Why should you peacefully protest against your violent oppressors?
Canada thought it was dealing with civil disobedience when Wet’suwet’en refused to remove a 10-year-old cultural centre ?so fracking giant TC Energy could build their natural gas pipeline — a pipeline that was condemned by the United Nations, no less. Protesting by blocking railways was also branded civil disobedience this past February. You might like to think “Ahh, what simple times.”
Today, the label of civil disobedience is also being applied to protests against police brutality that were sparked by the murder of George Floyd. These are two very disparate worlds of protest, but we use the same words to group them together. It’s becoming obvious that any protest that disrupts the status quo is unwelcome. So what happens when we follow the rules and protest the way authorities want us to?
Acceptable protests are “peaceful” and are lauded by policy makers and law enforcers everywhere. These are protests where a couple thousand people gather in a street, chant for a bit, maybe sing songs, and then promptly disperse at curfew and go home; things wouldn’t have to get violent if every protest was like that, right? Except that isn’t the case, as we saw from the peaceful protest at Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C., where 25 minutes before curfew police shot tear gas, flashbangs, rubber bullets, and pepper balls at the non-violent protestors. This was the same peaceful protest where Tim Myers, a member of the Australian press, was punched in the face live on air by a police officer.
We see protest organisers disavow looting and rioting at every turn ?— which is understandable. Nobody wants their civil rights movement to be associated with civil disobedience. Governors, mayors, and even the White House press secretary have been invoking Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s name in a mad dash to whitewash the history of civil rights protests in America. They’re asking protestors to be peaceful, to not sully the dream he had for America while conveniently forgetting that Martin Luther King Jr.’s peaceful protests were also met with cruel violence from police. They conveniently forget that MLK Jr., despite his non-violence, was assassinated anyway. Despite his non-violence, we are still fighting for civil rights 52 years after his death.
So if peaceful protest doesn’t work, we commit civil disobedience. When civil disobedience doesn’t work, we riot. And I don’t want to hear politicians and police chiefs complain about violence when both the United States of America and Canada were built on the back of violence against people of colour. The RCMP shouldn’t complain about Indigenous land protectors stopping trains when the RCMP’s first job was to starve and displace Indigenous peoples from their lands. American police forces shouldn’t complain about black people blocking the streets when they started off as runaway slave patrols.
What authority figures are saying when they call for peaceful protests is that they want protests that are easy to ignore. They want protestors that disband at curfew — protestors that turn the other cheek when they’re shot in the eye with rubber bullets. They want protestors who go home feeling satisfied while the world moves on from yet another forgettable peaceful protest.
In a heartbreakingly prescient 1968 speech, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said: “But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society.”
Rioters are protesting the only way they can in a society that will ignore them if they stay silent, and maim or assassinate them if they protest peacefully. I can’t say that looting and rioting are good, but I could never in good conscience make the claim that the riots and the protests are separate issues. They’re the same. Rioters are protestors, too.
Illustration: Kayt Hine/The Cascade
