Photo credit: Wikimedia, Gaza war protest
Protest: Civil Disobedience v. Marching in the Streets
For anyone either involved in or watching the weekly protests against the policies of Donald Trump, such as are organized by Indivisible, among other similar groups, the results must be self-evident. “Saying hurrah for our side” (“For What It’s Worth”) didn’t change anything over a half century ago, and these marches and rallies certainly don’t make any difference now. Most often, these groups serve as conduits into and for Democratic Party politics.
During the civil rights movement and the antiwar movement of the Vietnam War, it was resistance through civil disobedience that made a difference. The more radical forms of resistance by a group such as the Weather Underground generally pissed large numbers of people off and became lethal and counterproductive. By the time of the townhouse bombing in 1970, and over a decade later in the case of the Brink’s robbery (1981), these actions were insane! The state has unlimited resources at its disposal to quell both peaceful and violent unrest and protest, and those tactics are used today without missing a step. Think in terms of storm trooper look-a-likes of ICE.
What does work are the campus and street protests against the Israel/Gaza war, which now includes the West Bank. The fact that colleges, universities, and police on and off the streets have quelled those demonstrations is proof that those actions were effective but could not be sustained against the immense power and violence of the state. What is also a great negative, or albatross today, is that the mass media, which slowly came to condemn the wars in Southeast Asia, are now major cheerleaders for stopping protest in the US. College and university administrators and large donors have accomplished the rest. Students faced with expulsion, denial of matriculation, or graduation are effectively banned from protest or suffer the consequences, including the loss of hefty college and university costs.
What we have now is a “perfect” Orwellian society where the government enforces the rewriting of history and destroys the guarantees of the Constitution to freedom of speech and assembly. For almost a year and a half, it has been obvious that the major forces in the mass media have controlled the narrative about the Israel/Gaza war and the US (and its allies) role in that war, providing massive amounts of armaments that break international law, and specifically the Geneva Conventions and other sources of law. It’s remarkable that after the Holocaust and World War II, other genocides have been tolerated by some in the international community and now the world’s military powers.