The American paradox of protest: Celebrated and condemned, welcomed and muzzled

NEW YORK — They are hallmarks of American history: protests, rallies, sit-ins, marches, disruptions. They date from the early days of what would become the United States, to the sights and sounds that echoed across the landscapes of the nation’s colleges and universities during this activist spring.

And just as much a part of American history? These same events were met with irritation, condemnation, anger, calls to stop, and sometimes the use of law enforcement and aggressive tactics to make that happen.

“Different opinions are essential for democracy. But dissent should never lead to disorder,” President Joe Biden said Thursday, summing up the ongoing national paradox.

Americans cherish the right to assemble, speak out, and petition for redress of grievances. It is enshrined in the first constitutional amendment. They praise past social actions and recognize the progress toward equality that previous generations have made, often at the risk of their own lives. But those same activities can breed anger and outright opposition when life’s routines are interrupted, and the fear that those who speak out are outsiders seeking to sow chaos and influence impressionable minds.

“The general public hated the civil rights protesters. The general public hated the Vietnam War protesters. And the general public resented the women’s movement protesters… and all the protests that happened were actually in the future,” said Robert Shapiro, professor of political science at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs University and an expert. about public opinion in American politics.

But that doesn’t mean the protests haven’t had an impact, he says, even if not immediately. “Public opinion on these issues is changing as a result of the effectiveness of the protests, which do one very important thing: increase the visibility and salience of the issues.”

Consider, for example, the Occupy Wall Street protest of 2011. “It drew attention to economic inequality in the United States,” he says. “People then paid more attention to the conversation. The issue of economic inequality in the United States has become and remains visible.”

Protest camps have sprung up and been demolished in recent weeks due to the war between Israel and Hamas, which has been going on since early October.

The Israeli government launched military action in the Gaza Strip after Hamas militants killed about 1,200 people and took about 250 others as hostages in an Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel. The Israeli offensive has killed more than 34,500 Palestinians and caused widespread damage to infrastructure in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry.

Pro-Palestinian protesters at American schools have called on their governments to cut economic and other ties with Israel or companies they say support the war. The protest camps began at Columbia University on April 17 and have spread nationwide.

What has also had waves is the resistance to the demonstrations. Administrators, under pressure to restore order and normal functioning just before the start of college, have said they support the right to speak but should not disrupt the lives of other students or violate rules of conduct. Police have been called to clear campus camps across the country, with more than 2,300 people arrested.

When it comes to protest activity, however, disruption is the point, says Celeste Faison, national director of the Movement for Black Lives network, a coalition of organizations that came together after the 2014 Black Lives Matter protests, which were catalyzed by the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

“It’s always those uncomfortable moments and those uncomfortable impulses that make change possible,” she says. “What has historically driven change in the United States is those who are willing to put their bodies on the line, their voices on the line, their communities on the line.”

That resonates with Andrew Basta, a fourth-year student at the University of Chicago, who spent time at the school’s encampment on Tuesday. Basta, 21, said: “It is not only fair, but it is, I think, even a responsibility for us to be disruptive, to change our lives accordingly and to resist.”

Rabbi Moshe Hauer does not agree that disruption is necessary. He points to demonstrations and rallies that have taken place over the years with permits and required approvals, and where people made their voices heard without blocking roads or interrupting life.

People’s right to speak out is a right that we “absolutely embrace as part of being American, as part of being serious people who know that no one has a monopoly on the truth,” said Hauer, executive vice president president of the Orthodox Union. Jewish organization. “We need to empower ourselves to listen to other voices and to people who raise their voices and express their opinions clearly – whether we like the opinion or we don’t like the opinion.”

But he is among those dismayed by the current wave of protests on campus. He says they have descended into anti-Semitism and created an atmosphere that is unsafe for Jewish students and communities. It is cause for concern, he says, if there is a movement that “chooses to define its tactics by things… that are intimidating, that are threatening, that clearly, clearly, clearly lead to violence.”

Calls for orderly protest have been common throughout American history, sometimes accompanied by a nostalgia for previous eras that may be misplaced.

“It’s a romance from the past that it’s actually not true. For example, the media pays a lot of attention to Martin Luther King. But we know: at the time he was presented in the media as this anarchist disruptor,” says Faison. “Ultimately, we have a very bad pattern of vilifying protesters when they are in battle, and then celebrating protesters when they win or after they take the risk.”

It’s a kind of “ideological appropriation” when people who were considered radical or crazy at the time of their protests are later considered “on the right side of history,” says Charles McKinney, associate professor of history at Rhodes College , who researches the Civil War. Rights movement. “The role of the state then is to incorporate those values, while being ambivalent about the process by which those values ​​were incorporated into the nation.”

It reinforces the idea that the power of protest is not necessarily in convincing people in the present, but in influencing the conversations in the culture. The most powerful protests in American history—from the Boston Tea Party in 1773—resonated far beyond their eras and, despite their enduring fame, were successful.

“It works, right?” says Robert Widell, Jr., an associate professor of history at the University of Rhode Island who has studied political movements. “It’s at least effective in changing the terms of the debate and changing the way people think about a particular issue or set of issues, or just putting it into people’s brains that something is happening here.

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Associated Press journalist Teresa Crawford contributed to this report from Chicago.