Dear America, Violent Protests Work
President Joe Biden should know when to say less - particularly in regard to how the Black community should or should not respond to police brutality. On January 27th, in an official statement posted to Twitter at 5:20 pm PST, the President said that “Those who seek justice should not resort to violence or destruction. Violence is never acceptable; it is illegal and destructive.” His statement came moments before the bodycam footage of the brutal murder of Tyre Nichols by the Memphis Police Department was released.
The sentiment was shared by others, including local Bay Area leaders, like Oaklands’ Sheng Thao. "Tyre's mother said last night, 'I want each and every one of you to protest in peace,' and I urge all Oaklanders to respect her wishes," said Thao. Interstingly, these sentiments are shared side by side with images of the actual military national guard being deployed in various cities where large protests were expected.
Protests remain peaceful when those with power and privilege respond in kind, a reality we have yet to see for Black lives in this country. In fact, historians, reporters, and researchers studying violent and non-violent protests have found that those in power often incite violence against protesters, not the other way around. Be that as it may, the assertion that there is no acceptable or just form of violent protest is regressive, anti-Black, and untrue. Tactical violence has long been a means of social change, giving birth to movements like the Civil Rights Movement or Black Lives Matter.
History shows that, in seeking to change outcomes for Black lives, violence works. It’s not unusual for the Black diaspora to disagree on the tactics used to acheive justice and liberation. In 2020, long-time civil rights activist John Lewis and Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza found themselves at this familiar impasse - the friction brought on by the dichotomy of violent and non-violent protest. John Lewis called for peaceful non-violent protests. In turn, Alicia Garza told The New Yorker, “It’s a familiar pattern: to call for peace and calm but direct it in the wrong places. Why are we having this conversation about protest and property when a man’s life was extinguished before our eyes?”. The non-violent tactics used crossing the bridge in Selma on Bloody Sunday worked in bringing about change. But so did the violent tactics in Los Angeles during the Rodney King riots, those during the Ferguson unrest after Michael Brown was killed, and those during 2020 after George Floyd was lynched publicly by Minneapolis police.
Evidence shows that 93% of Black Lives Matter protests are, in fact, peaceful. But, nonviolence isn’t a prerequisite to progress. Barbara B. LaBossiere for Public Affairs Quarterly states, “When that power is abused, however, we recognize the people's right to bring it to the attention of the nation. Whether that attention is acquired through violence depends, in great part, on how much those who are in power resist the people voicing their outrage at the injustice that has been done”. Determining whether violence aids or hinders the movement is a subject of academic debate and significant interest, with an intriguing hypothesis.
Two large-scale studies examined the impact of protests on the Black Lives Matter movement in particular. The researchers espouse, “The answer to the question of whether violence makes protests more or less effective likely depends largely on what outcome is used to evaluate effectiveness. A number of outcomes are potentially relevant to evaluating a movement's success, including prejudice toward the minority group, public awareness of the protested inequality, support for the movement’s key policy aims, and even systematic structural change.” Their efforts was “to examine the psychological impact of BLM protests that occurred in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the role of violence within them on both 1) increasing support for key policy demands of the movement and 2) reducing prejudice. Specifically, we argue that while protests are unlikely to reduce prejudice, they may increase public support for the movement’s policy goals and that some amount of violence may even increase this effect.”
American history is littered with “heroes” who are praised for the tactical violence employed in the name of progress. Revolutionary violence in service to a desired shift in social structure, governmental policies, or social-political leadership has long been lauded by the American people as acceptable. To prove this, we need only look to examples such as the New York City Draft Riots, or the Battle of Athens. We have a national holiday, July 4th, built around the celebration of such violence. In contrast, the narratives surrounding John Brown’s Raid on Harper’s Ferry, or even the Stonewall Riots, are generally viewed through a less rosy lens. Revolutionary violence makes clear what is urgent and what is desired, as much as it makes clear what is not. It is at this point that we see the clear divergence of the “two Americas”.
In a speech that is, sadly, as applicable today as in 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., well known for his views on non-violent action, explained that:
“...a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear?”
The swift calls to refrain from revolutionary violence are telling. This isn’t about an actual disdain for violence, so much as it is a dedication to upholding systems and institutions that perpetuate violence towardtowards Black lives.
I know that many Black people watching the Tyre Nichols tragedy unfold are thinking the same thing as I amme. The areI’m frustrated. They areI’m tired. They haI’ve marched the streets. Yet we continue to see the videos of Black bodies brutalized - videos released by the very police who commit these heinous crimes. They haI’ve voted. They haI’ve donated. They haI’ve volunteered. I’ve written think pieces. I’ve presented to book clubs for white people. They have haI’ve pushed the boundaries of legal civic action. And yet, nothing changes. Time and again, the Black community is left to wrestle with angst. What more will it take?I am left to wrestle with my angst. What more will it take?
Amira Barger, she/her, is an executive Vice President at a global communications firm, providing diversity, equity and inclusion counsel to clients. She is also an adjunct professor of marketing and communications at Cal State East Bay.