There is a definite theme threading through the content we see on national news channels. The influx of police brutality and racial tension floods the United States, suggesting seemingly no foreseeable end. We have been witnesses to these weekly, fatal encounters between civilians and police officers for the past couple years now. This era of unease, representing a new strain of racial turmoil, has revitalized the effort to iron out our differences and try to see what the world looks like from another perspective by taking to the streets in protest. Whether you are directly affected by this unrest, people are dying. Wives are losing their husbands, mothers their sons. Yes, protesting does have the potential to grow into violence, but there will always be the few in a peaceful crowd who incite a violent response by the police. Peaceful protest is the vehicle by which change can be brought about and it is the diplomatic weapon of choice to combat prevalent issues, such as racism and injustice.
The potency of nonviolent activism prevails as much today as it did 80 years ago. In March of 1930, an independence movement began against the British salt monopoly in colonial India. The Salt March was a challenge to the British authority, and it demonstrated the effective use of civil disobedience in the face of social and political injustice. Mohandas Gandhi led a band of 78 volunteers on a march toward the sea, 241 miles south of where they started. After 24 days of marching in India, Gandhi began to pick up salt, which was regulated at this time by the British government. This simple act sparked India’s independence movement away from oppression and social injustice. Rosa Parks, by simply sitting down in the back of a bus, became the “mother of the civil-rights movement.” Her willingness to stand up to injustice and prejudice by sitting down advanced the decision to make segregated seating in public areas unconstitutional. This law invited further speculation about discrimination encouraged a change in cognition. And naturally, no discourse on the power of protest could exist without a discussion of the March on Washington, the day over 200,000 people gathered in the grace of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Lincoln Memorial to peacefully protest for the desire to have equal rights.
From these events, one thing is obvious: peaceful protests are necessary to evoke change in something we believe is unjust, and we have a God-given right to do so. We tend to focus on the separate entities involved in acts of protest, but why not focus on the unity? President Barack Obama referred to the shooting of three police officers in Baton Rouge on July 5th as “an attack on all of us.” There is the unity that we must use as the glue that holds us together. While we may protest against each other, the goal is common. When examined at the core, the purpose of such protest is to end violence for everyone.
Let me try to bring this full circle. The Black Lives Matter campaign serves as this decade’s civil rights movement, fighting to tear down walls rooted in hatred and validate the lives of black men and women. Peniel Joseph explains how the people involved in the Black Lives Matter protest have “mounted a human rights movement bold enough to articulate unspeakable, unspoken truths about a national culture of violence, division, and racial oppression.” By no means is this group “calling death to the police;” they are sharing a dose of their reality, which is a new perspective for some, in this universal fight for justice. DeRay Mckesson, one of the strongest leaders in this movement, ensured that “the movement began as a call to end violence. That call remains.”
Protests challenge us to fight for a new “normal.” America is still not equal. All its laws are still not just. We cannot see protesting as a dead art, a thing of the past, for if we do, we run the risk of letting history repeat itself and manifest into a reality of all too tangible consequence. William Faulkner once said, “Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world… would do this, it would change the earth.” We protest because we must be able to join hands with our neighbor with a firmer grip than we now offer.
Lucy Siegel is an Opinion columnist for The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at l.siegel@cavalierdaily.com.
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