When I sat down in Trumbower’s lecture hall, one of the
three speakers intrigued me immediately as she began speaking, the speaker was
a Muhlenberg graduate of 2003, Kelly Howe. One of her main points caught my
interest particularly; it was when she pointed out the contradiction of civil
disobedience. Who is really calling protesters to be civil? And how can you expect a protester
to act more civil than angry? These are two questions that were raised during
the talk by Howe.
When you
look at people calling for civil disobedience it is not the activist and
protesters themselves rather the people in power getting protested against.
People in power call for civil disobedience as a way to insure that they remain
in power. Some examples include businesses, the government and even our own
Muhlenberg administration. People or institutions in power fear a protest
because of what it might evolve into, in many cases a protest that starts out
as peaceful can quickly turn violent, leaving the people in power in danger of
losing their power. These people of power would rather see all the protesters
holding hands than raising pitchforks, because when all that is going on is
hand holding it is easier to dismiss the protest however when people are
knocking down the president’s door their demands are met a lot more quickly.
Examples of each type of protest is the riots in Ferguson and the occupy Wall
Street movement. There were some clear differences in the protests like one was
held in the largest city in the world and the other was held in the ghetto of Ferguson
Missouri, both protests were protesting against an institution however only one
of the two pretests turned violent. Maybe if the executives on wall street swapped
spots with the police surrounding the camp site at occupy wall street both
would have been violent but Wall Street, the foundation of everything the 99%
was protesting against, was just 3 miles south of their main camp ground. What
was preventing some one from taking the train south to throw a bomb in the wall
street building and what didn’t prevent the protesters in Ferguson to choose to
fire live rounds at police officers? Occupy Wall Street was more or less a
conversation starter than a protest based off of how little they actually
accomplished. As great as a story occupy Wall Street was, it was really a
failure because nothing was changed. However when the people in Ferguson turned
violent against the police who have been exploiting them, it caught everyone’s
eye. Now because of how serious the riots were the likely hood of actually
getting justice for the slaying of Michael brown is much more likely. But in
all honesty it will take time to see weather the wrongful killing of Michael
brown will lead to less racial profiling and more strict adherence to the law
from our law enforcement. This might seem like an un supported claim however based
on the history of our country race riots have brought about change for example
the Newark riots and the Rodney King riots, while these might be looked back on
as a dark spot in our nations history what emerged in its aftermath has only
benefitted our country. I believe the Ferguson riots, much like the watts and
Newark riots, are just growing pains of a country, which is slowly but surely
becoming more just and equal. And protests like this are what remind us that
the work is not done and we still need to strive for justice and equality.
Howe isn’t
a completely ballistic in her views on protest, while she does acknowledge the
importance of being angry and having rage while protesting, she also believes
that rage and anger is most affective when you turn your rage and anger into
effectiveness. The only thing pure rage will get you in a protest is arrested
however when you turn the anger you have towards a topic and turn it into
activism and a driving force behind rallying a community around one important
issue than the rage has been used effectively.
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