Our forefathers recognized the need for protest in 1789 they granted their posterity the following amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.(U.S. Constitution)
The birth of this nation is rooted in the 1st amendment. From the Boston Tea Party to the American Revolution protest have played an integral role in our democracy. However these protest worked in tandem with revolts; These revolts damaged Great Britain’s economy. Today people use protests to communicate with political leaders on issues they seem to overlook. The recent deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice and many others have sparked a series of protest against police brutality and systemic racism. The pressure to make President Obama to pass the XL Pipeline plan has galvanized global warming factions. If we take a look outside of the United States, East Mexico has sprung into protest for abducted students by corrupted police officers and to “end collusion between drug lords and police officials.” The protests that are occurring around the globe are being carried out to communicate with state/country leaders to ask for immediate change. Protests give citizens a unified voice, and make the injustice they are fighting for clear. Protest can only affect change when they are inconvenient and paired with explicitly demands for changes in laws.
Protests can be done by a mass of people or by an individual. For instance, Henry D. Thoreau’s Civil disobedience a polymath writes about the need for individual protest for those who wish not to take part in protest, but still want to work towards solving a social injustice. “They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil.” He believes that we live in a complacent and complicit society that waits around for someone else to take action. We know the difference between good and bad, yet we take a gander at the bad and hope it changes eventually. He gives people the tool of Civil Disobedience the act of not supporting the oppressor in protest:
What is the price-current of an honest man and patriot to-day? They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. (http://thoreau.eserver.org/civil1.html)
It’s ok that we have lawmakers because they have the skill to make these decisions, but the citizens know what kinds of decisions need to be made. SInce utimately they will be on the recieving end of these decisions:
Others, as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders, serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God. A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it. (http://thoreau.eserver.org/civil1.html)
When protest are needed in neighborhoods, the need for a community organizer is substantial. In the early 1930s Saul Alinsky, a criminal justice major at the University of Chicago, created new methods of organizing the poor, underrepresented, and powerless. To this day his ideas “have changed the way American democracy works.” In his earlier works Alinsky infiltrated Al Capones gang to learn the root of violence, he found that violence was the voice of the poor and powerless. This discovery inspired and could be found in his later work.
While Alinsky worked at the Institute for Juvenile Research he was assigned to a neighborhood called Back of The Yards that sat behind Chicago’s Union Stock Yards Complex. He was sent there to learn the cause of juvenile delinquency. When Alinsky began working in the Chicago neighborhood he notice a greater injustice; The presence of a lower income community amidst the largest manufacturing plants. In that year alone wages had been cut three times. He believed that “participation in the political process was the key to preserving democracy.” Alinsky organized over 100 existing organizations to band together to create the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council . The organization rallied in a public space with John Lewis and a neighborhood priest as speakers. A day after the rally the Amor company, the second largest meat packing manufacturers, agreed to recognize the meat packer union. The Back of the Yards Council later er rallied for a welfare center.When the rallying cry was heard the welfare center cut infant mortality rates by 50% and provided 3 hot meals a day for malnourished children.
#BLACKLIVESMATTER
Presently, #blacklivesmatter protest in Ferguson, Philadelphia, New York, DC, Boston etc. at their core, are protest that are exposing racism in America. Sadly, This issues can not be simply solved by a stroke of a pen, but can be done with deep psychological reconstruction. Incendiary Language Ahead:I am in no way belittling the work that has been put into #blacklivesmatter, I support the movement wholeheartedly and has even been in a few protest. However the movement takes the first step to curing racism: Making people aware, and informing them that it is a REAL problem. Until congress understands what the #blacklivesmatter protesters want them to do legislatively, congress will continue to overlook their movement because they don’t want to acknowledge America has a race problem. Protest can only affect change when they are organized and paired with “explicit demands.”