I’ve had a few days to think about what’s going on, and I feel like I need to speak up. I want to talk about protests and riots; those things that are being condemned right now to such an extent that not only are national guardsman being sicced on them, now we’re seeing unidentified mercenaries also being brought into the situation. I’m probably going to piss some people off by saying this, and to that I can only say that we will have to agree to disagree; I know that I can’t change minds that aren’t interested in being changed.
In 1909, the women of the New York shirtwaist factories led a general strike that would come to be known as the Uprising of the 20,000. They sought shorter hours, better pay, and the right to form unions. In response, the owners of the companies they were working for paid prostitutes and thugs to attack the strikers; at best, the police allowed these abuses and did nothing. At worst, they assisted in the attacks. One year later, the failure to improve working conditions for these women would end in the tragedy of the Triangle Fire, a blaze that killed 146 of the women working at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. This tragedy, and the legacy of the Uprising of the 20,000, would see the enactment of sweeping reforms to New York’s labor laws, laws that would be enacted on a national level when reform leader Francis Perkins became FDR’s secretary of labor- the first woman to serve on the cabinet.
In 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. would give his historic I Have a Dream speech during the March on Washington. This gathering of an estimated 300,000 people on the Washington Mall was precipitated by the cruel Jim Crow Laws and the “separate but equal” Plessy VS. Ferguson supreme court ruling that permitted segregation of facilities on the basis of race. This led to such egregious situations as having two separate water fountains in one place, one labelled for whites and one labelled for blacks. Though the Jim Crow laws would be repealed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in response to the March on Washington, this act was poorly enforced and black citizens were often obstructed from being able to act on their new rights by discriminatory state laws or groups of white supremacists taking matters into their own hands. Two years later, the Selma to Montgomery marches would push the movement still further… but not without significant pushback. On March 7, 1965, police attacked the unarmed marchers with tear gas and billy clubs, an event that would come to be known as Bloody Sunday. The night after a second march, civil rights activist and minister James Reeb was beaten and murdered by a group of whites. This murder and the events of Bloody Sunday spurred multiple riots and demands for protection of the protesters and an answer to their calls for enforcement of their rights. This would ultimately lead to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
In 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn gay bar in New York’s Greenwich Village. Though paid off by the mafia who owned the bar to only raid during off-peak times, this particular night they showed up when it was full of people. Homosexuality was illegal at the time, and the police would force everyone to leave during these raids, and anyone who was dressed as a woman was brought by a female officer into the restrooms to check their genitalia, and if they were perceived as male, they were arrested. Physical violence against those who failed to comply or didn’t comply fast enough was common. That night, the patrons of the bar resisted the police, unifying together in an event that would come to be known as the Stonewall Riots- throwing bricks and bottles at the police, ripping out a parking meter as a makeshift battering ram when the police barricaded themselves inside the bar, and chasing them in circles around the narrow streets of Greenwich Village while drag queens formed a jeering rockettes kick-line. One year later, participants in the riot led what would become the very first Gay Pride March, and today Pride Parades are still held on the anniversary of the riots.
And this is just a small sampling. Like it or not, protest is baked into our identity as Americans- and sometimes, protests become riots, because as we’ve seen over and over again, police brutality is also baked into America’s identity. When completely peaceful protesters are shot with pepper spray, gassed, shot with rubber bullets, have flash bangs thrown at them, and are physically beaten with riot shields, truncheons, and in the case of at least one Australian newsman, the officer’s fist, what do you expect is going to happen? Everyone, no matter how peaceable at the best of times, has a breaking point. It is entirely reasonable for people to fight back when they are being threatened.
Instead of condemning people for doing what millions before them have done, for being understandably angry that the men and women who are supposed to protect the peace and uphold justice are reenacting the same violence that we learn to condemn in our history lessons in school, let’s try for a little empathy. Let’s try to help champion the cause for which they fight. Stand behind them in opposing police brutality and advocating against systemic racism. It’s thanks to people much like them that you have a great many of the rights we now take for granted.
