my position is simpler than that, i fully intend to be completely indifferent to them and their needs except as they become collateral recovery in our work towards a more just and equitable society. i insist that their needs, desires, hopes, etc. are irrelevant to our larger purposes.
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That man on the ground holding his head is the late Rep. John Lewis. His home county brought this whole thing home for Georgia. Yet another reason to celebrate.
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first, the only organized group who brought it up as a serious platform was the minneapolis city council who found it much harder to turn into an actual policy than it was to talk about the concept. it was then picked up by republican admakers to try to turn it into an epithet with distinctly mixed results.
second, a serious study of last summer’s protests demonstrated conclusively that 93% of all protests were nonviolent and of the 7% that had violent elements the vast majority was violence initiated and/or conducted by either the police or white supremacist group members–occasionally the same thing.
chasing our tails about “extreme policies” which are virtually nowhere extant is an unnecessary distraction from progress and would be a guaranteed way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
put simply, i find your analysis extremely flawed and your prescriptions more harmful than the disease they purport to assuage.
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Not that I agree, I’ve read the true account of the bridge crossing to vote(which was terribly whitewashed) as an example, but I think his point was that the violence from the people protesting was fairly reserved, considering the appaling things they were protesting against, and subjected to.
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But such a peaceful moment for young John Lewis… I mean he only spent a few weeks in the hospital after that, so peaceful… /s
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Not in all cases, no. But imagining the civil rights movement as peaceful is just a distortion of history. It was violent and bloody, even as one major faction was employing non-violent resistance.
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I once had a conversation with a fellow white guy who questioned why Harriet Tubman seemed to have an angry scowl in every known photograph of her. My answer was “she had a lot to be angry about.
Sometimes a good righteous anger is exactly the right motivator to get shit done.
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From the wikipedia article you cited:
The bombings were initially used against African Americans attempting to move into neighborhoods with entirely white residents. Later, the bombings were used against anyone working towards racial desegregation in the city.[1]
In other words, your example shows violence AGAINST the civil rights movement backfiring and causing people to support civil rights instead.
I claim that using violence drives people away from your cause.
“Bombingham” seems to be strong evidence backing my position.
Unless of course your plan is to rile up the white supremacists until they start killing a lot more people. In which case I’d request you get some buy-in from the targeted communities before you offer them up for sacrifice.
Amen.
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Oh, so it doesn’t count if white people are violent… gotcha… /s
I never said that protesters were the violent ones. Some were, but the violence coming from the establishment is STILL violence. The civil rights era was chock full of violence. Ignoring that is white washing reality.
But the original object you had was to anger. Non-violent action doesn’t mean that people weren’t beyond angry by that point. Young people were especially angry, whether they followed Lewis’ example of Stokely Carmichael’s. They were fed up and sick and yes, REAL FUCKING ANGRY with being murdered with impunity and denied basic rights in a country and them and their ancestors fucking built with FREE god damn labor!
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Indeed; then as now, most of the violence was directed AT protestors.
60 years on, not much has changed on that front:
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And people also forget that many homes of civil rights activists were basically armed fortresses. King’s house had a ton of weapons, to protect him and his family, with armed guards on watch 24/7. It cound’t have been any other way. They would have killed him much sooner if they had not.
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That reminds me- Biden can update the $20 bill without consent from the senate, right? Assuming they let him confirm someone as the treasury secretary, which I guess is not a given.
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I love that picture! So iconic, of both the man and the movement.
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That was a poster on my wall when I was 19.
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I know, it was disturbing but not surprising, to learn that what I had been taught in school about the civil rights movement was whitewashed into a fairy tale that made the oppressors look less evil.
That said, they were still an example of peaceful protest considering what they were protesting against, and subjected to while doing so, all things considered, for any impartial observer, the civil rights movement could have embraced a much more violent retaliation, and been entirely justified.
The fact that they didn’t speaks a lot about the persuasiveness and righteousness of the people that led them.
Once again, that doesn’t mean there wasn’t violence. There was a lot of violence, which was my point.
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