There were also other groups in the wide array of liberation and anti-racist struggle at the time that used different tactics, often with real success.
We are in Pride month right now, which celebrates a string of victories spurred by, among other things, multiple massive riots.
"Peaceful protest," when used by governments, police departments and most non-profits today, means something very different than what civil rights organizers meant by "nonviolence." It means passive, polite, ignorable and easily controllable...
Those against them even used an old trope that we hear frequently now, that anything disruptive would just give those in power an "excuse" to crack down and they should be less confrontational. This lie was rejected in everything from "Letter from a Birmingham jail" to songs like "It isn't nice"
The criteria for sanitized protests today would, if applied even to the civil rights movement, result in their demonstrations being disavowed, smeared as "instigators" and reported to the cops. That is a testament to what the narrow idea of "peaceful protest" is meant to do and whom it serves...
Community support, solid organizing, determination and understanding the enemy had much more to do with whether something worked than the fictional saintliness that politicians like to invoke today. They still do.
Whatever tactics you and your communities end up choosing that's worth remembering.
I would point out that the kind of "destruction" by non-violent Civil rights protesters in the 60s was usually perpetrated by whites and the riots by POC were a result of the assasination of MLK.
Nonviolent civil disobedience is very different from a mass peaceful protest. And nonviolent protest depends at least in part on being an alternative to the credible threat of violence. A movement is more of an ecosystem than a single entity all deploying a single tactic.
Nonviolent protest in the 20th century can be directly traced back to some later writings of Tolstoy, when he was about as anti-government as one could be.
Comments
We are in Pride month right now, which celebrates a string of victories spurred by, among other things, multiple massive riots.
there’s no acceptable behavior as a for of protest
if it’s against their views in any way and you speak out in any way it’s “violent” and your actions are instigating a response in kind
Whatever tactics you and your communities end up choosing that's worth remembering.