of violence, King become a national celebrity both for what he accomplished and how. “Our use of passive resistance in Montgomery,” King told TIME, “is not based on resistance to get rights for ourselves, but to achieve friendship with the men who are denying us our rights, and change them through friendship and a bond of Christian understanding before God.”

On Jan. 10, 1957, weeks after black residents returned to unsegregated buses in the Alabama capital, King convened a gathering at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, the church where his father preached and that he would later lead. He invited influential civil rights activists, like strategist Bayard Rustin and organizer Ella Baker, and prominent black ministers from across the South to discuss how to expand the nonviolent resistance movement. After weeks of discussions, they formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a confederation of civil rights groups across the South, with King at the helm, that would go on to spread his philosophy.

Central to the SCLC’s mission was the notion that the Montgomery model could be replicated across the segregated South, to strike a blow against the entire Jim Crow system, which entrenched racial division in law and practice. But it wasn’t an easy sell. As the SCLC worked to recruit black churches and ministers, the organization faced real concerns of retaliation—both physical and economic—against those who signed on. Some doubted the method of nonviolent protest, believing the courts would eventually provide for integration. Others, especially younger groups, called for more-aggressive efforts.

But by 1960, nonviolent protests were sweeping across the South. In just one week in April, hundreds of black students were arrested as young people sat in and picketed segregated stores and diners from Nashville, Tenn., to Greensboro, N.C. Yet progress was painfully slow. In Savannah, Ga., the white mayor, Lee Mingledorff, demanded that the city council outlaw unlicensed picketing. “I don’t especially care if it’s constitutional or not,” he said. There were even more arrests, but the protests tired before achieving change.

The following year’s efforts were hardly more effective. A summer of Freedom Rides —in which black and white activists would jointly challenge segregation on buses—resulted in thousands of arrests and dozens of incidents of violence against demonstrators. But Jim Crow held. Groups consisting of younger and more impatient activists, like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality, shifted strategy, borrowing the lessons of Montgomery. In late 1961, the SNCC and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People targeted the heavily segregated city of Albany, Ga., with boycotts and sit-ins. The SCLC and King joined the effort, and in July 1962 King was jailed.

Days later, King was quietly bailed out and ejected from prison by Albany police chief Laurie Pritchett, who had studied the nonviolence protest method and released King to undermine it. In other cities, violence by police against peaceful demonstrators brought outcry and sympathy. But Pritchett met nonviolence with nonviolence. Within weeks, the protest fizzled out. For King, Albany was largely a failure, and his takeaway was for the movement to better pick its spots.

That place was Birmingham, Ala., “probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States,” King would say. Racially motivated bombings against blacks had earned the city the nickname “Bombingham,” and many of its majority-black residents were denied all but the most menial jobs—if they could find work at all. Unlike in Albany, where the goal had been to desegregate the city, in Birmingham King focused on the downtown shopping district. And unlike in Albany, he had a foil of the first degree: Birmingham’s commissioner of public safety, Eugene “Bull” Connor. Connor told TIME in 1963 that the city “ain’t gonna segregate no niggers and whites together in this town.”

The tactics changed too. While there were sit-ins and kneel-ins and demonstrations, the SCLC also encouraged an economic boycott of the city. Birmingham’s economic heart, its shopping district, was crippled when black residents refused to shop in segregated stores. Boycott organizers patrolled the streets to shame black residents into toeing the line. The protests were designed to force a crisis point, and Connor only aided the effort. When business took down “Whites Only” signs, the avowed racist threatened to pull their licenses. On Good Friday, King was jailed for his 13th time for more than a week. Using the margins of scrap paper smuggled into his cell, King drafted his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” among the clearest representations of his philosophy.

“Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue,” King wrote. “It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.”

Children provided the movement with some of its most powerful images, and the SCLC and King encouraged students to skip school to join sit-ins and marches. On May 2, the Children’s Crusade saw the arrest of hundreds of students in Birmingham, some under the age of 10, who sang and prayed as they awaited arrest. The New York Times compared the scene to a “school picnic” as they were transported to the city’s jail by every available city vehicle. Within hours, the prison was at capacity, filled with hundreds of school-age children.

Unbowed, Connor changed tactics, and the next day he deployed fire hoses and police dogs against a peaceful protest march in the downtown business district. The images, some of the most grotesque and iconic of the era, dominated nightly news broadcasts and national newspapers and magazines nationwide. In Washington, lawmakers took up the issue of civil rights legislation with renewed vigor. President John F. Kennedy said the day’s events were “so much more eloquently reported by the news camera than by any number of explanatory words,” calling the scene “shameful.”

In a paralyzed Birmingham, more than 2,000 people had been arrested, with officials turning the state fairgrounds into a makeshift holding area. The fire department bucked Connor’s orders to redeploy its hoses against demonstrators. The city’s chamber of commerce pleaded for talks, even as political leaders were steadfast in their commitment to Jim Crow. By May 8, the white business leaders had acceded to most of King’s demands, promising to desegregate diner counters, rest-rooms and water fountains within 90 days.

It was far from total victory, but King had something more important: the attention of an outraged and rapt nation. The legacy of the water cannons and dogs, of callused feet and imprisoned children, would be incarnated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act and the Twenty-Fourth Amendment, which banned poll taxes. Montgomery and Birmingham also formed the script for peaceably countering injustice in a nation founded on protest. From antiwar protests during Vietnam to Occupy Wall Street and beyond, King’s commitment to nonviolent protest lives on.

Imprisoned in Birmingham Jail, King wrote in praise of those nonviolently demonstrating outside “for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes.”

More Must-Reads from TIME

Javier Milei’s Radical Plan to Transform Argentina
The New Face of Doctor Who
How Private Donors Shape Birth-Control Choices
What Happens if Trump Is Convicted ? Your Questions, Answered
The Deadly Digital Frontiers at the Border
Scientists Are Finding Out Just How Toxic Your Stuff Is
The 31 Most Anticipated Movies of Summer 2024
Want Weekly Recs on What to Watch, Read, and More? Sign Up for Worth Your Time

The Power of Peaceful Protests

From the Salt Marches to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, history is littered with examples of peaceful protests having a powerful and lasting impact; shaping the world to become a fairer, freer and more peaceful place.

In recent weeks, over 50 demonstrations occurred across the United Kingdom, focussed on a broad range of issues ranging from environmental concerns to rising living costs 1 .

While driven by different triggers and motivations, these instances are not unique. The last few years have seen an increasing prevalence of demonstrations related to civil liberties and human rights. New technologies and social movements have enabled campaigns to gain traction and spread globally, encouraging their potential to become hugely influential.

Despite this, the latest Global Peace Index highlights a number of worrying trends. Violent demonstrations have risen by almost 50% since 2008. During this period, 126 countries deteriorated in their violent demonstrations score, compared to only 22 countries improving.

Positive Peace is defined as the attitudes, institutions and structures that create and sustain peaceful societies. While the other domains have improved since 2008, the attitudes domain has deteriorated by 1.8%, demonstrating a clear link between Positive Peace and the global trend in violent demonstrations.

Impact of peaceful protests

Building consensus is a critically important part of ensuring movements maintain momentum. The use of violence in a protest movement risks undermining that consensus and can alienate those who would otherwise support a cause. An example of this consensus building can be seen with the Salt Marches of the Indian Independence Movement.

Led by Mahatma Gandhi in 1930, during the height of Britain’s colonial occupation of India, dozens of activists marched over 240 miles to collect salt from the Arabian sea to protest a law preventing Indians from buying or selling salt in the country. This act of resistance was met with a crackdown from the British authorities, leading to the imprisonment of 60,000 people. That a peaceful protest was met with such a response drew publicity for the Indian Independence movement, garnering support from all over the world. This event was a significant turning point, triggering widespread civil disobedience that eventually led to India gaining its independence in 1947. The actions of Gandhi and his peers also heavily influenced the American civil rights movement.

Furthermore, the use of non-violence does not necessarily mean taking to the streets in protest. Techniques such as boycotts and strikes can be equally effective ways of making a change. Economic disinvestment and boycotts of South African goods, for example, played a key role in helping to end apartheid. In 1955 perhaps the most famous coordinated peaceful boycott occurred, Montgomery Bus Boycott. African-American activist Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on the racially segregated public transport system in Alabama. This triggered a 13-month mass boycott of public transportation by protesters, which had an enormous financial impact. The protest ended with the US Supreme Court ruling the policy of segregation unconstitutional, a watershed moment in the civil rights movement.

While mass boycotts are effective, even protests with a small number of participants can communicate messages and achieve change. Research suggests that it only requires 3.5% of the population to engage in non-violent resistance for these movements to be effective 2 . One such example was the infamous Black Power Salute at the 1968 Summer Olympics. After winning medals in the 200m sprint, African-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists while wearing black gloves during the American national anthem. This powerful message was seen around the world, drawing attention to the civil rights movement in America.

More recently, in 2018, 15 year-old Swedish school student Greta Thunberg decided to sit outside the Swedish parliament for three weeks. She held a sign reading “School Strike for Climate” to protest her government’s response to the growing climate emergency. What began with an individual protest by one teenager, triggered student-led protests all over the world and became part of a global movement against climate change. Thunberg’s activism has given her a platform, through which she has inspired millions. Thunberg’s actions and the actions of the 1968 Olympians show how it is possible, even for individuals, to make an enormous impact and inspire change.

The wave of aggressive anti-protest laws

While the impact and influence of protests and demonstrations continue to grow, this is being met with a wave of aggressive legislative restrictions, policies and responses designed to limit their effectiveness.

For example, 93% of the protests against racial injustice in the United States in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer were peaceful; however, the narrative around the protests was that they were largely violent demonstrations and as such triggered an excessive police response 3 .

In Sri Lanka, which ranked 90 on the Global Peace Index (GPI), the new government responded to protests with the widespread use of draconian emergency regulations. These laws granted the authorities sweeping powers to suppress protests and detain and punish activists 4 . The rise in demonstrations, and the violent crackdown, will likely be reflected in Sri Lanka’s ranking in next year’s GPI.

The United Kingdom ranked 34 on the GPI, has also recently strengthened its anti-protest laws; granting the authorities greater power to disrupt and limit protests, particularly those such as the Extinction Rebellion 5 . Furthermore, a number of territories within Australia (ranked 27 on the GPI) have recently passed anti-protest laws granting authorities more powers to specifically target non-violent environmental protesters 6 .

In their early days, digital tools such as social media played a key role as a tool for mobilisation. However, increasingly they are being weaponised by authoritarian states and used as a tool to quell protests and identify protesters.

As can be seen with the violent crackdowns on protests security forces often carry out – protests, demonstrations and social movements are not without their challenges. More often than not, the establishment does not support change and protesters are often vilified as well as legislated against.

Non-violent resistance is approximately ten times more likely to lead to democratisation than violent resistance

The expansion of legal restrictions and obstacles to protest presents a growing challenge to non-violent resistance. Despite this, non-violent resistance remains an incredibly effective tool for triggering substantial, supported and long-lasting social change. The research suggests that non-violent resistance is approximately 10 times more likely to lead to democratisation than violent resistance 2 .

Peaceful protests are a way for ordinary people to have their voices heard. Inherent power imbalances in society can result in people feeling marginalised and disenfranchised. Non-violent civil movements can offer anyone the opportunity to become involved and have a voice.

Between climate-related threats, widespread conflict and displacement, and increasing food insecurity, the challenges facing the world are complex and innumerable. Time and again, the power of peaceful protest has been proven as a tool to meet these challenges and make a positive change.

The interconnected and globalised world in which we live enables movements and ideas to spread, despite the many challenges they face. It is this power that continues to drive activists to the streets to pursue change.

1. ‘It’s scary – things are escalating fast’: protesters fill UK streets to highlight climate crisis and cost of living | Protest | The Guardian

2. Why nonviolent resistance beats violent force in effecting social, political change – Harvard Gazette

3. 93% of Black Lives Matter Protests Have Been Peaceful: Report | Time

4. Sri Lanka: Heightened Crackdown on Dissent | Human Rights Watch

5. What is the Police and Crime Bill and how will it change protests? – BBC News

6. Victorian and Tasmanian governments under fire for laws that target environmental protesters | Environment | The Guardian

Jerome Gavin

Jerome is studying a Masters of International Security at the University of Sydney, specialising in Peace and Conflict studies.

Vision of Humanity

Vision of Humanity is brought to you by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), by staff in our global offices in Sydney, New York, The Hague, Harare and Mexico. Alongside maps and global indices, we present fresh perspectives on current affairs reflecting our editorial philosophy.

Civil Unrest

How does positive peace affect protest movements.

What can Positive Peace tell us about social movements and civil resistance campaigns?

Global Peace Index

Peacefulness declines to lowest level in 15 years.

June 15 2022, Today marks the launch of the 16th edition of the Global Peace Index from the international think-tank the Institute for Economics &...

RELATED RESOURCES

January 2022

Positive peace report 2022.

Analysing the factors that sustain peace.

Global Peace Index 2022

Measuring peace in a complex world.

Never miss a report, event or news update.

Subscribe to the Vision Of Humanity mailing list

Email address *
Future Trends (Weekly)
VOH Newsletter (Weekly)
IEP & VOH Updates (Irregular)
Consent * I accept the above information will be used to contact me. *

a fist raised in the air during a protest in New York City on 06/04/2020

HISTORY & CULTURE
RACE IN AMERICA

2020 is not 1968: To understand today’s protests, you must look further back

The conflicts of 2020 aren’t just a repeat of past troubles; they’re a new development in the American fight for racial equality.

Coming together in opposition to police brutality and the death of George Floyd, protesters stand together in the streets of New York City on June 4, 2020.

The 1960s Black Power activist formerly known as H. Rap Brown once said that “violence is as American as cherry pie.”

Over the last two weeks, more than a thousand protests —most of them peaceful, though some devolved into violence—have swept across America caused by outrage over the death of George Floyd, recorded as a Minneapolis police officer pressed a knee to his neck for nearly nine minutes while Floyd was handcuffed and lying face down. Floyd was one of approximately 1,100 people killed annually by police use of force in the United States in recent years, according to data compiled by Fatal Encounters , a nonprofit that tracks police-involved deaths since 2000. A disproportionate number of the people killed, like Floyd, are African American.

Casting their eyes to the past, observers search for comparisons to today’s uprisings in the chaos of 1968. But the roots of 2020’s events go far deeper into the last hundred years of American history, which were punctuated by race riots, massacres, and clashes between the police and African Americans. Starting in 1919, three major waves of nationwide uprisings in the 20th century shed light on how the fight for racial equality has grown, how it’s changed, and what has stayed the same.

In July 1967, the beating of a black cab driver by white police officers began a six-day riot in Newark, New Jersey, leading to the deployment of the National Guard.

a black lives matter protest in New York City on 05/31/2020

More than 50 years later, protesters take to the streets of New York with raised fists, signs, and cell phones to speak out against the death of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer.

The first wave came in the early 20th century, culminating in the so-called Red Summer of 1919, when the country was recovering from World War I, bitterly divided by racial and gender tensions and anti-immigration fervor, and ravaged by the deadly Spanish flu epidemic. That year, dozens of violent racial clashes played out with ferocity in at least 25 places including small towns such as Elaine, Arkansas, and Bisbee, Arizona, and in big cities, including Omaha, Nebraska, Chicago, Illinois, and Washington, D.C. During this first wave, hundreds of thousands of African Americans were moving north in what came to be known as the Great Migration , seeking jobs created by wartime spending and fleeing the violence and oppression in the former Confederacy.

In 1921, white mobs, with the complicity of local police, torched Tulsa, Oklahoma’s black business district , known as “Black Wall Street,” killing about 300 people and leaving nearly all of the city’s black population homeless. In most of these massacres and riots, the police turned a blind eye to white violence and instead arrested African Americans for defending themselves.

Tensions between whites and African American World War I veterans was one of the the underlying causes of the Red Summer of 1919; in Chicago, the state militia was called in to police the riots.

The Chicago 1919 Race Riot was one of the Red Summer’s most devastating; lasting for 13 days, it left 38 people dead and 537 injured. In this image, an armed white mob pursue an African American man.

During the riot, whites set fire to scores of African American homes, leaving more than a thousand people homeless.

In response to these brutal tactics, African Americans invested energy in building up civil rights organizations in the 1920s and 1930s. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), founded in 1909, expanded its nationwide campaign for racial justice, creating one of the largest mass-membership organizations in the country, with 500,000 members by 1945. Millions of African Americans—in both the urban North and the rural South—gravitated toward organizations that promoted racial pride and self-determination, most notably the United Negro Improvement Association, led by Marcus Garvey. Empowered by the right to vote (a right denied to blacks through voter suppression across most of the South), African Americans in northern cities began to exercise their electoral clout.

For Hungry Minds

Fighting fascism abroad, racism at home.

The second mass wave of protest and racial violence came during the disruptive years of the Depression and World War II. In 1941, when civil rights and labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened a March on Washington to demand that the federal government open up defense jobs to African Americans, President Franklin Roosevelt succumbed to the pressure and signed an order creating the Committee on Fair Employment Practices. The hypocrisy of racism in a country that was fighting a world war for democracy fueled anger among many African Americans, unleashing one of the most intense periods of black political organizing and white opposition ever.

In a second wave of the Great Migration, hundreds of thousands of black workers moved north and west during the war, finding jobs in aircraft factories and shipyards. Newspapers serving African American communities, led by the Pittsburgh Courier , publicized racial discrimination and violence and launched the “Double V” campaign for victory against fascism abroad and against white supremacy at home.

striking trolley workers in Philadelphia

In August 1944 protesters marched in support of the Philadelphia Transit Company's decision to allow black men to drive trolleys after white employees went on strike. Many supporters called on African American's experiences in World War II: "We drive tanks. Why not trolleys?"

a mob turning over a car during the Detroit riots

On June 21, a white mob riots and overturns a car. For about 24 hours in June 1943, Detroit, Michigan experienced one of the second wave's worst race riots, resulting in the deaths of 25 blacks (17 of whom were killed by police) and 9 whites.

a white man slapping a black man during the detroit riots

During the Detroit Race Riots, a member of the surrounding white crowd attacks a black man in police custody.

In Mobile, Alabama and Detroit in 1943, whites fearful of rising black militancy and competition for jobs and housing rampaged through black neighborhoods and attacked black workers, a reprise of what had happened in the 1919 Red Summer. More than 240 race riots broke out that year throughout the United States. African Americans were not the only targets; the same year, in Los Angeles, white mobs angry about a new racial threat attacked young Mexican American men. In all of these cities, the police swept in, taking the side of white rioters.

During and after World War II, African Americans actively protested—both peacefully and violently—against racism and police brutality. New York’s City’s Harlem neighborhood was a hotbed of civil rights activism. In August 1943, after a white police officer shot Private Robert Bandy, an African American soldier on leave, angry crowds of blacks outraged at police brutality broke shop windows and clashed with law enforcement officials. In wartime Birmingham, Alabama , African Americans resisted second-class treatment on the city’s buses, clashing with white drivers, passengers, and police. In 1943 and 1944, civil rights activists in Chicago staged sit-ins at restaurants that refused to serve blacks. Those protests snowballed into a nationwide movement between the war and the mid-1960s.

The turbulent Sixties

Fueled by growth of the civil rights movement, a third and enormous wave of urban uprisings swept the country between 1963 and 1968. The protests grew out of decades of grassroots organizing against racial segregation and discrimination in employment, housing, transportation, and commerce, both in the North and the South.

In 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference marched in Birmingham, Alabama, demanding the desegregation of department stores, restaurants, public restrooms, and drinking fountains. In a violent show of force, Birmingham Commissioner of Public Safety Eugene “Bull” Connor infamously ordered police officers and firefighters to turn guard dogs and fire hoses on nonviolent protestors, many of them schoolchildren. In retaliation for the brutality, angry local blacks calling for self-defense rampaged through the city’s business district. When peaceful demonstrations did not get the desired results and law enforcement officials used force to suppress dissent, protestors often turned to more disruptive tactics.

marchers wearing placards that say "I AM A MAN" marching by national guard troops

Pointed bayonets and looming tanks menace protesters in the Memphis Sanitation Workers' Strike on March 28, 1968. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. would travel to Tennessee in support of the strike on April 3. King would be assassinated the following day.

a black storekeeper outside his shop with a sign that identifies the store as black-owned

During the Newark Race Riots in July 1967, African American businesspeople, like this store owner, appealed to racial solidarity to protect their businesses from looting.

a water cannon being used on young, black protesters

Peaceful protests, like this one in Birmingham, Alabama, were met with a violent police responses. In 1963 water cannons were fired on young African Americans during a protest against segregation, organized by Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth.

It was a pattern that would be repeated hundreds of times over the next several years, drawing energy from the rising Black Power movement, which called for black pride, self-defense against racist attacks, and self-determination. Philadelphia, Harlem, and Rochester burned in 1964; Los Angeles in 1965; and Chicago and other cities in 1966, culminating in the “Long Hot Summer” of July 1967, when 163 cities erupted in collective violence over police brutality and indifference to black suffering.

African Americans burned and looted stores and faced violent retribution on the part of big cities’ nearly all-white police forces. In Newark, New Jersey, 34 people died, 23 of them at the hands of the police. In Detroit, 43 people died, most of them shot by some 17,000 police, National Guard, and military troops sent to put down the rebellion. In April 1968, sorrow and fury over Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination turned to uprisings in which more than 100 cities were burned.

The 1960s uprisings differed from their precursors in 1919 and 1943. The later demonstrations—both nonviolent and disruptive—were led by African Americans, unlike the race riots in Chicago, Tulsa, Detroit, and Los Angeles that were instigated by white mobs. In the 1960s, almost all looting and burning happened in African American neighborhoods, targeting mostly white-owned local shops accused of overcharging black customers for inferior goods. Some whites joined in vandalizing stores, but the crowds and the business districts affected were overwhelmingly black.

The only whites out on the streets in sizeable numbers were law enforcement officials, who fueled the flames of discontent by beating and shooting protestors. Many white Americans—including presidential candidates Richard M. Nixon and George Wallace—cheered the police. Those who were more sympathetic to black protesters included prominent members of the blue-ribbon, bipartisan Kerner Commission, established by President Lyndon B, Johnson to investigate the causes of the 1960s uprisings. Its 11 members, including the nation’s only black U.S. Senator, Edward Brooke (R-Mass), and NAACP Executive Director Roy Wilkins, published a bestselling report that concluded that for many blacks, “police have come to symbolize white power, white racism, and white repression.”

MLK and Malcolm X only met once. Here’s the story behind an iconic image.

These Black transgender activists are fighting to ‘simply be’

What was the Stonewall uprising?

Changing face of protest.

In the decades that followed 1968, outbreaks of protest and conflict were more geographically isolated, but their causes and fury foreshadowed the events of 2020. In 1992, mass protests and riots exploded in Los Angeles after the acquittal of white police officers who were captured on video brutally beating black motorist Rodney King. Twenty years later, the deaths of more African Americans at the hands of police ignited public outrage, mass protests, and sometimes attacks on white-owned businesses. Activists around the country loosely banded together in the Black Lives Matter movement, founded in 2013 by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi in response to the acquittal of a Florida man who fatally shot an unarmed 17-year-old black student, Trayvon Martin, who was visiting relatives in a gated community. The coalition uses protests, social media, and publicity to shine a bright light on police violence against African Americans.

a man holding a sign that says 'black lives matter'

Since George Floyd's death on May 25, 2020, protests have spread from Minneapolis, the site of Floyd's death, to all 50 states and around the world. Kingmil Miceus is among those protesting in Nyack, New York.

2020’s uprisings resemble those of 1919, 1943, and 1968 in certain respects: They grow out of simmering hatreds seeded by the long, festering history of white violence and police brutality against African Americans that has taken hundreds of lives of per year , including Floyd, Breonna Taylor , and Ahmaud Arbery , three of the most recent victims. Most of 2020’s protests have been peaceful, early reports have found , with a fraction becoming violent.

But more than ever before, today’s demonstrations are markedly interracial—African American, Asian American, Latinx, and white faces, covered by masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19, appear in city centers, blockaded across bridges and highways, and gathered in front of the White House. It suggests a new phase of opposition that is uniting groups who did not have much in common for most of American history. In cases where conflicts have erupted, those assaulted, tear-gassed, or shot with rubber bullets are of all races.

tear gas being fired at protesters in Minneapolis

In Minneapolis shortly after Floyd's death, police fired tear gas at protesters outside the 3rd Police Precinct. Like protests in the past, violence and looting have erupted out of some of 2020's protests.

an NYPD police officer standing in front of a store with a cracked window on 06/01/2020

In New York City, anger has been directed at chain stores and the city's wealthier neighborhoods, a marked change from the riots of decades past.

The geography of violence and looting looks different in 2020 as well. Clashes of the past happened mostly in black neighborhoods; today, they have often started and spread to wealthy downtowns and suburban shopping malls. Looters have gone after local shops and global chains in wealthy neighborhoods such as Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, Soho in New York, and Buckhead in Atlanta. We can’t yet wholly grasp the significance of demonstrators spraying graffiti that say both “Black Lives Matter” and “Eat the Rich” but amidst soaring unemployment and ongoing racial injustice, we might be seeing something that is both old and new.

participants at a protest in New York City on 06/01/2020

Protests in past decades often saw people of different races on different sides. In 2020, protesters of different races, who wear masks as a caution against COVID-19, rally together in New York City on June 1, 2020.

The solidarity of today’s protesters transcends the bloody racial divides of the past and may be a springboard for more sweeping reforms. George Floyd’s death has sparked a global movement, with statues of slaveowners being torn down from Bristol, England to Richmond, Virginia ; anti-police protestors taking the knee from Seattle to Rio de Janeiro and Rome; and U.S. public officials debating whether to defund or rebuild their police forces from the ground up.

It remains to be seen if the uprisings of 2020 will resolve the long-standing issues of racial injustice fought again and again on America’s streets, but when many races march together rather than face off, the arc of history may be bending toward justice again.

10 million enslaved Americans' names are missing from history. AI is helping identify them.

Harriet Tubman, the spy: uncovering her secret Civil War missions

Who was Martin Luther King, Jr.?

The surprisingly subversive history of mini golf

Meet the 5 iconic women being honored on new quarters in 2024

Paid Content
Environment
Photography
Perpetual Planet

History & Culture

History & Culture
History Magazine
Mind, Body, Wonder
World Heritage
Terms of Use
Privacy Policy
Your US State Privacy Rights
Children's Online Privacy Policy
Interest-Based Ads
About Nielsen Measurement
Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information
Nat Geo Home
Attend a Live Event
Book a Trip
Inspire Your Kids
Shop Nat Geo
Visit the D.C. Museum
Learn About Our Impact
Support Our Mission
Advertise With Us
Customer Service
Renew Subscription
Manage Your Subscription
Work at Nat Geo
Sign Up for Our Newsletters
Contribute to Protect the Planet

Why Protests Are Necessary, Even When They Inconvenience People

This is a conversation I’ve seen before, and it has only escalated in recent months. It’s a conversation that has happened for years when it comes to protests for racial justice and other critical human rights issues, and it has made its way to climate conversation too. When Extinction Rebellion protesters began glueing themselves to public transport, or spraying buildings with fake blood. When kids start missing school, or organising en masse and challenging leaders. The words vary, but the general idea stays the same: why are they inconveniencing innocent people? Why are they blocking roads? Why don’t they let people do their job? Of course we should do something about injustice, but we don’t want to be an idiot about it.

Well, I decided it was time to address and examine these things a little more, because I imagine this conversation will happen a lot in the coming weeks. To save myself the time of having this conversation on repeat, and hopefully to help you too, I’m writing an explanation here.

So today let’s talk about the idea of civility .

Civility doesn’t mean what you think it means

When we have arguments about methods of protest, civility is a word that comes up a lot. When we think of the word civility, most of us will think of the modern definition, which is about politeness and courtesy. The idea is that protest movements like Extinction Rebellion aren’t civil, because they aren’t courteous and considerate of innocent bystanders, usually by disrupting their commutes by doing things like blocking roads. I understand this argument; of course it’s frustrating to be caught up in something when you aren’t the one that caused it.

However, it’s also important to recognise that the call for protestors to be more civil is also a fundamental misunderstanding of the word. Here’s a little etymology:

“‘Civitas’ is a juridical and political construct that Greco-Roman antiquity bequeathed to Western civilization. In Latin, it meant ‘city,’ in the sense of city-state, the body politic, the commonwealth. Consequently, ‘civilitas’—which became ‘civility’ in English—was the conduct becoming citizens in good standing, willing to give of themselves for the good of the city,”… “Building on the notion of ‘civilitas,’ here is a possible definition of civility for our times: The civil person is someone who cares for his or her community and who looks at others with a benevolent disposition rooted in the belief that their claim to well being and happiness is as valid as his or her own.”

We associate civility with being polite, but at its heart civility is deeply concerned with justice. To be civil is to care for your community, for your neighbour, for people you don’t know. To be civil is to be concerned with true equality, which means one must also to be invested in the work of dismantling racism, homophobia, the patriarchy, ableism, economic inequality, corruption, persecution of Indigenous peoples, violence and more. Advocating for the environment is fundamental to these issues because the marginalised are the first to be hurt by climate breakdown .

We know that polite dialogue alone does not create change, because marginalised communities have been talking about these issues for decades , their voices largely ignored . Oppressed people are already hurt by climate breakdown both globally and locally , and so the notion of what it means to be a good citizen must evolve with this knowledge.

Because civility is concerned with morality and with fighting for the rights and quality of life for all, and because there is an urgent need to protect the most vulnerable in our society, this cannot and does not always look like politeness.

Due to the frequent conflation of politeness and civility, it may seem incongruent to call people who shout and heckle avatars of civility, but they can be. Confronted with the decision to silently stand aside while public servants disrespect and endanger their communities, the protesters of the Trump administration have chosen to speak out. While their strategies for doing so may be considered rude, protesters who do speak out against inhumane politics are often actually guarding civility of government, as institutional civility is, at root, an issue of treating fellow human beings with dignity. “Civility is the shape that care takes,” Forni wrote . Protest is a profoundly civil action, even when the act of protest involves raising one’s voice, or politely refusing service on ethical grounds. It may not be mannerly to scream during a circus, but frequently it is the only way to be heard.

These contexts frame what civility means. True civility cannot align with the status quo, because the status quo kills and harms millions of oppressed individuals. These numbers will only increase as climate breakdown escalates, and so true civility can only result in protests. Especially because peaceful dialogue has continually been ignored and silenced.

Martin Luther King Jr was not civil

Most people who don’t like the actions of Indigenous activism, refugee activism , Black Lives Matter , Extinction Rebellion or other movements concerned with human welfare (although these groups repeatedly emphasise that their actions are rooted in non-violence) tend to look back with rose-tinted glasses at the type of activism they’d prefer. The civil kind.

The figure that is most frequently recalled in these moments is Martin Luther King Jr .

When (white) people look back at Martin Luther King Jr’s legacy, it is incredible to see just how whitewashed it has become . Rather than the radical, visionary, brave leader that he was, he is often portrayed as a harmless, peaceful man who calmly asked for what he wanted. This is not the case. When it comes to the civil rights movement, the nonviolent methods of protest that were used were both radical and very unpopular with Americans at the time .

For King—and more so for the younger generation of student civil-rights leaders who initiated sit-ins and Freedom Rides—nonviolence was militant. It was confrontational by design. Often, this sort of protest required breaking laws— which is why King went to jail dozens of times . …obstruction, public call-outs, and protests designed explicitly to provoke white onlookers into violence were part and parcel of the civil-rights strategy. But those tactics were not widely considered civil , and according to public-opinion polls, many whites believed black agitators were themselves the ones upending public order, and creating the conditions under which voters who supported white supremacy would only double down on their beliefs.

Just like climate protestors being arrested, Black Lives Matter blocking roads, or business owners refusing service to Trump officials, nonviolent direct action is rarely popular or orderly. But it is on the right side of history, and of morality. King knew this, and it is important that we remember the reality of the civil rights movement instead of propping up a fictional version as an excuse to delegitimise important protests.

And what is it America has failed to hear?” King asked. “It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity”… King and his intellectual forebears engineered nonviolence specifically as a tool that would break the violent foundations of white supremacy, and doing so necessarily meant disrupting order and breaking the law. The current model of civility counsels accommodation to violent power, but that course of action is actually antithetical to the Kingian project. Civil-rights protesters escalated confrontation and provocation in proportion to the violence that met them, seeking to push that violence to its logical end—either exhausting its proponents or horrifying voting bystanders.

Protest is public and disruptive by nature, which normally leads it to be unpopular at the time it is happening. But it is important to remember that these protests have always been concerned with making the world a fairer, safer, and kinder place for everyone. With the benefit of hindsight we see these protests for what they really are: ordinary people doing extraordinary things to improve the world around them. Every advancement of society and human rights has been fought for and hard-won, and these fights have often inconvenienced bystanders at the times they took place. Society still has a long way to go, which means inconveniences must continue. But, as time continues on, we will remember these moments differently when we look back on them.

By kneeling silently, Kaepernick was acting in the same dignified way civil rights demonstrators did in the 1960s: Students sitting quietly at lunchroom counters until they were dragged away, matrons shoved into police wagons, children being fire-hosed: All were quietly resisting what they believed was a societal wrong… As with so much, time changes things. Those students who had to be pulled away from lunch counters throughout the South were vilified back then. Today, many are considered heroes for their civil disobedience .

There is a history of effective protest

It’s not just the civil rights movement that proves this to be true. If we look back through the history of protests there are many notable examples of disruptive civil disobedience being effective, despite being unpopular with the general public or those in power.

Back in the late 1980s, many AIDS activists decided that the only way the country was going to become concerned about the growing human toll that HIV was claiming was to cause disruption. Steven Petrow writes a column for The Washington Post on LGBT issues called Civilities. Back then, he says, most of the country had to be shocked into caring about AIDS — and trying to find a treatment for it. A group of AIDS activists called ACT UP , which was dedicated to aggressively pressing for more research and services, infuriated a lot of people whose lives were disrupted by their demonstrations . But, Petrow says, something had to happen: “People were dying. The FDA was doing nothing. The Reagan White House had said nothing about AIDS well into the president’s second term. So, yes, that urgency justified that type of action.”

Although people probably felt their lives were inconvenienced by the choices of ACT UP, in retrospect it is clear that protesters were acting for the moral good. They were trying to save lives and save their communities. With time and a more well-rounded understanding, it is clear that this kind of disruption was necessary.

This is also the case for many protest movements that are happening today, including climate activism and racial justice activism ( which are inherently connected ). If we reach a point in the future where we have taken proper action to tackle the oncoming climate crisis, where we have clean air that doesn’t kill millions each year , where Indigenous people have legal rights and land rights , where the biodiversity of plants and animals is thriving , where people are connected to the natural world, we will look back and talk about how those who stood up, advocated and put themselves on the line were heroes too.

Protestors don’t want to be here either

There is also one key element that I also think often gets missed in discourse, and that is the fundamentally incorrect belief that the protestors love inconveniencing people.

I want to be really clear on this: protestors do not want to be protesting . People who protest are people who want their voices to be heard and action and reform to happen. Groups that organise protests are doing so in response to the fact that nothing is being done to dismantle injustice. They have tried other tactics, they have tried dialogue. Protest is an option that is resorted to because people are desperate for change, and those in power are blatantly ignoring them.

there’s an extent to which all protesters are going to seem uncivil to someone, depending on how narrowly you’re going to define civility. In itself, protest is uncivil if you consider only calm and reasoned dialogue around a table to be the gold standard of how to behave civilly in a democratic society. The very idea of protesting in the streets is disruptive. Even if you’re doing it peacefully, it could be considered uncivil by someone. And yet, protesters believe this disruption is necessary to get their point across, especially if they’ve done those other things – dialogue, negotiations, the quieter, calmer action – and it didn’t get them anywhere.

I know protest may frustrate or inconvenience you, but please remember that protestors are frustrated and inconvenienced too. Nobody wants to take time off work to sit outside in the cold, desperate to be heard. If they had the option of not protesting and leaders actually listening and acting on the demands made, they would take this option. Additionally, please know that in the case of Extinction Rebellion, organisers have coordinated with the London emergency services for months in advance of their rebellion, and it was Transport for London who refused to cooperate with them. Regardless, specific pathways have been kept clear to allow emergency vehicles and MPs through, tube lines are running, and local citizens are still able to cross many of the bridges on foot.

Ultimately, it’s also important to remember that apathy and indifference are the biggest threats to change, and in terms of climate we need change on such a huge scale that many have likened it to the mobilisation efforts of WW2 . There is an urgency because we essentially only have a decade to make massive strides towards a different world, and so there isn’t the time to use dialogue as a strategy on its own. Because that, so far, has not been enough.

It’s unfortunate that normal people sometimes get caught up in these more drastic methods of protest, but please remember that protestors are not deliberately trying to make your life worse. In fact, they’re trying to fight for it, alongside the lives of your children and grandchildren, and they’re trying to stand up for the millions of people that are already seriously harmed by the climate crisis .

That being said, if you are a person that cares about climate, there’s also an opportunity to be glad that you’re inconvenienced because it means that you can participate even when you can’t. When large numbers of people protest, there’s a hope that leaders will respond in order to stop the protests. A large part of this is also due to the inconvenience caused on the other side. When lives are disrupted it can prompt policymakers to act in order to keep the peace on all fronts, both by making protesters leave and by appeasing angry disrupted people. It lends itself to a larger collective voice demanding change. So if you care about climate but can’t miss work, be glad if your commute is interrupted! It also means you can participate too.

Civility can be a tool of oppression

I think this point is the most important. Please don’t read it as an attack, but as an opportunity to reflect, look inwards, and potentially grow.

If, when you see news of protests, your first reaction is to get upset about how disruptive these actions are, I implore you to ask yourself why you feel like this.

Because, here’s the thing, the notion of civility is often used as a tool of oppression.

We can see this stretching back through history in the form of colonialism. Instead of seeing colonisation for the violent, destructive practice of tearing apart communities and extracting resources for profit, colonisers have long seem themselves as bringing civility to savage nations. The problem is that the colonisers are the only ones defining what civility is.

That belief would indicate that some people are innately civil, while others need to have civility taught to — or imposed upon — them. Johnson says this is part of the underlying rationale for the enslavement of Africans imported into America and the genocide of Native peoples. “People of color don’t get to orchestrate the terms of civility,” she explains. “Instead, we’re always responding to what civility is supposed to be.” So the relationship between alleged civilizers and the people they’re “gifting” with civility, Johnson points out, is “inherently undemocratic, unequal and racist.” (Think of Native American children being forcibly removed from their homes and placed in so-called Indian boarding schools or Mexican children being punished for speaking Spanish in schools or African-Americans being forced to listen to sermons that preached that servants should obey their masters, etc. )

While we may not see this playing out in exactly the same historical patterns, this does still occur in many ways. One of these is in how we frame protest.

people are more likely to evaluate protesters as uncivil if the protesters are members of relatively marginalized groups, of lower social status, with less political power, or with less economic resources. Those groups are less likely to get the benefit of the doubt in terms of how the public perceives them. But this is not to say that some high status groups won’t be considered uncivil, too.

This will massively differ depending on the type of protest, and what the protest focuses on, but the biases are always there. Whether its hysteria over Colin Kaepernick’s peaceful protest or upset over climate demands, the facts remain the same. The marginalised are the most at risk in these situations. Climate breakdown hurts Indigenous people, global south countries, island nation states, people of colour, women, the poor and the disabled first. White, rich, global northerners will not feel these effects for much longer. If we focus on the method of protest and not the topic, we are silencing and tone policing the oppressed.

When protesters go out they’re doing it because they have a set of demands, concerns, a message they want to get across, and they struggle to get it across in any other way. When the response to that protest is not to engage on the actual issue but to instead talk about whether they protested appropriately, it’s a way of changing the subject.

Changing the subject like this effectively erases the voices of those protesting and those they are advocating for as a whole.

Honestly, if you are focused on how civil a protest is rather than the very real, urgent issues it is addressing, I would say that it is you that is being uncivil, if we take the original definition of the word. While protestors act in the true role of civility by advocating for equality and for their neighbour, it is the critics of the method of protest that erase these issues and don’t look out for their communities, instead changing the subject and ignoring dealing with the very real problems we are facing in today’s world.

The role of the media

It’s also important to critically examine the role our media plays in this. I have no doubt that the next few weeks will be filled with coverage that completely misses the point and instead focuses on the methods of protest.

Take, for example, the XR activists who sprayed fake blood on to the Treasury recently. This coverage from The Guardian very quickly explains what the protestors were concerned with, namely the UK’s role in the Middle East and investments in fossil fuels, and takes the time to look at these topics in more depth. Now, look at the same event covered by the BBC . The topic of protest is barely covered (note how the mention of the Middle East is completely absent), with much more focus on the means of protest. This is not to say that all Guardian reporting is good and all BBC reporting is bad, but that it’s important to look beyond the surface and engage thoughtfully with how the media covers protests.

It’s hard to put a fine point on the role media is playing, in part because they have a couple of different interests. On one hand, they might play up the more dramatic and disruptive nature of protest, in which case they may play a role in making protest seem more uncivil than it is, if they only go to the people holding the most outlandish signs and they don’t talk to the hundred other people who are out there protesting peacefully without that kind of outlandish message. They can heighten this appearance of incivility. They are also drawn to larger and more disruptive protest events in the first place, which, again, might lead to the impression that protest is more uncivil than it is. The vast majority of protest events are relatively small, peaceful, and uneventful, but that doesn’t get covered very much in the press, so they’re playing this role that is amplifying uncivility.

As we move forward, as you engage with news media, I urge you to remember that our media is owned and dominated by a very small number of people , who have specific biases and motivations. Please make sure to not just take reports on protest at face value, but to dig deeper below the surface to get an accurate timeline of events, as well as noting what people are actually protesting about, rather than how they’re protesting.

To learn more about improving media literacy and bias, read this guide.

Ultimately, I know protests may make your life more of a hassle. But please try to remember that protestors know this too, and they are only acting because they want you to be able to live in a thriving world. The fight for human rights is always messy, but people are trying their best.

Right now we’re in urgent times, and we have to act like it.

By: Francesca Willow

Francesca Willow

Francesca Willow is a Geordie writer and artist based in Cornwall/London. She believes the best way to see change happen is through consumer choice, intersectional collective action, and policy change.

If you dig my work but live a bit too far away to buy me a real coffee, you can send me a lil digital thank you here instead!

Why Are Peaceful Protests Turning Into Riots?

Let's shine a light on the darkness in the aftermath of george floyd's murder..

Posted June 2, 2020 | Reviewed by Lybi Ma

Since the murder of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis, peaceful protests have taken place in cities across the country, with thousands of people gathering in solidarity to speak out against systemic racism, and to demand change. Unfortunately, riots have also erupted, causing some police forces to shift from being a supportive presence to donning riot gear and focusing on damage control. Tragically, this disturbing turn of events is sabotaging the protesters' worthy mission and obscuring this urgent message: Black. Lives. Matter.

Why is this happening? Before you condemn this movement or dismiss these protesters as mindlessly acting out, ask: Who is actually inciting and participating in the violence? And why?

First, there is mounting evidence that disruptive outsiders, including extremists and white supremacist groups, are infiltrating these protests to advance their own agendas and subvert the racial justice and equality movement, by engaging in destruction and violence in order to trigger violent government reactions.

This brings us to a second factor: Law enforcement response. As local police and National Guard presence ramps up to curb violence, rising tensions have only escalated the aggressive reactions of law enforcement in some cities, including attacks on peaceful protesters with rubber bullets, pepper spray, batons, and tear gas, further antagonizing protesters. It has become a vicious cycle. And it is unconscionable that police brutality is being used against protesters, particularly people of color, who are exercising their right to peacefully protest against police brutality.

Indeed, we are here because police are more likely to respond aggressively to people of color, who also represent a disproportionate number of those killed in police custody. And these racial disparities are not new; they've been documented for decades . Also note that police in the U.S. kill far more people than police in any other developed, industrial democracy. Driving the point home, police violence is currently on full display in many cities.

And so, a third factor is the pent up and justified rage of perpetually, systemically oppressed people.

Clearly, we have a problem. Our society is rife with terrible racial injustice. And we can't afford to be distracted by the riots erupting out of these peaceful protests. We must address the systemic racial injustice at the root of disproportionate police violence, inequities, and discrimination against black and brown citizens. To right these terrible injustices would be to finally, truly make America great.

Where do we start? Here are five suggestions, particularly intended for all white people, and to inspire change agents and anyone who holds social power and influence:

First and foremost, be a better ally. Recognize that, as Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum writes , we all live in the smog of systemic racism and white supremacy--smog that surreptitiously pollutes our hearts and minds, and makes us, especially us white people, complicit without even knowing it. To rid our society and ourselves of this smog, we must become aware of its presence, notice all the damaging effects, and build non-polluting systems based on justice, equity, and racial equality. (For more details and guidance, especially for white folks, dive into the references listed at the end of this post.)

Second, we must shine a light on the outside disruptors fueling the riots, and hold them accountable. And we must continue to shine a light on brutal policing, and hold them accountable, and demand change, so that police get the training and support and leadership they need to protect and serve their communities, instead of terrorizing them. In fact, research shows that militarizing police departments warps the relationship between police and the community, creating more unrest. In contrast, when police show solidarity with protesters, such as in Queens, NY, Petersburg, VA, Flint, MI, and Oklahoma City, this "protect and serve" approach elicits unity, mutual cooperation , and far less conflict. Let's aim for more of that!

Third, make room for angry protests. Whenever peaceful demonstrators get swept up in the rage and power of their protest, we--especially us white people and police officers-- must empathize and accept their fury. And what about the looting? See it as a reaction against a society that has been looting black lives for centuries. As Trevor Noah explains in a powerful video (see references below), how can we even ask black and brown citizens to abide by social contracts, when our society violates those contracts every day with racial inequality, injustice, and systemic racism? Even Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. , known for promoting peaceful protest, underscored the fact that when oppressed people don’t feel heard, such as when change isn’t forthcoming and promises prove to be empty, they may well decide that rioting is their only option. So, whenever angry words or violent actions are perpetrated by people of color protesting against racial injustice, we must acknowledge that their outrage is justified. Because racial injustice-- and the white supremacy reinforcing it-- is truly an outrage.

Fourth, make the racial equality movement a priority. If we as a society are going condemn rioting, whoever is inciting or participating , it is imperative that we even more vigorously condemn the unjust conditions that spark riots and condemn the white supremacy that reinforces those conditions. As Dr. King so powerfully pointed out, “Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.”

And even if you argue that implementing social justice won't stop far-right extremists bent on burning everything to the ground, Dr. King's vision still stands. Because when social justice and equality prevail, oppression is lifted and everyone benefits, everyone thrives. And when people are thriving under the status quo, they're not interested in burning it down.

Fifth, but not least, vote for justice-minded, follow-worthy leaders, who can talk about race and prioritize the racial equality movement. Because as long as there is oppression, no one is free.

PBS.org (2003) Race: The Power of Illusion. An interview with Beverly Daniel Tatum.

Saad, L.F. (2020) Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor . Sourcebooks .

Stein, T. (May 30, 2020) Racism and Violence Aren't New and Won't Change Until We Do: We must demand and work for change if we are to heal as a nation . Psychology Today Blogpost.

Noah, Trevor (May 29, 2020) George Floyd, Minneapolis Protests, Ahmaud Arbery, and Amy Cooper. The Daily Social Distancing Show.

Martin, M. (May 31, 2020) "Raising White Kids" Author on How Parents Can Talk About Race . NPR All Things Considered.

Kendi, I.X. (2019) How To Be An Antiracist . One World

Tatum, B.D. Can We Talk? In Defining Racism , pp 65-68.

O'Brien, Conan. (June 1, 2020) Van Jones on George Floyd, Police Brutality, & What Comes Next. Conan on TBS

Fallon, J. (June 1, 2020) Jimmy Addresses Past Mistakes and Speaks to NAACP President Derrick Johnson. The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.

Deborah L. Davis, Ph.D. , is a developmental psychologist and the author of 6 books, including one about perinatal hospice titled A Gift of Time.

Find a Therapist
Find a Treatment Center
Find a Psychiatrist
Find a Support Group
Find Online Therapy
United States
Brooklyn, NY
Chicago, IL
Houston, TX
Los Angeles, CA
New York, NY
Portland, OR
San Diego, CA
San Francisco, CA
Seattle, WA
Washington, DC
Asperger's
Bipolar Disorder
Chronic Pain
Eating Disorders
Passive Aggression
Personality
Goal Setting
Positive Psychology
Stopping Smoking
Low Sexual Desire
Relationships
Child Development
Self Tests NEW
Therapy Center
Diagnosis Dictionary
Types of Therapy

At any moment, someone’s aggravating behavior or our own bad luck can set us off on an emotional spiral that threatens to derail our entire day. Here’s how we can face our triggers with less reactivity so that we can get on with our lives.

Emotional Intelligence
Gaslighting
Affective Forecasting
Neuroscience

There Is No Democracy Without Protest

Peaceful protests are at the heart of newer democracies, says Stephen Jones, director of the Davis Center's Program on Georgian Studies.

In May 2021, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili characterized a proposed public demonstration in defense of LGBTQ rights (the March for Dignity ) as “unreasonable.” It threatened “ civil confrontation,” he claimed. Such attitudes toward protest in precarious democracies like Georgia’s are endorsed by a number of Western democratic theorists. Mass protests outside institutional channels, they argue, are destabilizing. They signify institutional immaturity and democratic weakness. A consolidated democracy, on the other hand, is characterized by demobilization of the masses. Instead of street manifestations that challenge regime stability, parties and institutions channel the demands of social movements into legitimate political competition. This was the argument of Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe Schmitter in their early work on political transitions. They maintained that as democracies matured, social struggles would be absorbed into institutional and party channels. This would eventually lead to a form of normalized (consolidated) democratic politics.

This, it turns out, is a rather simplistic version of democratic development, and it is the opposite of what we see in Georgia. In Georgia, normalized politics is not democratic or integrative. Attempts at institutionalization in Georgia have led to popular exclusion, both politically and economically. Even in the more mature democracies, where democratic “consolidation” has been reached, O’Donnell and Schmitter’s model no longer holds water. In the US and Japan, for example, there is little evidence that institutionalization has expanded citizens’ access to power, and in the US case, political routinization contributed to the rise of a populist like Donald Trump. The experience of the last decade under leaders like Victor Orban and Jair Bolsonaro, who have captured state institutions, surely underlines why protest outside the usual channels is crucial to a country’s democratic health.

The implication, repeated by Georgia’s prime minister, that marches and campaigns against the ruling party are generated by disaffected radicals, is one of the oldest political instruments used to delegitimize dissent. In the context of Georgia’s “consolidated populism,” where sparring parties have failed to represent the public interest, protest remains a vital component of active citizenship. If protest remains non-violent, it can deepen democracy’s reach and improve its chances of survival. Democratic advances at the grass roots level may be reversed, or they may take a generation to bear fruit, but at the heart of every democracy there is always a history of protest. Think of the US civil rights movement of the 1960s, Northern Ireland from 1967-72, “people’s power” in the Philippines from 1983-86, the revolutions of 1989, South Africa from 1983 to 1994.

If protest remains non-violent, it can deepen democracy’s reach and improve its chances of survival.

Protest does not always work in democracy’s favor. The violent demonstrations in Georgia against gay rights are an example. But Georgia’s experience over the last thirty years, despite the disappointing outcomes of the Saakashvili and Georgian Dream administrations, underlines the strong connection between protest and democratization. The protests in November 2003 against a corrupt presidential system, the fall 2007 demonstrations which opposed an authoritarian president and his administration’s disregard for civil rights, the persistent campaigns against governments’ anti-environmental policies, whether it was the construction of the Caucasian Mountain Railway in 1987, or the Namakhvani dam in West Georgia in 2020-21, and the recent campaigns against forms of sexual discrimination, are all examples of how protest can stall, or in some cases, prevent the slide into democratic decline.

Very often, protest is the only way minority voices can be heard against what Steve Levitsky and Lucan way have characterized as exclusionary political systems . Ronald Inglehart, in his evaluation of the political values most conducive to liberal democracy, sees citizens’ belief in the right of protest as pivotal to a democratic political culture (what he calls a “post-materialist” value). Protest is at the core of democratic consciousness, which is why authoritarian governments contain them, condemn them, or repress them.

When democracies like Georgia’s have become routinized or unresponsive, what can citizens do if they want to be heard? It has been evident for some time that Georgia’s elections represent the political consolidation of a semi-democratic political oligarchy. Elections have become ritualistic demonstrations of the ruling party’s power. The official turnout for the October 2020 parliamentary elections was a little above 56%, a reflection of the citizenry’s indifference to a system that does not represent them or respond to them.

In the longer term, peaceful protest promotes a sense of solidarity and citizen power through alliances among diverse social groups.

Citizens in Georgia have little faith in elections, a pattern evident elsewhere in the world. Protest has gone beyond fenced-in parliaments to open squares; it has sidelined parties and called into question the legitimacy of lopsided political competition. Georgia’s political parties are unaccountable and severed from citizens’ needs. In conditions like these it is no surprise that people take to the streets when elections fail or opaque companies, endorsed by the state, threaten their access to economic resources. In Georgia, it is not elections which promote political change, but the courage to protest them when they fail.

Protest in Georgia like those condemned by the prime minister in May 2021, or more recently the mass protests in June 2022 against the government’s inaction over Georgia’s EU candidacy, have taken on an apolitical and anti-elite character. They parallel other global protest movements which demand participation, accountability, and representation, rather than the promotion of ideological visions and manifestos. Led by the civil society movement, Shame , thousands of Georgian protesters in June 2022, rejected both the parliamentary opposition and the ruling party. Disillusioned with Georgia’s elitist and partisan politics, Shota Dighmelashvili, one of the leaders of Shame , declared that “If before, people were joining rallies organized by politicians, now politicians came to the rally organized by people.”

This may be overly optimistic. Rallies this June did not reboot Georgia’s democracy. Mass demonstrations don’t work in all contexts – much depends on the strength of the regime, or on the cause and whether it resonates with the public. But the June demonstrations epitomize a long history of popular protest in Georgia, protest which has frequently arrested the country’s stubborn tendency toward a centralized and top-down managed political system.

But protest is not just about resistance. In the longer term, peaceful protest promotes a sense of solidarity and citizen power through alliances among diverse social groups. Demonstrations inform politicians of voters’ concerns. Protest is an educational process which combats passivity. It is focused on collective action, and on each citizen’s psychological evolution. It is a mechanism for self-liberation from social constraints which limit the legitimate expression of citizenship by women, or by sexual and ethnic minorities. If Georgia wants to be like Europe, then protest has to be accepted as part of its democratic practice.

This piece originally appeared in Georgian Institute of Politics (GIP) publication on July 26, 2022.

Stephen Jones

Director, Program on Georgian Studies, Harvard University; Professor of Modern Georgian History, Ilia State University, Tbilisi

Subscribe to the Davis Center Newsletter

Be the first to know about events, programs, and news.

How do you define lawful peaceful protest? The UN Human Rights Committee has a clear answer

Protesters gather at a park in Brooklyn, New York City to demonstrate against racism and police violence.

Facebook Twitter Print Email

People have the right to demonstrate peacefully and Governments should respect international law and let them do so, senior UN-appointed independent rights experts said on Wednesday.

The legal advice is from the UN Human Rights Committee , whose 18 experts monitor how countries implement the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights .

UN expert @cvoule welcomes as groundbreaking an authoritative new interpretation that the right to #PeacefulAssembly extends to digital activities. He says it is particularly relevant during #COVID19, when so many peaceful gatherings have moved online 👉 https://t.co/K9Hj6rh2Aw pic.twitter.com/nkI7iYEoF5 UN Special Procedures UN_SPExperts

The panel’s General Comment , notes that protesters have the right to wear masks or hoods to cover their face and that Governments should not collect personal data to harass or intimidate participants.

Focus on racial justice

The development comes at a time of worldwide protests in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and clarifies how “peaceful assembly” should be understood by the 173 countries which have ratified the Covenant.

Committee member Christof Heyns, said that it was a “fundamental human right” for people to gather to celebrate or to air grievances, “in public and in private spaces, outdoors, indoors and online.”

“Everyone, including children, foreign nationals, women, migrant workers, asylum seekers and refugees, can exercise the right of peaceful assembly”, he added.

‘Generalised references’ are not enough

The Committee’s advice also notes that Governments could not prohibit protests by making “generalised references to public order or public safety, or an unspecified risk of potential violence”.

In addition, Governments “cannot block internet networks or close down any website because of their roles in organising or soliciting a peaceful assembly”, according to the Committee.

It also stressed the right of journalists and human rights observers to monitor and document any assembly, including violent and unlawful ones.

Rights expert hails ‘landmark affirmation’

The UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association, hailed the new interpretation that the right to peaceful assembly also extends to “digital activities”.

“I am excited by this truly landmark affirmation that protection of the right to peaceful assembly extends to remote participation, including online assemblies”, said Clément Voule , reacting to a document released by the Committee. “It is particularly relevant during the COVID-19 pandemic, when so many peaceful gatherings have moved online.”

“By focusing extensively on the intersection of digital technologies and the right to peaceful assembly, General Comment 37 sets out a clear framework to protect this fundamental right in the digital era”, said MR. Voule. “It firmly settles the debate about whether the right to peaceful assembly extends to online activities, says governments should not block or hinder Internet connectivity in relation to peaceful assemblies, and questions the chilling effect of surveillance technologies.”

The Committee’s interpretation will be important guidance for judges in national and regional courts around the world, as it now forms part of what is known as ‘soft law’, he added.

peaceful assembly
Human Rights Committee

Understanding violent protest in South Africa and the difficult choice facing leaders

Vice-Chancellor and Principal, University of the Witwatersrand

Disclosure statement

Adam Habib does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

University of the Witwatersrand provides support as a hosting partner of The Conversation AFRICA.

View all partners

A while police van lies on its side and in flames after protesting farmers set it alight

Protests and social mobilisation are the lifeblood of democracy. They enable the discontent of citizens to be communicated to political elites between elections, and when intra-institutional processes have lost their efficacy. But most protests never lead to sustainable change . They peter out because of one or other reformist measure. Or they lose support because they tend to take on violent overtones .

Most protesters and leaders engage in peaceful mobilisation. But there are always some leaders and activists who are intent on violence. This is because protests and social movements always involve heterogeneous communities with multiple expressions, political factions and leaders.

Some of these expressions and political factions believe in violent direct action and behave accordingly in the protests. Add to this the opportunism of criminals who use the protests as a cover to conduct criminal activity, and it is not hard to imagine why protests can turn violent.

Much of this is reflected in the contemporary protests and social mobilisation around the world. All of the movements - #BlackLivesMatter , the Hong Kong Democracy Movement , Gilets Jaunes in France, #FeesMustFall and #RhodesMustFall in South Africa - were in the main peaceful. But they nevertheless manifested in violent direct action on occasion.

Protest leaders often expressed disquiet and dissociated themselves from the violence . But on many occasions, they also excused the violence, suggesting that it could not be compared to that experienced by protesters at the hands of police or by the victims of oppression and exploitation. This may be true in most cases. But it evades the strategic issue that violence can often undermine and erode the legitimacy of protests. It creates the opportunity for police and security forces to repress the social action itself.

Protest leaders also often blame the violence on criminals or on aggressive police action. Again much of this is true. Criminals use protests to conduct criminal activity including, among others, looting and theft when the opportunity arises. Moreover, aggressive policing and repressive actions by security services can often turn the tide of peaceful protests and prompt violent acts by some protesters.

But these explanations do not account for all forms of violence in protests.

Why peaceful protests turn violent

Perhaps the foremost scholar on social movements and political violence is political scientist Donatella Della Porta . She holds that violence in protests is a product of two distinct developments: aggressive police action and political factionalisation , in which distinct political groups try to dominate the leadership of social movements. The explanation of aggressive policing is uncontested by most progressive intellectuals. They often refer to it to explain the violence. But they often ignore the second explanation because it involves a collective self-reflection and a political confrontation with movement participants.

There is no doubt that in many of these movements, there are individual activists and political groupings who explicitly hold the view that violent action is legitimate . They use the circumstances to actively drive such behaviour, as I explain in detail in Chapter 9 of my 2018 book, Rebels and Rage .

These proactive commitments from factions within these protest movements suggest that violence is as much internally driven from within the social movements as it is a response to the repressive actions of the police and security services.

This then necessitates a reflection on the strategic efficacy of violence as a means of sustainably achieving social justice outcomes. Of course, this reflection must be contextually grounded. It must be understood in the context of the democratic societies within which the protests occur. After all it is the democratic character of these societies, flawed as they may be, which establishes the parameters of legitimate political action and the consequences for the violations thereof.

Rage versus violence

Social mobilisation requires rage but not violence. When the two get confused, the cause of social justice itself may be delegitimised or defeated. Rage is important because it can inspire people, galvanise them, and as a result enable collective action against injustice. It also need not always lead to violence. Neither does it need to lead to emotionally driven acts of impulsiveness.

If there is a lesson to be learnt from the life of the late statesman Nelson Mandela , it is that effective leadership of a social or political struggle requires an understanding of the political lay of the land. It also requires an assessment of the prevailing distribution of power among social forces, an acute grasp of the leverage available to political actors opposed to the social justice cause, and a plan for how to overcome these without compromising on the ultimate social outcome.

Much of the case of young activists for adopting violence as a strategic option is predicated on the presence of structural violence . This refers to the prevailing economic and political conditions which produce not only deep social marginalisation within and across nations, but also the implicit racism that is codified in institutions and daily practices.

If there is such structural violence present, it is held, is there no legitimacy to acts of physical violence that are targeted to address the marginalisation and oppression?

Social pact in a democracy

The answer to this lies in the social pact that undergirds democratic society. Citizens cede the authority of legitimate violence to the state in exchange for security and rights. The alternative to this is that all bear the right to legitimate violence, thereby making society vulnerable to the rule of the strongest and the most forceful. The real victims of such an environment are the poorest and weakest in society.

Yet what does one do if political factions or individuals resort to violence in a peaceful protest? This after all is one of the major challenges that confront leaders of protests. Most of them are committed to peaceful social mobilisation, but are confronted with individuals or political factions who violate the peaceful character of the mobilisation – either proactively or as a response to aggressive police action.

The protest leaders have to then engage in a rearguard battle in which they have to explain why there is violence accompanying the protest, even though they have expressed a commitment to peaceful social mobilisation. Inevitably the leaders come off as unconvincing or duplicitous or as making excuses for the violence.

Of course those who are committed to violent direct action are aware of this reluctance by protest leaders to identify them. They realise that most protest leaders will not identify the perpetrators of violence because they would not want to be seen as abetting the authorities.

The perpetrators of violence can then behave in a manner that explicitly defies the collective underlying principles of the protest without having to fear any sanction. Essentially the political norms disable the incentive structure for political factions to abide by the strategic principle of peaceful social action.

The only way out of this dilemma is to change the rules. Leaders must either explicitly exclude political factions or individuals who are committed to violent social action. Or they must make explicitly clear that they will identify those who violate the principle of nonviolence that serves as the guiding philosophy of the protest.

Of course the political factions or individuals are unlikely to meekly accept this state of affairs. But leaders are going to have to explicitly manage this political challenge by openly debating the issue with movement participants, explaining why this is necessary for the success of the protest itself. Otherwise, such leaders will forever remain hostage to factions and small unaccountable political groups who serve as parasites on the progressive social cause.

This then is the challenge for protest leaders.

Exercising leadership

Political leadership sometimes requires difficult choices. Such difficult choices are not simply required from those leading institutions and governments. It is sometimes also demanded of leaders of social movements. This is particularly true when individual acts of violence can compromise the outcomes of the protest itself.

Protest leaders have a choice: either they allow acts of violence and, therefore, play to a political script not of their own making, or they act in a manner that keeps the social mobilisation on a path that they have explicitly chosen. This is especially important because the alternative path will not only erode the broader legitimacy of the cause. It will also provoke reactions that could undermine the protest and the sustainability of the social justice outcome.

This choice of enabling or containing political violence is, therefore, the central strategic challenge confronting the political leadership of contemporary protests both in South Africa and around the world.

Social justice
Nelson Mandela
Accountability
Peacebuilding
Democracy in Africa
Political violence
#feesmustfall
#RhodesMustFall
Police brutality
#BlackLivesMatter
Social movements
Gilets jaunes movement (France)
Hong Kong protests
Peaceful protest
Nonviolence
Protests 2020

Research Fellow

Senior Research Fellow - Women's Health Services

Lecturer / Senior Lecturer - Marketing

Assistant Editor - 1 year cadetship

Executive Dean, Faculty of Health

Today's news
Reviews and deals
Climate change
2024 election
Fall allergies
Health news
Mental health
Sexual health
Family health
So mini ways
Unapologetically
Buying guides

Entertainment

How to Watch
My watchlist
Stock market
Biden economy
Personal finance
Stocks: most active
Stocks: gainers
Stocks: losers
Trending tickers
World indices
US Treasury bonds
Top mutual funds
Highest open interest
Highest implied volatility
Currency converter
Basic materials
Communication services
Consumer cyclical
Consumer defensive
Financial services
Industrials
Real estate
Mutual funds
Credit cards
Balance transfer cards
Cash back cards
Rewards cards
Travel cards
Online checking
High-yield savings
Money market
Home equity loan
Personal loans
Student loans
Options pit
Fantasy football
Pro Pick 'Em
College Pick 'Em
Fantasy baseball
Fantasy hockey
Fantasy basketball
Download the app
Daily fantasy
Scores and schedules
GameChannel
World Baseball Classic
Premier League
CONCACAF League
Champions League
Motorsports
Horse racing
Newsletters

New on Yahoo

Privacy Dashboard

Capitol Perspectives: The value of tolerance to college protests

A stone marker in Columbia's Peace Park placed to remember Kent State University students killed by Ohio National Guard troops who fired on protesters on May 4, 1970 (Jason Hancock/Missouri Independent).

This column is a suggestion to both college student protesters and higher education officials to find a better approach to the pro-Palestinian student protests.

Those protests and university reaction are so different from the 1970 student demonstrations on the University of Missouri’s Columbia campus in protest to the Vietnam War and the deaths of four Kent State University students shot by Ohio’s National Guard who were called up to deal with a campus anti-war protest.

At Missouri, thousands of students gathered on MU’s Francis Quadrangle in 1970 to protest the deaths.

The emotions on both sides were just as deep as today. And, yes, there were a few isolated acts of violence in Missouri including reports of a couple of fire bombs thrown against a campus ROTC building, although I do not recall serious damage — unlike the major damage caused by a similar attack at a higher education ROTC facility in St. Louis

The MU protesters called for the university to recognize the Kent State student deaths by canceling classes and also take a stand against the Vietnam war.

One night, MU’s chancellor, John Schwada, invited some of the protesters to the patio of his campus home beside the quad to explain his decision not to cancel classes.

As I remember, he sought to calm the situation. He did not criticize the protesters’ views. Rather he talked about how class cancellations would disrupt the educational process for students.

I’ve since learned that the MU student association vice president, Chip Casteel, had discussed with the chancellor how to de-escalate the tensions after Chip encountered armed military pointing weapons behind the main door of the administration building where Schwada’s office was located.

The purpose was to block protesters storming the building. It was that serious.

It makes me wonder how the protests in other universities this year might have been different if the student protesters were peaceful and they had a university leader like Schwada to engage in conversations with students and reporters rather than an armed law enforcement response.

However, I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge that some of Schwada’s staff took a different approach.

One of Schwada’s top officials sought to confiscate video of that patio discussion taken by a TV journalism student.

In addition, I was warned the university would expel me from the university if my audio of Schwada’s comments was broadcast.

Those reactions were absurd.

There was no privacy invasion. Schwada had invited protesters in the quad to his patio. My TV colleague’s camera was obvious as was the microphone I held up in front of Schwada to record his conversation.

In fact, I remember Schwada actually made room for me to get my microphone closer. The chancellor knew I was a reporter because of my regular news coverage of him.

Although my radio stories were broadcast, I was not expelled. I’ve always wondered if Schwada blocked that effort to toss me out of MU. Or, maybe, the idea just died on its own.

Beyond Schwada, CBS Correspondent Harry Reasoner helped demonstrate to students the value of a civilized conversation when facing deep political or ideological divides.

Reasoner was in Columbia to accept the Journalism School’s Honor Medal. But he was drawn to the massive crowd of protesters.

As a reporter who covered conflicting views, I found his presentation insightful. Essentially, he made it a teaching moment for the student protesters.

The lessons I learned from those 1970 demonstrations should be something that both students and college administrators consider.

For administrators, campus protests by students can be an opportunity for teaching opportunities, as was demonstrated by Reasoner and Schwada.

There is another component of the 1970 Columbia protest that other universities should consider. It’s to make amends for harsh actions against students after the protests have ended.

One such action involved Bill Wikersham. As the founding director of the university’s Peace Study Institute, he was described as a faculty leader of the 1970 protests.

Although he stressed peace, he was arrested and suspended from MU’s faculty for participating in the campus protests.

Yet, he subsequently was reinstated as an adjunct professor of peace studies.

A physical example of restoring peace is a peace symbol made of rock stones that student protesters had put together. It remains to this day on the MU campus, not far from the center of the protests.

The post Capitol Perspectives: The value of tolerance to college protests appeared first on Missouri Independent .

'It's a very uncertain time': Columbia students share their perspectives on the campus protests

Amid final exams and upcoming graduations, Columbia students are grappling with fluctuating tensions on campus and the national attention these protests have received.

Should colleges crack down on pro-Palestinian protests?

Universities across the country are taking varying approaches to encampments that have taken root on their campuses, with some allowing them to remain and others calling in police to break them up.

Birmingham-Southern baseball advances to DIII College World Series, as school shuts down

The Birmingham-Southern baseball team will play in the Division III College World Series as the school itself is shutting down due to financial difficulties.

The ups and downs of investing in Europe, with VCs Saul Klein and Raluca Ragab

It’s something we talked about this week in London, when TechCrunch took its StrictlyVC series of more intimate, more investor-focused events on the road. Sitting down with Saul Klein, the renowned founder of the seed-stage firm LocalGlobe, along with Raluca Ragab, a managing director at the growth-stage outfit Eurazeo, we hashed out with the two how alike – and distinct – the U.S. venture market is right now compared with Europe.

Stan Van Gundy reveals wife died by suicide in August: 'I just don't think I'll ever get over it'

Kim Van Gundy's obituary only said she died 'unexpectedly.'

Scarlett Johansson brought receipts to the OpenAI controversy

OpenAI announced this week that it’s removing Sky, one of the voices used by its new GPT-4o model, after users found it sounded eerily similar to Scarlett Johansson’s AI character in “Her.” While the company claims the voice was not based on Johansson’s, the actress said OpenAI had previously approached her about using her voice for the model. The U.S. Department of Justice and 30 state attorneys general filed a lawsuit against Live Nation Entertainment, Ticketmaster’s parent company, for alleged monopolistic practices.

NBA playoffs: Pacers' Tyrese Haliburton will not play in crucial Game 3 vs. Celtics

Haliburton left Game 2 in the third quarter with a hamstring injury.

Grayson Murray, two-time PGA Tour winner, dead at 30

Murray won two PGA tournaments, including the Sony Hawaii Open this past January.

Spain, via Barcelona, continues to rule women's soccer

Barcelona won the UEFA Women's Champions League by beating Lyon 2-0 in Saturday's final. It's their third title in four years.

I'm a pro baker, and these are the best Memorial Day kitchen deals — save up to 80% on knife sets, air fryers and more

From a Le Creuset Dutch oven for $140 off to a Vitamix blender discounted by $249, snag these deals before they're toast.

Junkyard Gem: 1977 Dodge Aspen Wagon

A 1977 Dodge Aspen station wagon, sibling to the Plymouth Volaré station wagon, found in a Colorado self-service wrecking yard.

Amazon's No. 1 bestselling mascara is so popular, a tube sells every few seconds — and it's only $5

'I really do look like I have on falsies': Over 249,000 five-star fans say you'll get length, volume and zero clumps.

Amazon's secret overstock section is bursting with huge savings for Memorial Day — starting at $6

Save big on amazing hidden deals, from knives to patio string lights and more.

This multitasker from L'Oreal gives Martha Stewart a youthful glow — and it's just $14

On its own as a moisturizer or layered under makeup, a flawless finish is affordable with this No. 1 bestseller.

The 35 best Walmart Memorial Day deals to shop this weekend — save up to 75% on summer essentials, outdoor faves and more

Ready for your holiday perusal: A Keurig hot and iced coffee maker for under $100, an adorably useful mini chainsaw for just $39 and a robot vacuum-mop combo for over $250 off.

I'm an interior designer, and these are Amazon's best Memorial Day patio furniture sales

My discerning eye has been drawn outside — create a lovely living space and enjoy the great outdoors with steals on Adirondack chairs, sofa sets and more.

Shoppers in their 60s say this No. 1 bestselling eyeshadow stick 'doesn't sink into creases,' and it's down to as low as $10

The makeup must-have that 29,000 reviewers love is nearly 40% off for Memorial Day.

Silicon Valley luxury home market heats up amid AI boom

Sales of homes priced at $5 million or more in Santa Clara County — home to Silicon Valley — spiked in April. The median home price is nearly $1.8 million, according to real estate agency Compass.

'Very flattering if you have a tummy': this flowy top is just $18 — that's over 40% off

With charming floral prints, flattering silhouette and flowy comfort, you'll be living in this top until the end of the summer.

Share full article

Supported by

Student Activism Over Gaza: Admirable or Ill Informed?

More from our inbox:, faith, family and the republican party, deep dish pizza meh.

An illustration showing a close-up of a suit jacket with a rainbow tie-dye tie and buttons. The first is a peace symbol, and the other three say “love,” “but also.” and “shut up and study.”

Re “ Dear Boomers, the Student Protesters Are Not Idiots ,” by Elizabeth Spiers (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, May 17):

Ms. Spiers’s characterization of the student protests misses the mark. As a recent college graduate myself, I don’t disagree that college students “are capable of having well thought-out principles,” but the principles underlying these protests are troubling.

Ms. Spiers alludes to my generation possessing elevated moral sensibilities due to our experience with mass shootings. But the calls for “From the river to the sea” and “Globalize the intifada” — ubiquitous in campus protests across the country — would require the killing of innocent Israelis in practice, as Bret Stephens pointed out in “ What a Free Palestine Actually Means ” (column, May 15).

If these chants are part of well thought-out principles and not naïveté, then it behooves us to scrutinize the moral framework that informs these principles.

Why is it that these protests project outrage toward Israel’s conduct in the war but conveniently elide the horrific details of Oct. 7 ? If my generation’s handle on complex world events is as comprehensive as Ms. Spiers suggests, then why do the protests flatten Israel’s entire history into an illegitimate colonial project? It’s not the protesters’ tactics that are uniquely troubling; it’s the worldview that inspires their actions.

Brian Silverstein Chicago

To the Editor:

As a baby boomer I am heartened by the fact that there are student protests that reflect that the younger generation actually cares and has insight about world events. I think that the student protests reflect the bravery and informed intellect of young protesters throughout the institutions of higher education.

Baby boomers would do well to reflect on their own stodginess rather than criticize young students for whom our generation modeled active protest as a vehicle for change.

Sahli Cavallaro Sacramento

Hillary Clinton’s voice remains a lonely voice in the media. Her argument is not one that is commonly heard on the issue of student protests. Yet it is an important message that she expressed: The protesting students are ignorant of the history of relations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Yet these students shout their misinformed arguments that gain the attention of many in the media and the public. Above all, the universities, institutions of teaching and learning, have failed their own students.

Instead of calling in the police, instead of capitulating to ill-informed demands, why did the universities not respond by offering to end the suspensions and expulsions of protesting students in return for their required attendance at “teach-ins” to acquire knowledge of the history of Israel and the Palestinians?

Let this be a lesson for universities and professors for the next round of student demonstrations.

Vivian R. Gruder New York The writer is emerita professor of history at Queens College, CUNY.

As a former protester from the Vietnam War era, I certainly agree with Elizabeth Spiers’s premise that college students have the right to peacefully protest and exercise their freedom of speech. What I find so disturbing is that these students are erroneously blaming the situation in Gaza on President Biden and vowing not to vote for him.

Really? They don’t understand that by not voting for Mr. Biden, they are voting for Donald Trump, who, by the way, has promised an expanded Muslim ban . This to me is idiotic.

Peggy Jo Abraham Santa Monica, Calif.

Elizabeth Spiers’s article appears to target an entire generation in a disparaging and demeaning tone. Surely Ms. Spiers is aware that millions of boomers protested the Vietnam War in various ways — writing letters to their representatives in Washington and gathering in parks and memorials across the country. On Oct. 21, 1967, about 100,000 people, many of them boomers, gathered near the Lincoln Memorial as protesters against that war.

Ms. Spiers, please don’t disparage a single generation at a time when all generations should come together.

Timothy Pasquarelli Anthem, Ariz.

I’m 74 years old and am in complete support of students protesting, although I don’t agree with all their positions. I have just one question: Where have they been during the last eight years when our past president barred people from several Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States and massive cutbacks were made to environmental laws, to mention just a couple of issues?

I only hope that what we are seeing is the start of greater student political awareness, which will spread and grow stronger.

Neither Donald Trump nor the current MAGA-dominated Republican Party is going to go away unless citizens take to the streets and make it clear that they won’t stand for undemocratic, bigoted and misogynistic laws or tax cuts created just to benefit extremely wealthy conservatives.

Jon R. Tower Pacific Palisades, Calif.

To quote the political activist Carl Oglesby: “It isn’t the rebels who cause the troubles of the world. It’s the troubles that cause the rebels.”

Boomers, listen with curiosity to the rebels on college campuses and you will hear that their cause is for us to care about what is happening in the world and for universities to stop investing in companies that provide weapons for war. Universities should not be making money off of killing people!

Niobe Way New York The writer is a professor of applied psychology at New York University and the author of “Rebels With a Cause: Reimagining Boys, Ourselves and Our Culture.”

Re “ The Authoritarians Have the Momentum ,” by David Brooks (column, May 17):

Mr. Brooks’s column, advising that liberals have conceded the “faith and family” vote, might have enlightened his readers as to how the presumptive authoritarian Republican nominee’s life experiences honor either one.

Obviously, the terms “faith” and “family” have been hijacked simply to enrage working Americans into supporting wealth for the few, intolerance, rejection of education, facts and science, and, most significant of all, fear.

Mr. Brooks might rather have pointed out that the party that rejects the basic Christian values of love of neighbor, forgiveness and tolerance as well as an increase to the federal minimum wage, affordable health insurance, middle-class tax reform, workplace safety, protection from guns, and Social Security and Medicare stability serves neither faith nor family, and hasn’t for decades.

Eric R. Carey Arlington, Va.

Re “ That Deep Dish Pizza? It’s Not That Deep ” (Food, May 15):

I am an Italian American who grew up in what was then Chicago’s Little Italy in the 1950s, and thin-crust Neapolitan pizza was king.

Our local family-run pizzerias were staffed by Italian immigrants, usually from Naples. Deep dish? Meh!

As I no longer live in Chicago, whenever I meet fellow Chicagoans outside the city and state, almost always there are two “tribal” questions asked:

1. Are you Sox or Cubs?

2. Thin-crust Neapolitan or deep dish?

My preferences are thin crust and Chicago Cubs!

Steven Giovangelo Indianapolis

Things you buy through our links may earn Vox Media a commission.

The Moral Necessity of Protest

By the second week of May, Israeli forces had killed thousands upon thousands of civilians. Israel has killed aid workers, journalists, and academics and turned universities, hospitals, mosques, and countless homes to rubble. The war has displaced over 1 million people. Whistleblowers told CNN that incarcerated Palestinian men face torture at a detention center in the desert. Most of the enclave faces famine. A full-scale invasion of Rafah, where a million Palestinian refugees are gathered, would be a horror. Yet horror is what Israel promises next.

The news out of Gaza is unbearable. The videos, the photos, the reports all reveal tragedy after tragedy, which accumulate like the dead. The terrors of October 7 won Israel sympathy from the world; now it is becoming a pariah state. For eight months, Israel has pursued vengeance, and that vengeance, indiscriminate and cruel, has set the country on a path it cannot easily depart. As the Israeli government walks into hell, it drags its allies along — allies who don’t understand the danger they’re in. Whether Gaza costs Biden the election or not, it could cost him something else: his moral witness.

Perhaps it’s unfashionable to say so. The language of morality is often the language of the right wing. Deployed poorly it invokes the Moral Majority, gender traditionalism, and hate. But the left should not surrender this concept to its opponents. That was true before Israel’s latest assault on Gaza, but it is urgently true now. What is happening in Gaza demands a moral response — from us, from Biden, from the world. Some have responded accordingly, though they may be outnumbered. On Monday, U.S. Army Major Harrison Mann announced his resignation, citing the American government’s material support for Israel. “My work here — however administrative or marginal it appeared — has unquestionably contributed to that support,” Mann wrote in a letter he later published on LinkedIn. “The past months have presented us with the most horrific and heartbreaking images imaginable … and I have been unable to ignore the connection between those images and my duties here. This caused me incredible shame and guilt.”

If Biden wrestles with similar emotions, it doesn’t show. He has said that campus protests have not influenced his foreign policy, which is believable enough. In public remarks he has reserved most condemnation for the protesters and has said nothing about the violent repression those protesters have faced. At UCLA, law-enforcement officers fired rubber bullets at peaceful demonstrators even though the rounds can maim and even kill . On April 30, pro-Israel protesters attacked the encampment at UCLA for three hours before police intervened. Though Biden has frequently expressed sorrow and even rage over 10/7, his response to Palestinian suffering has — to put it charitably — been muted. Dr. Nahreen H. Ahmed, who worked in Gaza, attended an April meeting with the president and said that when she showed him photos of malnourished and suffering children, he responded by saying he’d seen the images before. But he hadn’t. The doctor had taken the photos herself and printed them from her phone. “This speaks volumes to the dismissive nature of the administration when it comes to strong-willed action toward a permanent cease-fire or, at a bare minimum, a red line on the invasion of Rafah,” Ahmed told NBC News.

Indeed, though the Biden administration says it opposes an invasion of Rafah and has paused the transfer of powerful bombs to Israel, recent history demands a measure of skepticism. On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that Biden is moving forward with a $1 billion arms sale to Israel. It’s hard to take Biden seriously on Gaza when he’s shown such little care for the dead. As protesters put their bodies on the line, and people end their careers over Gaza, Biden’s position looks weak, at least in a moral sense. Here, pundits will say that Biden’s opponent is not a man of robust moral character, and they’re correct to a point. There’s no doubt Donald Trump will be worse on Gaza. The same pundits might also say that Biden cannot unilaterally end a war he did not directly start, which is true, again to a point. But what is a person of conscience to do? Conventional wisdom prefers silence, and silence is fatal. People are being killed right now.

Protest, then, is not an Ivy League luxury but a moral necessity. It is salvation — not only for ourselves but for Gaza. The circumstances in Gaza are too dire to forget, even temporarily, and I am not convinced that our pundits, from atop their sinecures, will begin to care about Gaza if Biden wins in November. There will be another excuse, another reason to look away. And that is exactly what we cannot do. Protesters have called this a genocide for months; Aryeh Neier, co-founder of Human Rights Watch, has at last agreed. “In late December, when South Africa brought to the ICJ its accusation that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, I did not join some of my colleagues in the international-human-rights movement in their support of the charge,” he wrote in the New York Review of Books . Israel had a right to retaliate against Hamas, he believed. “And yet, even believing this, I am now persuaded that Israel is engaged in genocide against Palestinians in Gaza,” he continued. “What has changed my mind is its sustained policy of obstructing the movement of humanitarian assistance into the territory.”

Neier’s article is a sign that the narrative is shifting. Not everyone is willing to walk into hell. Now the world, faced with genocide in Gaza, must respond according to the scale of the crime. The kids might not be perfect, but they’re right. Moral rightness is not perfection, after all, but something else, an act of conscience that can push anyone toward the light. The future beckons, and it will judge us by the actions of today.

sarah jones
campus protests

Editor’s Picks

What is your email?

This email will be used to sign into all New York sites. By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy and to receive email correspondence from us.

Sign In To Continue Reading

Create your free account.

Password must be at least 8 characters and contain:

Lower case letters (a-z)
Upper case letters (A-Z)
Numbers (0-9)
Special Characters (!@#$%^&*)

As part of your account, you’ll receive occasional updates and offers from New York , which you can opt out of anytime.

Harry Edwards to sociology grads: Even in turbulent times, believe in yourself

By Public Affairs

May 24, 2024

Follow Berkeley Talks , a Berkeley News podcast that features lectures and conversations at UC Berkeley. See all Berkeley Talks .

Harry Edwards gives a commencement speech at a podium

Allena Cayce/UC Berkeley

In Berkeley Talks episode 199 , Harry Edwards, a renowned sports activist and UC Berkeley professor emeritus of sociology, gives the keynote address at the Department of Sociology’s 2024 commencement ceremony.

“As I stand here before you, in the twilight of my life’s time of long shadows,” said Edwards at the May 13 event, “from a perspective informed by my 81 years of experience, and by a retrospective assessment of the lessons learned over my 60 years of activism, what is my advice and message to you young people today? What emerges as most critically germane and relevant in today’s climate?

“First: Even in turbulent times, in the midst of all of the challenges, contradictions and confusion to be faced, never cease to believe in yourself and your capacities to realize your dreams.

“From time to time, you might have to take a different path than you had anticipated and planned, but you can still get there. Achievement of your dreams always begins with a belief in yourself. Never allow anyone to dissuade you of this imperative disposition. And if someone so much as even tries, you tell them that the good doctor said you need to go and get a second opinion.”

[ Music: “Silver Lanyard” by Blue Dot Sessions ]

Intro: This is Berkeley Talks , a Berkeley News podcast from the Office of Communications and Public Affairs that features lectures and conversations at UC Berkeley. You can follow Berkeley Talks wherever you listen to your podcasts. New episodes come out every other Friday. Also, we have another podcast, Berkeley Voices , that shares stories of people at UC Berkeley and the work that they do on and off campus.

[Music fades out]

Raka Ray: Well, hello everyone. It’s a delight to be here with you today to congratulate the class of 2024 and everybody else who is here in support of them. Today I get to introduce to you a man who is not only a foot and a half taller than I am, but also truly a giant of a human being in every way, Professor Harry Edwards, who was professor of sociology at Berkeley between 1970 and 2000.

Born in St. Louis Missouri, Harry Edwards was awarded an athletic scholarship to San Jose State University, completed his Ph.D. degree in sociology from Cornell, and then joined the Berkeley faculty. His experiences as an African American, as an athlete and as a sociologist helped him to keenly understand in the late 1960s that sport in America was deeply racialized and discriminatory. With this understanding, he set about transforming race relations in sports through his research, teaching, mentoring and activism.

Some of you might have seen the statues of Tommy Smith and John Carlos in San Jose State. If you haven’t, they’re great athletes, Tommy Smith and John Carlos, who won the 200 meters race in the 1968 Mexico Olympics and then raised their fists in a Black power salute. This was done because of Harry Edwards who encouraged them to do this.

He created the Olympic Project for human rights, which challenged racism in sports and called for the boycott of apartheid South Africa. Just the other day, he arranged for a personal video to be sent by gymnast Simone Biles to encourage a heartbroken 8-year-old Black Irish gymnast who had been ignored during a medal ceremony. He has used his keen sociological imagination and eye for justice to affect transformation in every sphere of sports that he could.

As professor in the department, he taught thousands of students about the sociology of sports and race, effectively creating the field of sociology of sports, even as he advised the NBA, the NFL and the major baseball league. Always a scholar and activist, he has insisted that struggle not be divorced from strategic analysis and intellectual consideration. Earlier this year, I was honored to present Harry with the Social Science for the Public Good Award for 2024. We have now renamed it the Harry Edwards Social Science for the Public Good Award. Please join me in welcoming Harry Edwards to the podium.

Do you need to adjust this?

Harry Edwards: Oh, yeah. A little bit. I got to make an adjustment here. People are vertically challenged, so I got to make up for that. Dean Ray, thank you for that gracious and profoundly generous introduction. I hope that one day soon you and I and that gentleman that you introduced will be in the same room and I’d like to meet him because he sounds like a heck of a guy.

Graduating class of 2024, families and guests, colleagues, thank you so much for this opportunity to address you on this August occasion. The problem with being the last speaker is that everything that needs to be said has been said, you just haven’t had a chance to say it, but I will try not to be too repetitive.

Today we stand again on the threshold of transformative times. Sixty-plus years ago, my undergraduate graduation was a time of exhilaration, high expectations and joy. I was a 21-year-old honors student and former scholarship athlete with the options of entering the pro football or basketball drafts, or accepting one of several fellowships to graduate school.

Strongly influenced by Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the 1963 march on Washington, I indulged the dream of helping to create a society where people would not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character, the caliber of their competence and the magnitude of their contributions to society.

But hanging over and clouding my personal excitement and aspirations was a growing concern about what was happening in society and the world around me. American society was already badly divided over civil rights issues and there was a growing division over the nation’s expanding involvement in a far-off war in a place called Vietnam, and the president was coming under increasing criticism and pressure related to both.

The trajectory of the domestic political climate had been set by the assassination of a popular president, John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963 — a tragedy that, for me, was all the more bewildering because it occurred at what was a major coming of age phase of life for me. I was a graduating honors student with fellowships to Ivy league universities, and Nov. 22, 1963 was my 21st birthday.

The tragedy was followed by a long list of others, all within the period of my subsequent graduate school matriculation, including the murder of civil rights workers Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner in Philadelphia, Mississippi; the assassination of the martyred president’s brother, himself a presidential candidate; and other national leadership figures, some of whom I’ve come to know and work with personally, including Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., over the course of my graduate matriculation.

By 1970, in my Ph.D. graduation from Cornell, I had organized the 1968 Olympic project for human rights and protest of racial conditions in America, America’s support for apartheid in South Africa and the continuing involvement in a war where casualties on all sides were escalating and young Black men were being drafted and killed in grossly disproportionate numbers. Nationwide campus protests demanding that colleges and universities divest from apartheid South Africa had melded with what by then was a tsunami of anti-Vietnam war protest that even had disrupted the Presidential Nomination Convention in Chicago in 1968.

And most graphically, the nation’s first war with real time saturation TV coverage had brought into our living rooms the horrific scenes of religious figures setting themselves afire in front of the U.S. embassy in Saigon, of dead and wounded anti-war student protesters at Kent State, and of Black students in Orangeburg, South Carolina, killed and wounded while protesting segregation.

And again, all considered, it would seem that today we stand again on the cusp of similarly turbulent times: a society badly divided over issues of race, immigration, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights and more.

A president under increasing criticism and pressure for both his domestic political agenda and for his policies relating to America’s involvement with, if not trending complicity, in a far off war that has spawned popular dissent, campus protest, and now an active-duty soldier setting himself afire outside of the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C, all of which have exacerbated our already existing divisions as a people on the eve of what is developing through the most significant presidential election at least since 1968, if not 1860. There is even a presidential convention again being scheduled in Chicago. All of this combining to make the challenges we face today all the more explosive, convoluted, complex and difficult to resolve.

But there are critical differences. As a people we did not know about the depths and scope of human tragedy that came with the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia, or in the wake of that expansion, the horrors perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge until after these events happened. We did not know about the Rwanda genocide until after it happened. For the most part, we did not know about the scale and magnitude of 6 million-plus souls whose lives were viciously and horrifically snuffed out until the gates and ovens of Buchenwald and Auschwitz were open to the world after it happened.

But today, right now, we know about 1,200 Israeli civilian deaths, 5,100 wounded and maimed, and 253 kidnapped and initially held hostages. We know about 35,000-plus Palestinian civilian deaths, over 7,000 wounded and maimed, with thousands more buried under bombed-out rubble in Gaza, nearly 70% of them women, children and babies. We know about a burgeoning, administratively induced famine and the massive starvation in Gaza. Again, most of those threatened being women, children and babies. And these differences between now and back in my day make a difference. And if you’ve ever wondered what you would’ve done had you been around and known about the march up to the atrocities in Cambodia, in Rwanda, in 1930s Germany. Today, you’ve got your answer. It’s exactly what you are doing now.

We can be honest even when we can’t be right. The reality is that the last 75 years of this Middle East perennial conflict have taught us, attack after attack, war after war, that there is no military solution to this tragedy. The only viable resolution is for the parties involved to come together at the peace table and establish a mutually agreed-upon and sustainable peace, not just the ceasefire, not just a temporary halt for hostilities in order to get in humanitarian supplies, but a sustainable peace. Other measures simply have not worked. Occupation is not peace, and a body count is not a measure of victory.

Now, sanity compels us to concede that the only real question remaining is how many bodies each party to this conflict is going to insist upon climbing over to get to the peace table. And to this point, nobody on either side appears to even have a number in mind. The parties involved continue to forge headlong, down the same paths, employing the same bankrupt strategies and expecting different outcomes — outcomes that have only spawned more war and more violent attacks, doing the same things expecting different outcomes. The very definition of insanity.

As I stand here before you then in the twilight of my life’s time of long shadows, from a perspective informed by my 81 years of experience, and by a retrospective assessment of the lessons learned over my 60 years of activism, what is my advice and message to you young people today? What emerges as most critically germane and relevant in today’s climate?

First, even in turbulent times, in the midst of all of the challenges, contradictions and confusion to be faced, never cease to believe in yourself and your capacities to realize your dreams.

From time to time, you might have to take a different path than you had anticipated and planned, but you can still get there. Achievement of your dreams always begins with a belief in yourself. Never allow anyone to dissuade you of this imperative disposition. And if someone so much as even tries, you tell them that the good doctor said you need to go and get a second opinion.

The Founding Fathers believed in themselves, and they were not just a bunch of old dudes as typically portrayed and memorialized. When you look at one of them paintings of 1776, everybody, if they’re not gray, they’re wearing a gray wig. On July the 4th, 1776, among the signers of the Declaration of Independence creating the United States of America in the face of threats of hanging and a declaration of war from the British Empire was James Monroe, 18, Aaron Burr, 20, Alexander Hamilton, 21, James Madison, 25, and old Thomas Jefferson, 33. Don’t let anybody tell you you’re nothing but a bunch of kids and don’t know what you’re doing.

As I look at this situation today, it’s easy to see how much ageism works into our perceptions and understandings of what we are and what we’re dealing with. Don’t get caught up not only in you’re too young, but the presidential candidates are too old. I was listening to somebody the other day … Did you see Biden trying to run up on the stage? Did you see him trying to hop up on the steps of Air Force One? He looked horrible. Hey, I want to tell you something. I’m Biden’s age. I’m 81. I couldn’t run out of sight if you gave me all day.

You are not electing somebody who can run a hundred meters. You’re not electing somebody who can set a world-class time in 110 meter high hurdles. You are electing a president. We need to get over this nonsense and understand that this ageism and this ageist bias, there’s no place for that. If they’re too old, hey, guess what? Don’t tell anybody old Edwards told you that, but it sounds to me like that’s a problem that’s going to probably take care of itself. At the end of the day, get out and vote, get your friends up off the couch where they start talking about, “Yeah, we can talk about how old the candidates are,” as we go to the poll and vote. Get out and vote.

You are part of the most informed, technologically savvy and sophisticated generation in human history, you have capabilities and access to information, analysis and communications technology that in the 1960s and ’70s we not only did not have, we could not even imagine. The mobile phone that you routinely use every day puts more information retrieval analysis and computing power at your fingertips than the rocket ship that took men to the moon in the 1970s and brought them back home safely. In fact, given the volume and scope of information you need to make a habit of checking, cross-checking and verifying everything, hold to your dreams, but learn to dream with your eyes open.

Second, keep the faith, not only in yourself, but in the ideals and promises of this nation, its institutions and, most of all, the majority of the American people. They’re eminently decent, intelligent and, for the most part, value and treasure freedom.

Though controversial and dismissed in some political circles as protestor capitulation, and alternatively as pandering to protestors, it is affirming to see student protestors, counter protestors and university administrators coming together across the nation from San Francisco State and Sacramento State to Rutgers in New Jersey to discuss and debate issues of urgent and mutual concern. To paraphrase a number of university presidents and chancellors across the nation, “If we cannot come together to discuss and debate these issues even on our college campuses in an America that so many have struggled to realize and have fought and died for then that America is doomed.”

Adversarial parties, not just reaching over, but coming out from behind their barricades to sit down and discuss and debate contentious issues, is a development that speaks persuasively to the conviction that American democratic traditions and processes not only work and can be saved, but that they are worth saving.

And do not be concerned about the lack of apparent, popular political cultural leaders. We never see them coming. We never have been able to see them coming. We didn’t see Dr. King, a 26-year-old Baptist pastor coming out of Birmingham. We didn’t see Malcolm X, a 26-year-old convict coming out of prison. We didn’t see Donald, what’s his name, coming, and didn’t believe it when he got here.

This old age is something you forget. You just forget. Stay positive, you’re going to be all right. America is greater at this kind of struggle than any other nation on Earth.

Third, always cast and view societal challenges and their proposed solutions through a prism of inclusiveness.

We as a people are more successful and effective at any task undertaken when we work together, as opposed to working separately or against each other. To quote the illustrious writer and public intellectual James Baldwin and his warning in 1962 to the Civil Rights Movement, no less than America more generally, “Unless we dare to include everybody in our strategic change strategies and efforts and goals, we are doomed to realize the prophecy of those words from the Bible put the song by a slave,” and God gave Noah the rainbow sign, “No more water, the fire next time.”

And in our deafness to Baldwin’s message, between the 1962 publication of his warning and his classic book of essays, The Fire Next Time, at the turn of the decade in 1970, over 150 American cities were ravaged with fire, riots, rebellions from Watson Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey. Episodes of lawlessness typically carried out by masses of people who felt left out and left behind by both mainstream America and a Black middle class oriented Deep South focused church-based civil rights movement.

And finally, do not be afraid.

The greatest storehouse and repository of human creativity, ingenuity and strategic solutions on Earth is in all probability the cemetery. Because far too often people are afraid to step out of their comfort zones, to take the chance of actively and aggressively pursuing their dreams and purposes in life, so tragically for everybody concerned. Ultimately, they end up taking their dreams and potential contributions to the grave with them.

And by no means should you be in fear of and immobilized by controversy. Controversy is all too often part of the deal. I heard a parent tell his daughter last week who was participating in demonstrations, protesting war and carnage, “You’re involved in something controversial.”

I was born in controversy and became even more controversial than that. You can get past it, you can get over it. Being controversial does not equate with being wrong, even when law enforcement is deployed against you. Police were sent in to break up student sit-ins protesting segregation at lunch counters and other public accommodations. In the 1960s, police were sent in to break up voting rights protests, marches led by John Lewis and others at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Police were called on Rosa Parks for not giving up her seat on a bus and she was arrested. Police were deployed to break up many of his protests, marches and they arrested Dr. Martin Luther King 29 times. Deploying law enforcement to arrest protesters is not necessarily right or even a moral act. It is a legal act. It is an act of power, and all too often, depending upon the cause and its urgency, might still doesn’t make right.

In the broader context, we have an even greater problem with fear in these turbulent times. Fear and fear-mongering have become staples of our social political life as a society to the point that it appears that everybody is afraid of somebody. Fear the left, fear the right, fear the immigrants, fear the progressives, fear the liberals, fear the conservatives, fear the Republicans, fear the Democrats, fear the government. Fear the evangelicals. Fear the secular humanists. Fear the Muslims. Fear the Jews. Fear Black males in hoodies. Fear the rich in their power, fear the poor in their demands. Fear women and their agenda for healthcare and equality. Fear the MAGA devotees and their agenda. Fear the LBGTQ+ and their agenda. Be whatever you want to be today. But first of all, be afraid and someone it seems is always there pledging to save you from everybody and everything that you fear in exchange for your money, your loyalty, your support, your idolization and your adulation of them.

Let me conclude then with this. As I look out upon this graduating class, I am not the slightest bit hopeful that you and your generation will successfully confront and manage the challenges of these turbulent times. I am confident that you got this.

You are just that much smarter, better equipped and better prepared than any other generation in American history. Now, at this commencement, as you start your journeys into the rest of your lives, as an old scholar-activist and UC Berkeley professor, I feel certain and completely convinced that the struggle to form that more perfect union and to create a better world is in good hands. And I salute and applaud you. Congratulations, best of luck and Godspeed.

Outro: You’ve been listening to Berkeley Talks , a Berkeley News podcast from the Office of Communications and Public Affairs that features lectures and conversations at UC Berkeley. Follow us wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can find all of our podcast episodes, with transcripts and photos, on Berkeley News at news.berkeley.edu/podcasts.

Watch a video of the Department of Sociology’s full commencement ceremony.

Listen to other episodes of Berkeley Talks:

Pro-Palestinian or not, we must protect people’s right to peacefully protest | Opinion

Videos of protesters being beaten, tear-gassed and aggressively arrested across the county have been going viral on social media.

No matter your take on the pro-Palestinian protests at college campuses across the country, including at UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee , something we should all be able to agree on is the need to protect people’s right to peacefully protest and fight against disenfranchisement.

Videos of protesters being beaten, tear-gassed and aggressively arrested have been going viral on social media. Often, those arrested aren’t charged with a crime. Imagine being violently arrested then being released and left with mental, and sometimes physical, trauma?

There are many examples of peaceful pro-Palestinian protesters' First Amendment rights being violated. At UW-Madison, police took a violent approach to taking down encampments, entering when they knew protesters were asleep in their tents, defenseless.

As protesters began to link arms, officers pulled out their riot batons, beat students, and hit people in the head with their shields. UW-Madison spokesperson Marc Lovicott said the scene "got a little tense," undermining the violence inflicted on students. Prioritizing upholding a "tenting policy" over the physical safety of their students is inhumane.

Professors have supported free speech, been aggressively arrested

This violence is not only being inflicted upon students, but also professors supporting their First Amendment rights. UW-Madison professor Samer Alatout was pinned to the ground by police, speaking to the press with dried blood on his head. Like many others, he received a citation and was released, but was presumably left with the trauma.

Conservation conversation: Why are taxpayers restoring an elk herd only to have hunters kill them off?

Other examples include a professor at the Emery University in Atlanta being thrown to the ground by a police officer, begging officers to not slam her head into the concrete. At that same university, a video of a student protester being tasered while already detained goes viral on X.

When people are not issued citations or charged with a crime, the arrests are more a statement for the public. This is a problem because it sends a message that our right to protest is at risk, putting one of the most important rights in our Constitution in jeopardy.

President Biden said on the issue “we are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people or squash dissent,” but he continued, “order must prevail.” He went on to say, “violent protest is not protected – peaceful protest is.”

When peaceful protesters are silenced, free speech is meaningless

Fair enough. But what happens when the protest is peaceful, and people are wrongfully arrested? To argue that these students simply protesting on campus is violent because they are “trespassing” is ridiculous. These campuses are often their homes, thus if they can’t protest there, then where?

While there have been incidents of antisemitism on many of the campuses where protests are taking place, many Jewish students are making it known that many of the protests themselves are not anti-Jewish. In fact, some of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators are Jewish themselves.

Antisemitic and racist protests and rallies have been happening (and increasing) in this county for years. Neo-Nazi groups have publicly called America a white, Christian nation. Yet these rallies and have seen little to no police intervention, even with protesters armed and chanting violent phrases. Their right to protest remains protected, so why isn't this true for these students?

Just last year, the Neo-Nazi group ‘Blood Tribe’ marched through Madison with swastika flags, yelling racial slurs at pedestrians, yet police let them continue to protest peacefully.

According to the police, the neo-Nazi group demonstrated lawfully, and "Whether you believe that's what this group is doing or not, it's First Amendment rights," said Stephanie Fryer, Madison police spokeswoman.

Their right to protest remains protected, so why isn't this true for these students?

It's possible for students to protest on campus and not be met with violence from police. At Brown University, encampments were given extensions of their time allowed camping as protesters continued their discussions with administration. This allowed the protesters and the college to make a deal, ending the encampments and having the college vote on disinvestment. More colleges need to be like Brown and take a peaceful approach that centers on discussion rather than police intervention.

Risking our right to protest also risks the future of our country, with the act of protesting creating some of the best, most equitable practices in our history. Whether you are pro-Palestinian or not, you should care that people’s right to protest is at risk.

Zoe Takaki is an intern for the Ideas Lab. She graduated from Columbia College Chicago, where she studied journalism.

Dr.Jeffrey (PhD)

Total Price

Finished Papers

How does this work

"Essay - The Challenges of Black Students..."

Online Essay Writing Service to Reach Academic Success.

Are you looking for the best essay writing service to help you with meeting your academic goals? You are lucky because your search has ended. is a place where all students get exactly what they need: customized academic papers written by experts with vast knowledge in all fields of study. All of our writers are dedicated to their job and do their best to produce all types of academic papers of superior quality. We have experts even in very specific fields of study, so you will definitely find a writer who can manage your order.

Can I pay someone to write my essay?

Time does not stand still and the service is being modernized at an incredible speed. Now the customer can delegate any service and it will be carried out in the best possible way.

Writing essays, abstracts and scientific papers also falls into this category and can be done by another person. In order to use this service, the client needs to ask the professor about the topic of the text, special design preferences, fonts and keywords. Then the person contacts the essay writing site, where the managers tell him about the details of cooperation. You agree on a certain amount that you are ready to give for the work of a professional writer.

A big bonus of such companies is that you don't have to pay money when ordering. You first receive a ready-made version of the essay, check it for errors, plagiarism and the accuracy of the information, and only then transfer funds to a bank card. This allows users not to worry about the site not fulfilling the agreements.

Go to the website and choose the option you need to get the ideal job, and in the future, the best mark and teacher's admiration.

Customer Reviews

1035 Natoma Street, San Francisco

This exquisite Edwardian single-family house has a 1344 Sqft main…

5 Signs of a quality essay writer service

IMAGES

The Positive Impact Of Peaceful Protests
5 Prominent Leaders in the Non-Violence Movement and Their Impact
Right to Peaceful Protest
Peaceful Protest Definition & Examples
Essay On Protest -(Donwload Free)1400 Words
Scenes from peaceful protests around the US

VIDEO

Peaceful protesters continue to march past curfew
fumding protest only 1 American flag
🍒 🛑 UAAG DISBURSEMENT♦️ PROTEST IS NOT AN OPTION RIGHT NOW
SCOOP: Did Columbia SCRUB a Pro-1968 Protest Essay From Its Website?
पेंशनरों को मिला सांसदो का समर्थन, इस बार जीत पक्की ? @OnlyTodayNews

COMMENTS

Are Peaceful Protests More Effective Than Violent Ones?
AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin. As unrest erupts across the world after the killing of a Black man, George Floyd, by a white police officer, even some peaceful protests have descended into chaos, calling into question the efficacy of violence when it comes to spurring social change. "There's certainly more evidence that peaceful protests are ...
Nonviolent resistance proves potent weapon
She had studied terrorism, civil war, and major revolutions — Russian, French, Algerian, and American — and suspected that only violent force had achieved major social and political change. But then a workshop led her to consider proving that violent resistance was more successful than the nonviolent kind.
Nonviolent Philosophy and Self Defense
The success of the movement for African American civil rights across the South in the 1960s has largely been credited to activists who adopted the strategy of nonviolent protest. Leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Jim Lawson, and John Lewis believed wholeheartedly in this philosophy as a way of life, and studied how it had been used successfully by Mahatma Gandhi to protest inequality in ...
Essay On Peaceful Protest
739 Words. 3 Pages. Open Document. A very debatable topic circulating in today's society is whether or not peaceful protest is considered to be effective. Peaceful protest is a form of nonviolent resistance to express one's disapproval or dislike through an action and/or statement without using violence to do so.
Nonviolence
As a theologian, Martin Luther King reflected often on his understanding of nonviolence. He described his own "pilgrimage to nonviolence" in his first book, Stride Toward Freedom, and in subsequent books and articles."True pacifism," or "nonviolent resistance," King wrote, is "a courageous confrontation of evil by the power of love" (King, Stride, 80).
Martin Luther King's Policy of Peaceful Protest Essay
Open Document. Martin Luther King's policy of peaceful protest was important because it led to public sympathy of the way black Americans were treated by white Americans an example of this would be the Birmingham campaign (1963), Kennedy said he was sickened by the images of violence and the soviet media used 1/5 of their time to broadcast on it.
Peaceful protests: Are non-violent demonstrations an effective way to
How to achieve change with non-violent demonstrations? Find out the scientific evidence behind peaceful protests.
Martin Luther King and Gandhi Weren't the Only Ones Inspired By Thoreau
Thoreau's essay became a cornerstone of 20th-century protest. ... Police remove peaceful protestors from a sit-in at the U.S. Capitol in 1965.
Martin Luther King Jr. And Lessons from Peaceful Protests
January 12, 2018 4:15 PM EST. The following feature is excerpted from TIME Martin Luther King, Jr.: His Life and Legacy, available at retailers and at the Time Shop. Revolutions tend to be ...
Right to protest
Is protest a human right? When taking part in a protest, a person is exercising a variety of universally recognized human rights. As well as the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, this includes other rights that are essential to enable peaceful protest, including the right to life, to freedom of association, to privacy, and to be free from arbitrary arrest and detention ...
The Power of Peaceful Protests
The Power of Peaceful Protests. From the Salt Marches to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, history is littered with examples of peaceful protests having a powerful and lasting impact; shaping the world to become a fairer, freer and more peaceful place. In recent weeks, over 50 demonstrations occurred across the United Kingdom, focussed on a broad ...
2020 is not 1968: To understand today's protests, you must look further
Pointed bayonets and looming tanks menace protesters in the Memphis Sanitation Workers' Strike on March 28, 1968. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. would travel to Tennessee in support of the strike on ...
Why Protests Are Necessary, Even When They Inconvenience People
A large part of this is also due to the inconvenience caused on the other side. When lives are disrupted it can prompt policymakers to act in order to keep the peace on all fronts, both by making protesters leave and by appeasing angry disrupted people. It lends itself to a larger collective voice demanding change.
Why Are Peaceful Protests Turning Into Riots?
Third, make room for angry protests. Whenever peaceful demonstrators get swept up in the rage and power of their protest, we--especially us white people and police officers-- must empathize and ...
There Is No Democracy Without Protest
Time Period. In May 2021, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili characterized a proposed public demonstration in defense of LGBTQ rights (the March for Dignity) as "unreasonable.". It threatened " civil confrontation," he claimed. Such attitudes toward protest in precarious democracies like Georgia's are endorsed by a number of ...
How do you define lawful peaceful protest? The UN Human Rights
The panel's General Comment, notes that protesters have the right to wear masks or hoods to cover their face and that Governments should not collect personal data to harass or intimidate participants.. Focus on racial justice. The development comes at a time of worldwide protests in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and clarifies how "peaceful assembly" should be understood by ...
Peaceful Protest Essay
797 Words. 4 Pages. Open Document. In the past few years, protest movements have surged across the United States. Various issues, thought to have been resolved, have explosively re-entered political discourse. In light of these demonstrations and their outwardly unsubstantial effect, many have begun questioning the purpose of peaceful protest.
Peaceful Protest Definition & Examples
A peaceful protest, also known as nonviolent resistance, is a form of protest in which participants do not engage in any action that could be deemed violent. Participants in a peaceful protest are ...
Understanding violent protest in South Africa and the difficult choice
Political leadership sometimes requires difficult choices. Such difficult choices are not simply required from those leading institutions and governments. It is sometimes also demanded of leaders ...
The Pros And Cons Of Peaceful Protests
For an example, we need look only at the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's led by Martin Luther King Jr. The Jim Crow Laws that ravaged the South at the time were incredibly unfair towards blacks, and as such, protests were necessary. Non-violent protests were the only option in Dr. King's opinion, and rightly so.
Capitol Perspectives: The value of tolerance to college protests
The post Capitol Perspectives: The value of tolerance to college protests appeared first on Missouri Independent. This column is a suggestion to both college student protesters and higher ...
Opinion
Kyle Platts. Re " Dear Boomers, the Student Protesters Are Not Idiots ," by Elizabeth Spiers (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, May 17): Ms. Spiers's characterization of the student protests ...
The Moral Necessity of Protest
The Moral Necessity of Protest. By Sarah Jones, senior writer for Intelligencer. Fordham University pro-Palestinian student protesters yell at university employees as they lower a tarp to prevent ...
The Benefits Of Peaceful Protest
Peaceful protest can be an effective and beneficial way to make a point about how many in a population feel strongly about an issue, yet many protests do not go as intended. The idea is to calmly make your opinion known, to get noticed and to demonstrate the sheer mass of opposition to a particular topic. Peaceful protest alone is not harmful ...
The protests aren't peaceful: Believe their calls for intifada
30 protestors were detained, of which only 10 were UNC students. Only six people were arrested, half of whom were not affiliated with the university. Discarded signs after UNC sends police in to ...
Harry Edwards to sociology grads: Even in turbulent times, believe in
The only viable resolution is for the parties involved to come together at the peace table and establish a mutually agreed-upon and sustainable peace, not just the ceasefire, not just a temporary halt for hostilities in order to get in humanitarian supplies, but a sustainable peace. Other measures simply have not worked.
Mass and sometimes violent arrests of protestors abridges free speech
At UW-Madison, police took a violent approach to taking down encampments, entering when they knew protesters were asleep in their tents, defenseless. As protesters began to link arms, officers ...
Peaceful Protest The Only Option Essay
At the end of the school year, students have no energy left to complete difficult homework assignments. In addition, inspiration is also lacking, so there are only a few options: do not write a scientific work; write it badly; delegate these responsibilities to other people. Most often, people choose the latter option, which is why companies ...
Peaceful Protest The Only Option Essay
Peaceful Protest The Only Option Essay - Place an order. 1(888)814-4206 1(888)499-5521. Useful Links. Request a call back; About; FAQ; Order Now; Write For Us; Blog; Legal. ... Essay Writing Service. Have a native essay writer do your task from scratch for a student-friendly price of just per page. Free edits and originality reports.
Campus protests: Free speech needs order, too
Some protests have been peaceful and rule-abiding or, as at the University of Chicago, close enough to be tolerated for a time. (The Chicago activists' demands came to include a call for ...

Are peaceful protests more effective than violent ones?

Editor's Picks

Recent Stories

Featured Topics

Explore the Gazette

Footnote leads to exploration of start of for-profit prisons in N.Y.

Should NATO step up role in Russia-Ukraine war?

It’s on Facebook, and it’s complicated

Nonviolent resistance proves potent weapon

Erica Chenoweth discovers it is more successful in effecting change than violent campaigns

Erica Chenoweth

Share this article

Six receive honorary degrees

Everything counts!

Five alumni elected to the Board of Overseers

Nonviolence

Peaceful protests: Are non-violent demonstrations an effective way to achieve change?

Share this article

Martin Luther King and Gandhi Weren’t the Only Ones Inspired By Thoreau’s ‘Civil Disobedience’

Why Martin Luther King Jr.’s Lessons About Peaceful Protests Are Still Relevant

More Must-Reads from TIME

The Power of Peaceful Protests

Impact of peaceful protests

The wave of aggressive anti-protest laws

Non-violent resistance is approximately ten times more likely to lead to democratisation than violent resistance

Jerome Gavin

Vision of Humanity

RELATED POSTS

Civil Unrest

Global Peace Index

RELATED RESOURCES

January 2022

Global Peace Index 2022

Never miss a report, event or news update.

2020 is not 1968: To understand today’s protests, you must look further back

For Hungry Minds

The turbulent Sixties

You May Also Like

MLK and Malcolm X only met once. Here’s the story behind an iconic image.

These Black transgender activists are fighting to ‘simply be’

What was the Stonewall uprising?

Related Topics

10 million enslaved Americans' names are missing from history. AI is helping identify them.

Harriet Tubman, the spy: uncovering her secret Civil War missions

Who was Martin Luther King, Jr.?

The surprisingly subversive history of mini golf

Meet the 5 iconic women being honored on new quarters in 2024

History & Culture

Why Protests Are Necessary, Even When They Inconvenience People

Civility doesn’t mean what you think it means

Martin Luther King Jr was not civil

There is a history of effective protest

Protestors don’t want to be here either

Civility can be a tool of oppression

The role of the media

To learn more about improving media literacy and bias, read this guide.

Francesca Willow

Why Are Peaceful Protests Turning Into Riots?

There Is No Democracy Without Protest

Stephen Jones

How do you define lawful peaceful protest? The UN Human Rights Committee has a clear answer

Focus on racial justice

‘Generalised references’ are not enough

Rights expert hails ‘landmark affirmation’

Understanding violent protest in South Africa and the difficult choice facing leaders

Disclosure statement

Why peaceful protests turn violent

Rage versus violence

Social pact in a democracy

Exercising leadership

Research Fellow

Senior Research Fellow - Women's Health Services

Lecturer / Senior Lecturer - Marketing

Assistant Editor - 1 year cadetship

Executive Dean, Faculty of Health

Entertainment

New on Yahoo

Capitol Perspectives: The value of tolerance to college protests

Recommended Stories

'It's a very uncertain time': Columbia students share their perspectives on the campus protests