Protesting, free speech, the free press are all about communicating how you feel about an issue in America. Your hope should be to sway the people to your point of view. As soon as any group crosses the line from trying to influence people to trying to intimidate them, they are criminals.
People who get arrested protesting deserve our support. People who attempt to force an encounter with police deserve to get arrested.
We are not a nation governed by mobs; we are a nation governed by laws. We do have a history of civil disobedience, but people forget that civil disobedience involves breaking the law and paying the consequences. It is intended to communicate you are prepared to suffer the consequences of breaking the law to draw attention to an issue you feel strongly about.
These days people confuse civil disobedience with lawlessness. In my day, you broke the law admitted it and suffered the consequences. You didn't claim victimhood. Where did that idea come from? Victim status only applied when people were legally protesting the law and were arrested, not when they were breaking the law to pursue what some call "social justice" nonsense.
This article states that America began as a country riddled with bigotry and bias against people, whether against Native Americans, religious groups, or slaves, people were victims of societal discrimination. All that is true. But our nation also began as the first nation on earth to embrace a dream that someday those bigotries and biases would be replaced with equality of opportunity based on merit and character. The first one to put it in its founding documents.
The struggle to get from our beginnings to our goal has closed that gap, but the gap remains. We have made huge progress, denying that is to deny truth.
But these days many protestors have taken the noble practice of peaceful protest and turned it into a circus of violence and bigotry. Groups shouting, "hang all blacks", marching with Nazi symbols, or shouting “from the river to the sea” are advocating division and violence. We tolerate such behavior as the price of a free society, but we should never endorse it.
Perhaps the most impactful American of my generation was MLK (Kennedy might have matched MLK had he lived to serve two terms). MLK's message has stuck with me from the time I heard him preach. America's future lies in integration. We need to become one America where people are judged based on merit and character.
MLK's method was to promote peaceful protests and to enlist good people of all races and beliefs to join him... he did not pit one group against another. Nothing brings this message home more than on the day MLK delivered his "Dream" speech before 250,000 people of all races and religions, he asked Rabbi Uri Miller to open with a prayer. He was followed by Rabbi Joachim Prinz delivering a stirring speech. Let the imagery of that sink in.
A Christian pastor and two Jewish Rabbis stood side by side, preaching a message of unity not division. Not surprisingly, the "baby boomers" remain the most committed age cohort in America supporting equal rights and integration according to polling.
Young people are much more divided and less committed to unity and more committed to separatist causes. Political parties search for issues to divide us over and racism and bigotry seem to work well for them.
The two questions protestors should ask themselves before protesting. Am I about bringing everyone together or am I about dividing them?
In the 60s, it was MLK and his supporters protesting to bring America together and white separatists trying to preserve segregation.
Today, on college campuses, I see militant groups preaching hate trying to tear us apart. The powerful draw of tribalism, the desire to dehumanize other humans to feel superior, or to justify taking something that is not yours to take... these are just some of the issues dividing America.
We need to get back to encouraging everyone to excel and helping people get that opportunity. We cannot and should not guarantee outcomes, but we should not close the doors to opportunity. We are a free society and so we put up with bigots, but let's not support their protests, let's turn our backs on them. Bigotry comes in all colors, religions, and genders... how can you tell... the messaging is usually pretty clear... unity or division.
