Not Violent, but Not Quiet

In school, history is often presented as if there was a predetermined outcome: the colonists broke from England formed America. The slaves were freed. Working conditions improved. Women got the vote. Schools were desegregated. This steady march of widening justice. Of course women should vote; it just took 140 years to realize it. Of course black people should be treated equal; it just took, um, 400ish years to realize it.

We’re taught to admire the peaceful protests that lead to these obvious outcomes. Founding Fathers writing patriotic texts on freedom and liberty. Women in white dresses and purple and gold banners marching down the streets. Blacks and white singing as they walk across bridges together. It’s inspirational, but it’s not the whole picture. People suffered and died for freedom. A lot. There were riots and false imprisonments and forced feedings and torture and lynchings and bombings and all-out wars. There was never a single, known outcome; there were multiple, competing positions, fighting for the identity of the nation.

The more I learn about movements for justice, the more I become disenchanted with peaceful protests. Would we really have the rights we have without some violent uprisings? Martin Luther King, Jr., who the nation celebrates today, once said, “A riot is the language of the unheard.” Are we slipping backward, losing our hard-won gains because we’ve been taught to only protest complicitly? Isn’t nonviolent protest “too safe” to create change? Is peaceful protesting effective or must it be accompanied by more violent means to achieve anything?

This article from The Washington Post tries to look at data and finds nonviolence is actually more affective at bringing about change. More people are willing to participate in nonviolent acts, and despite what militia-enthusiasts believe, fighting the military is not an even fight. It will also engender greater third-party support. It’s easier to feel sympathy for a cause whose protesters are enduring violence peacefully than for a cause whose protesters are creating violence and chaos.

However, I think we have begun to think as nonviolent protests too peacefully. That it was people calmly sitting in dinners or making handmade anti-war signs. And while those things are strong, visual messages, there is more to the story. Nonviolent protest is not calm and safe. It is putting oneself in danger, sometimes physical danger. It is breaking an unjust system. It is intended to be loud and uncomfortable and disrupting. King said that “the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

I have my doubts that social media posting will stop fascism or annual marches of high-schoolers will end abortion. They are in safe, designated places. No one is risking anything by such a protest. It is an expression of free speech, and a necessary part of democracy to be able to do it, but it’s not really a fight. King and other civil rights advocates went to jail multiple times, lost their jobs, had their houses bombed, had the FBI follow them, faced assault and assassination. They protested without inflicting violence, but there was nothing peaceful about it.

What issues am I really willing to suffer for? What will I willingly go to jail for and face harassment for? And if I’m not willing to, can I truly call myself an advocate? There is solace that nonviolence is still an ethical and effective means, but there is fear that it’s been distorted and while hailed in history books, not as championed in our present time. History is not predetermined. It must be fought for and won.