Protest, the Good and the Bad
Protest is as American as apple pie — but have we lost sight of what makes it work?
This week, we celebrated Martin Luther King’s legacy. For me, that brings back a flood of memories. As a teenager, I lived in Birmingham, Alabama, a city that later became an epicenter in the battle for racial equality. I will never forget one Sunday afternoon in 1961; I was attending a school event just a few weeks before our high school graduation when the teenage rumor mill suddenly came alive (this was long before cell phones and social media) with buzz about a group of colored (the term used in those days) and white people, on a Greyhound bus from somewhere up north, fallen upon and roughly treated by police in Anniston, Alabama.
That was the first of Dr. King’s Freedom Rides. Our immediate, collective thought was curiosity: Why in the world would those folks want to do that? In the tumultuous years that followed, we found out.
Dr. King’s contribution to our nation was enormous. His personal leadership spawned a sea change in equality and harmony. Moreover, he taught us that responsible, non-violent protest can be the game changer that achieves lasting societal growth.
Largely due to Dr. King’s actions, protest has become as American as apple pie, part of our everyday landscape. We can be thankful for that, but at the same time, it’s worthwhile to take a hard look at how far that practice has drifted from his principled example.
In the 60 years since Dr. King’s crusade for racial justice in America, we’ve seen every kind of protest imaginable: anti-war (all of them), anti-nuclear, pro-choice and anti-abortion, police behavior, Supreme Court appointments, along with the full gamut of LGBTQ, race, and other social issues. And the list goes on.
Looking back, the trend is striking:
Protests are increasingly angry and disruptive, and they often turn violent.
Nearly all are political in nature, evoking fierce partisan support and equally fierce disagreement.
For the most part, protest is initiated by the Left. Many are well-organized and evidently well-funded.
While the majority of protesters are no doubt sincere advocates of the cause they are advocating, the protest venue also seems to attract those who view it as a free ticket to mayhem, an opportunity to vent their grievances and behave badly — and on occasion very badly — usually without penalty.
The consequences for disruptive or even criminal behavior by protesters seem to depend largely on the issue being protested. On a matter considered by authorities to be a “good” cause — racial justice, as one — they often get a free pass.
For example, in the summer of 2020, George Floyd’s death at the hands of a white policeman spawned an epidemic of nationwide protest. While advertised as being “mostly peaceful,” their composite toll was three dozen deaths, billions of dollars in property damage, thousands of injured policemen, widespread arson and looting, and a mob takeover of a police precinct and a federal courthouse.
But the underlying issue was racial justice, and for that reason, the protests (riots) were applauded by the Left, with minimal punishment for the perpetrators. We heard more about defunding police than finding and prosecuting those who attacked the police.
In stark comparison, there was the riot of January 6, 2021. While called an insurrection, that event was, in fact, an angry protest about a presidential election with which many disagreed. It morphed into a deplorable assault on our Capitol building, with numerous injuries and one violent death (of a protester). The riot delayed the official certification of the election by several hours.
The U.S. Department of Justice has pursued the J6 participants, even those on the fringe, with unprecedented vengeance. In recent weeks, both the president and the attorney general boasted about the 1,200 arrests, yielding jail sentences totaling more than 800 years.
Regardless of one’s political alignment, and without dismissing the significance of an assault on the Capitol, the extraordinary difference between the harsh treatment of J6 perpetrators and that of criminal behavior in so many other protest events is, in my view, indefensible.
And the beat goes on. Over the past month, we have been watching increasingly angry, disruptive protests in cities across the nation. These are nominally pro-Palestinian, or maybe anti-Israel, or maybe pro-Hamas, and perhaps even anti-Semitic — and all seemingly discounting the horror of a savage terrorist assault on unsuspecting civilians, and hostages (including several Americans) held for 110 days and counting.
Where is that protest taking us, America? Can it possibly be helpful to our national interest?
My simple takeaways on protest, then and now:
Martin Luther King Jr. taught us that responsible protest makes a difference. It opens hearts and minds to injustices and it prompts meaningful change.
Much of today’s protesting — angry, disruptive, and often violent — gets a lot of media attention, but it changes very few minds and achieves little.
The right of Americans to protest is unquestionable. We don’t need new laws or policies to get back on track. We should revere and nurture that right, applauding and learning from principled protest, while also holding to account those who abuse that sacred right.
