by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
One way to move the needle on social, economic, and political issues in the United States has been to protest. Our country has a long history of rallies, marches, lockouts, walkouts, brawls, sit-ins, and even love-ins, all used in promoting or opposing various movements and causes.
A couple of noteworthy protests occurred this weekend.
Rep. Cori Bush, a Democrat from Missouri, has a first-hand understanding of what it means to be homeless. At one point in her pre-congressional life she was living in a car with her two small children. Rep. Bush was angered that the House adjourned this week without moving to extend the US moratorium on evictions, a move that many believe will have a significant impact on under-employed black women who are heads of households.
The Missouri congresswoman decided that she would protest the lack of congressional action on the matter by spending Friday night sleeping outside of the US Capitol. She sent a letter to all of her colleagues airing her feelings on the matter of the moratorium being allowed to expire and inviting them to join her in the campout. Two others, Reps. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, both Democrats like Ms. Bush, showed up with their sleeping bags and joined in the protest. Their efforts generated news coverage and some national discourse on the matter.
In Texas former Congressman Beto O'Rourke led a citizen's march from Georgetown, Texas, to the state capitol in Austin, a walk of twenty-seven miles, to protest a spate of voter-intimidation and vote-suppression laws that the Texas legislature has been debating. O'Rourke compared their march to the famed civil rights march that Dr. King led from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965. When Beto and his marchers got to the Capitol they were treated to a free concert by Willie Nelson. The country superstar is an outspoken opponent of the proposed new laws. Willie said:
"It is important that we ensure the right for every American to vote and vote safely. Voting restrictions are unAmerican and intended to punish people of color, the elderly, and disabled."
And when Willie Nelson sings - or speaks - people listen!
Protests may not be a uniquely American art form, but they have been used to great effect throughout our nation's history. The Boston Tea Party was an act of protest against the British government. It was carried out in December of 1773 and helped to precipitate events that led to the American colonies declaring their independence from Great Britain less than three years later.
After we became an independent nation and defined our government through a Constitution, protests were used to highlight the inequities that remained in how the country functioned. Street protests in some northern communities helped to hold the government's feet to the fire on the issue of slavery, an issue so intense and divisive that it finally took a great, bloody war to resolve it.
Women's rights and suffrage were long simmering political issues in the United States, and after the Civil War had supposedly cleared the stage of the slavery issue, the suffrage movement began to come to the forefront of political discussion. Many of the women at the center of the movement were also active in the prohibition (of alcohol) movement, and suffrage and prohibition became inter-twined in American politics. It was primarily American women who carried signs and marched in parades to bring about prohibition. Slogans like "Lips that touch liquor will never touch mine" were rallying cries, and some extremists like "Mother" Carrie Nation even became notorious for acts of violence and mayhem like busting-up saloons.
There was a sizable parade for Women's Suffrage in Washington, DC, in 1913 that included 5,000 marching "suffragettes," several bands, and many floats. Angry men who felt threatened by the changing times attacked the marchers, and more that a hundred were treated for injuries. Seven years later women witnessed two victories for their efforts. The 18th Amendment establishing prohibition was enacted in January of 1920 (but repealed thirteen years later), and women were given the right to vote through the 19th Amendment which was added to the Constitution in August of 1920.
In 1963 Martin Luther King, Jr, led the "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom," an event that helped to bring about the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and generated public support for the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's.
Being gay was a crime and also regarded as a mental illness not many years ago. In 1969 in response to a surge in anti-gay harassment by New York City Police, gay patrons of the Stonewall Inn decided that they weren't going to continue to take the police abuse. They fought back physically in a series of clashes with police that became known as the Stonewall Riots. The riots lasted for a week, and the efforts of that group of angry protesters led to the establishment of the gay rights movement in America, a movement that has witnessed many social advances and a rising level of acceptance over the following fifty years, including the legalization of gay marriage.
Protests over the Vietnam War and the draft were instrumental in causing Lyndon Johnson not to seek a second full term in the presidency, and the continuing protests forced his successor, Richard Nixon, to begin peace negotiations.
Native American rights were highlighted through two major acts of defiance in the early 1970's. In the last days of 1969 a group calling itself "Indians of All Tribes" seized and occupied Alcatraz Island off of the California coast. The occupiers, who at one time numbered more than four hundred, existed on the grounds of the abandoned federal penitentiary for nineteen months, often without water or electricity, demanding better services for Native Americans. The protesters also sought to put an end to the "Indian Termination Policy" in which the government intentionally worked to eliminate the tribal system and completely incorporate the remaining Native Americans into the general population. President Nixon, to his credit, ended that policy and replaced it with the concept of Indian self-determination, but Nixon also had the squatters forcibly removed from their citadel on the Pacific.
Later during the Nixon administration the government was more forceful and deadly in dispersing a group of Lakota Sioux who took over the impoverished town of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.
The Women's March on Washington in January 0f 2017, the day after the Trump inauguration, was significant not only because the crowd was far larger than the one that had attended the inauguration, but also because it focused the country's attention on issues that were of importance to women and families, things like equity in wages and universal childcare.
In March of the next year, 2018, some survivors of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida organized the "March for Our Lives" protest in Washington, DC. The day-long event drew 800,00 participants to the nation's capital, and there were auxiliary protests around the country. The students spoke eloquently for what many regarded as "common-sense" gun laws including the restoration of the 1994 ban on assault-style weapons, having background checks for all guns sales, including private and gun show sales - and prohibition of the deadly bump stock add-ons which increased the firepower of certain weapons. Their efforts intensified the national discourse about guns, and the Trump administration banned bump stocks at the federal level.
The nationwide protests that came about after the police killing of George Floyd last year helped to focus attention on racism and brutality in America's policing agencies.
Protests are an important part of the American fabric. They highlight issues that many would rather see shelved or forgotten, and place those problems directly before the public.
Cori Bush and Beto O'Rourke have generated some news coverage and gotten people talking. They have made evictions and vote-suppression a little harder to ignore - and that is a good start.
And we have not heard the last from either of them!
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