Angry: Acceptable Protest

"A thousand people in the streets

Singing songs and they're carrying signs

Mostly say hooray for our side."

                    --Buffalo Springfield, "For What It's Worth"

What constitutes Acceptable Protest?  In this country the consensus seems to be that  for protest to be Acceptable it must be necessary and it must not be violent or disruptive.  Let me be crystal clear at the outset that I agree with these criteria. The protest actions led by Martin Luther King, Jr and others 60 years ago or so are considered by most today to be the gold standard in protesting.  Everyone agrees that King's cause was just and that the things he and his supporters protested against were clearly wrong.  He passed the Necessary test. Further, because of his explicit, disciplined commitment to non-violent protest, he met the Non-Violent requirement as well.  You've probably seen the meme:

We've once again entered into a season of protest in the United States.  And while many are joining arm and arm with the protesters, many others are not happy about "a thousand people in the streets".  This current batch of protests don't seem meet the criteria for Acceptability. Most of the objections stem from the Non-Violent Clause for acceptable protests. The violence and looting disqualify or render moot the value of the peaceful protests. I do not agree that the violent behavior of a few should invalidate the cause, voices, or actions of the peaceful majority. And I would contend that the majority are peaceful. I've already addressed that specific objection in another post.  But even apart from violence, there are those who object to the disruptive nature of the protests even if  no one is getting hurt.

Remember this guy?

I have hard time understanding what the furor was over Kaepernick. People got very upset, and, dare I say, emotional about the anthem, the flag, the troops.  But it wasn't like he was walking all over the flag, he wasn't holding a sign proclaiming "Thank God for dead soldiers"  like the Westboro Baptist Church  did, he didn't extend the middle finger or even raise his fist. I guess the objection was that it was disrespectful, but as protests go, kneeling is about as respectful an action as there is (unless of course someone happens to be underneath your knee). The only thing he disrupted was people's sense of propriety. And of course now days people long for the days of his silent, solitary protest.

The larger objection, though not articulated as often, is really to the violation of the Necessary Clause of Acceptable Protest. Far too many white people just don't see the need for all the fuss:   "The freedom to assemble is being abused!  Things were fine until folk started getting whipped up by the radicals and the media. People were happy.  We were getting along.  We're living in a better time."  They just don't see the need for the protests. I'd suggest that had a lot to do with the objection to Kaepernick.  People just didn't think his stand (or kneel) was necessary.

Let's revisit Dr. King.  There was no national consensus that King's protests were necessary. If there had been, well. . .the protests wouldn't have been necessary. Just as today's protests are associated with the Antifa and violent radicals, King's protests were tarred with accusations of Communism*  His marches were for equal rights, sure, but they were also for economic parity, fair pay and working conditions (the day he was shot, MLK was in Memphis to support the local sanitation workers strike)**, and against the Vietnam War. He was not popular, he was not universally respected. Violence still happened, not just after his death but right in the heart of his work. The Watts riots for example took place in 1965 while King was very much alive.  This narrative of a period of  necessary, peaceful protest under King being replaced by unnecessary, violent protest after his death is just not true. And let's not forget that his protests were disruptive. The marches and sit-ins and boycotts effectively prevented people from going about their business undisturbed. 

With our 2020 hindsight we all tend to flatter ourselves that we'd have been right out there with MLK back in the day.  We'd have been running an Underground Railroad station out of our house if we lived in those days.  But I think if we're being honest, it's more accurate to say that whatever we are doing now, we would have probably done then.  We forget the extent to which outmoded racist ideas were once the norm, accepted by all white people except for a few radical types. Marching with King, being an abolitionist--to be involved in these noble causes you had to go against the grain of what most of your friends and neighbors thought. You were advocating for a change in a society that the vast majority of white America thought--at least at first-- was just fine the way it was.  So do the math: If you just don't see a problem now, chances are you wouldn't have seen one then. That doesn't make you a bad person. It just means you're not "radical," you are a product of your time who more or less accepts the values of "mainstream" polite society. 

Sadly, the most acceptable (and effective) protest seems to be the suffering and death of the protester.  There's something really awful about the fact that protests like Kaepernick's or the peaceful protests of the Black Lives Matter movement get criticized, but when an innocent person is beaten, abused, or killed then we say: "Wow, okay these concerns are legitimate." George Floyd didn't set out to be a hero; his desire was not to lay down his life to be an inspiration for a movement. Yet that was his lot.  I sometimes wonder if that's the real reason King's protests are the gold standard.  The abuse heaped on kids at the lunch counters, the fire-hoses, the dogs, the bombings, and finally King's death from an assassin's bullet. That got people's attention. We see it, and we say "Oh, no that's wrong.  But if you live and don't even get hurt, we're going to look askance at you."  Do you ever think about how deeply unfair that is?

Dr. King shrewdly understood that this self-sacrificial method would elicit sympathy in a way that nothing else would.  He understood optics, and what it would take to get through white complacency. The soldiers in his army of love would have to be victims, preferably ones beyond reproach (check out why the NAACP  passed over Claudette Colvin in favor of Rosa Parks to be the test case for fighting the segregated bus system in Montgomery, Alabama). I think he knew it was unfair, but was willing to suffer the short-term unfairness in the service of long term justice.

King may have been right that this is the only form of Acceptable Protest, but I think it's wrong to demand that of today's protesters. I think we ought to be able to be given a listening ear without having to sacrifice our bodies or our lives. The merits of the protest should stand on their own without cost in blood. I maintain that the protests today are both necessary and for the most part, peaceful (see photos below of recent protests attended by friends of mine). 

Protest in Portland, Oregon a few weeks ago attended by my college friend Pat Rodriquez Castillo (pic is from her)

Three of my former students (the two standing having just finished their 8th grade year in May) attending a protest in here in Columbus (photo credit: Tricia Crawford)

*I could not believe it, but just yesterday I saw someone drag out that same tired old argument that the push for equal rights was and still is all a Communist plot. Really?  The Soviet Union's been dead these thirty years and we're still worried about Communism? Talk about dredging the bottom of the objection barrel!

**I urge you to read that Wikipedia link on the Memphis Sanitation Worker's strike. I learned so much I didn't know. This is exactly the kind of protest that people still object to today.  And King was there, and lost his life for it!