The American protest paradox: Celebrated and condemned

NEW YORK (AP) – These are the hallmarks of American history: protests, rallies, sit-ins, marches, riots. They date from the early days of what became the United States, to the sights and sounds echoing across the landscapes of the nation’s colleges and universities during this activist spring.

And equally an element of American history? These same events are met with irritation, condemnation, anger, calls to stop, and sometimes using law enforcement and aggressive tactics to make it occur.

“Dissent is essential to democracy. But dissent must never lead to disorder” – President Joe Biden he said Thursday, a summary of the continuing national paradox.

Americans value the appropriate to assemble, speak out, and petition for redress of grievances. This is included in the primary amendment to the structure. They praise the social actions of the past and appreciate the progress towards equality that previous generations have made, often in danger with life and limb. However, these same actions can create anger and outright opposition when routine life activities are disrupted, in addition to fear that those speaking out are outsiders seeking to sow chaos and influence impressionable minds.

“The public didn’t like civil rights protesters. The general public disliked protesters in the course of the Vietnam War. And most of the people didn’t just like the women’s movement protesters… and all of the protests that mainly happened in the long run,” says Robert Shapiro, a professor of political science on the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and a public affairs expert on American politics.

This doesn’t mean, nonetheless, that the protests haven’t had results, even in the event that they aren’t immediate. “Public opinion is changing on this issue because of the effectiveness of protests, which do one very important thing and that is raise the visibility and importance of issues.”

Take, for instance, the Occupy Wall Street protest of 2011. “It drew attention to economic inequality in the United States,” he says. “After that, people paid more attention to the conversation. The problem of economic inequality in the United States has become and remains more visible.”

The protests are growing in intensity, as is the opposition to them

Over the past few weeks, protest camps have been established and destroyed in reference to the Israel-Hamas war, which has been ongoing since early October.

The Israeli government began military operations within the Gaza Strip after Hamas militants killed roughly 1,200 people and took one other 250 hostage in an October 7 attack in southern Israel. According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, the Israeli offensive killed greater than 34,500 Palestinians and caused widespread damage to infrastructure.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators in U.S. schools are calling on their administrations to chop economic and other ties with Israel or firms they imagine support the war. Protest camps began on April 17 at Columbia University and spread across the country.

There was also opposition to the demonstrations. Administrators, under pressure to revive order and normal operations around commencement, said they supported the appropriate to talk out but to not disrupt the lives of other students or violate the foundations of conduct. Police were called in to clear encampments on campuses across the country; over 2,300 people were arrested.

But in terms of protest activity, it’s about disruption, says Celeste Faison, co-national director of the Movement for Black Lives network, a coalition of organizations that united after the 2014 Black Lives Matter protests that were catalyzed by the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri .

“Change is always possible in those uncomfortable moments and uncomfortable impulses,” he says. “What has historically created change in the United States are those who are willing to put their bodies on the line, their voices on the line, their communities on the line.”

That resonates with Andrew Basta, a fourth-year undergraduate student on the University of Chicago who frolicked at the varsity’s camp on Tuesday. Basta, 21, said: “Not only is it fair, but I think it is our duty to disrupt the order, change our lives accordingly and resist.”

Where is the road drawn?

Rabbi Moshe Hauer would disagree that disruption is essential. He points to demonstrations and rallies which have taken place over time with permits and required consents, during which individuals expressed their voices without blocking roads or disrupting life.

People’s right to talk out is a right that “we absolutely recognize as part of being an American, as part of being serious people who know that no one has a monopoly on the truth,” says Hauer, executive vp of the Orthodox Union, a Jewish organization. “We must allow ourselves to listen to other voices and people raising their voices, clearly expressing their opinion – whether we like that opinion or not.”

However, he’s one in all those terrified by the present wave of protests on campus. He says they’ve descended into anti-Semitism and created an environment that’s dangerous for Jewish students and the community. He says it is a cause for concern when there is a movement that “chooses to define its tactics based on things… that are intimidating, threatening, that clearly, clearly, clearly lead to violence.”

Calls for orderly protests have been common throughout American history, sometimes accompanied by nostalgia for previous eras that might be lost.

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“It’s a romanticization of the past where it’s not actually true. For example, the media portrays Martin Luther King with great love and respect. But we know: back then, he was portrayed in the media as this anarchist destroyer,” Faison says. “Ultimately, we have a really bad pattern of defaming protesters when they get into a fight and then celebrating protesters when they win or when they take a risk.”

It’s a type of “ideological appropriation” when individuals who were considered radicals or crazy on the time of the protests are later considered “on the right side of history,” says Charles McKinney, an associate professor of history at Rhodes College who studies the Civil Rights Movement . “The role of the state is therefore to embody these values ​​while being ambivalent about the process by which these values ​​were implemented in the nation.”

This reinforces the concept that the facility of protest isn’t necessarily about persuading people in the current, but about influencing conversations within the culture. The strongest protest in American history – from the Boston Tea Party of 1773 onwards – resonated far beyond its time and became successful due to its enduring fame.

“It works, right?” says Robert Widell Jr., a history professor on the University of Rhode Island who has studied political movements. “It is effective at least in changing the terms of the debate and changing the way people think about a particular issue or set of issues, or just drilling into people’s brains that something is going on here.”