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by mandmandam
722 days ago
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That argument was used (a lot) to decry suffragette protests and desegregation protests. I for one am glad that women and black people didn't take it too seriously. You may want to read some MLK - he had some very clear words about the liberal who demands civility in the face of oppression. |
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It is not about acting civilly. It is about messaging.
If non-movement people consider you as a bunch of jackasses, do you think they will join your cause, or even have sympathy towards it? You need to communicate your message—words and actions—so that, at the very least, people will have a neutral opinion. If you're actually good, then people will have a positive opinion of you and your goals.
> Days later, King was quietly bailed out and ejected from prison by Albany police chief Laurie Pritchett, who had studied the nonviolence protest method and released King to undermine it. In other cities, violence by police against peaceful demonstrators brought outcry and sympathy. But Pritchett met nonviolence with nonviolence. Within weeks, the protest fizzled out. For King, Albany was largely a failure, and his takeaway was for the movement to better pick its spots.
[…]
> It was far from total victory, but King had something more important: the attention of an outraged and rapt nation. The legacy of the water cannons and dogs, of callused feet and imprisoned children, would be incarnated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act and the Twenty-Fourth Amendment, which banned poll taxes. Montgomery and Birmingham also formed the script for peaceably countering injustice in a nation founded on protest. From antiwar protests during Vietnam to Occupy Wall Street and beyond, King’s commitment to nonviolent protest lives on.
* https://time.com/5101740/martin-luther-king-peaceful-protest...
It is why violence is usually such a bad idea: most non-members of a movement don't want to get into that, and would probably see the movement as a bunch of thugs. In a survey of 600 movements since 1900, Chenoweth et al found that those that used violence were successful ~25% of the time, but non-violence had a >40% success rate.
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44096650-civil-resistanc...
* https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/2021-1...
* https://www.hks.harvard.edu/behind-the-book/erica-chenoweth-...
* https://www.peacejusticestudies.org/chronicle/review-of-civi...
You almost double your chances of success by gaining sympathy versus 'acting out'. Do you think the race riots helped or hindered the civil rights movement?
> Let me say as I've always said, and I will always continue to say, that riots are socially destructive and self-defeating. I'm still convinced that nonviolence is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom and justice. I feel that violence will only create more social problems than they will solve. That in a real sense it is impracticable for the Negro to even think of mounting a violent revolution in the United States. So I will continue to condemn riots, and continue to say to my brothers and sisters that this is not the way. And continue to affirm that there is another way.
* https://www.crmvet.org/docs/otheram.htm
If you want to actually achieve your goal(s) then non-violence and public opinion are important things to consider.