Reflections on the Right to Protest

Photo by Alex Radelich on Unsplash

I have been sick for almost a week, and what little energy I had this week was spent searching for apartments. It's the strangest thing, how when you’re sick, you have no energy for the things that will actually make you feel better. I watched a lot of The Chelsea Detective, ate boxed mac and cheese, and scrolled on Twitter. 

Twitter, of course, was an incomprehensible, infuriating miasma of recriminations, accusations, snide commentary, moral superiority, and fear mongering around the rise of student protests on college campuses across the country, following the administration at Columbia University’s decision to call the police on the student encampment on the lawn. As you can imagine, it didn’t have much in the way of healing properties, didn’t do much for my ability to sleep. There is something deeply disturbing about a timeline flooded with images of police in riot gear, wrestling protesters to the ground in any circumstances, let alone kids only just stepping into adulthood. And it only gets more disturbing when you consider the way the conversation around these protests has devolved into another weapon in our war against ourselves. 

And this whole time, I keep thinking about the Boston Tea Party. It’s a foundational part of the American story, a keystone of our history, the protest that begat a revolution. We were founded on the right to protest. It’s in the very first amendment we made to our constitution, the first thing we put down in our Bill of Rights - the right to free speech, the right to assembly, the right to petition the government to address our grievances. After the repression of the British, we knew exactly what we needed to protect, and how. 

The right to protest, it turns out, is even more American than apple pie. 

So why is it that every time there is a mass protest movement the response is not just violence from the state, but accusation and dismissal from the rest of us? I understand that those in power have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, whether it's empowering the police, empowering Wall Street, war profiteering, there is someone benefiting from things as they are. But there are so many who want to know how these students dare disrupt, what these rich kids could possibly really want, who try to rationalize why they think this is silly, or stupid, or selfish, who say this is not the right time, or place, or people, who demand something more orderly, something less disruptive, something more polite - what are their vested interests? 

There are a lot of ways to try to get out of what we’re seeing, to try and absolve ourselves of our guilt, complicity, resentment, uncertainty, fear. But whatever our first impulse when confronted with a mass movement like this, we can and must move past it to the truth. When people rise up like this, when they put their bodies, livelihoods, time, money, and energy on the line, they are trying to tell us that something is very, very wrong, and that we cannot look away. 

Across the country, protesters at universities, in marches, outside government buildings, at speeches and rallies, people of all ages are telling us to look at Gaza, to look at Palestine, at the tens of thousands of people killed, the thousands of children killed, maimed, and orphaned, the millions displaced, the famine and disease, the destruction of homes and sacred sites and universities and museums and restaurants and saying they do not want to be a part of it anymore. 

We do not want to be a part of it anymore. And we think we should use every power available to us to make it stop.

We’re in a really scary time right now, a cascading series of crises unfolding in front of us. The Republican candidate for president and his lawyers are alternating their time between a Supreme Court case where they are claiming immunity from prosecution for any crimes committed as president, and a fraud case involving hush money spent to secure the presidency. Trump, should he be elected, will not only face no accountability for any of his crimes including trying to overthrow the government, he’ll also immediately begin radically restricting our rights - to our bodies, to our time and money, to love and read and go where we will. 

On the flip side we currently have a President who while doing an incredible job fighting for ordinary Americans at home, presides over an economy rigged for the wealthy, a Supreme Court rigged for Republicans, and a planet that is melting. For all that this administration has done to alleviate these crises, there is still much more to do. And for some reason, this administration also keeps sending weapons and funding to the autocratic Israeli government that is responsible for untold death and destruction in Palestine and is actively impeding the efforts to get hostages back. 

So, I get why people are scared. I’m scared. I’m scared of a future where Trump is reelected President, not just for what it will do here in the United States, but what will happen around the world, and how much worse the violence and instability can get. But I’m also scared of what happens if we let Israel’s violence in Palestine, and the complicity of American foreign policy in that violence go unanswered. I’m scared for the hostages that were taken on October 7th, and how many have been lost to a vengeful invasion, and I’m scared for those in Gaza who have nowhere to go to escape famine, disease, and death. I’m scared of what it means for our country and our democracy if this call to action is ignored. 

We have a lot to contend with, both here at home and well beyond our shores. And we do ourselves no favors by turning away from any of it. We cannot turn away from the violence in Palestine, and we cannot turn away from the very real dangers posed by the authoritarian threat looming over this election year. But when faced with something that challenges us, that makes us uncomfortable or uncertain, from protests to books to everything in between, we have a choice. We can give into that initial impulse to dismiss, to undermine, to repress, or we can take a deep breath, and we can look closer. We can accept the discomfort, the uncertainty, and yes, even the complicity it takes to be human in a complicated, messed up world. We can listen to the people doing everything they possibly can to tell us something is wrong. We can speak up, assemble, and petition the government to address our grievances. We can fight for a future we believe in at the ballot box and in the streets. 

We protest, and then together, we take the next step.