Comment on YSK: Non-violent protests are 2x likely to succeed and no non-violent movement that has involved more than 3.5% of the country population has ever failed

• 5too@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  I understood US Civil Rights movement to be peaceful, as in the people in the movement did not instigate violence. Calling a protest violent because those in power struck back violently seems nonsensical to me.

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  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    I understood US Civil Rights movement to be peaceful, as in the people in the movement did not instigate violence.

    I’m more responding to

    with some regimes, it’s not possible to non-violently protest. For non-violent protest to work, the environment must respect a minimum amount of human rights.

    then citing the US during the civil rights movement as a place where non-violent protest was possible.

    Calling a protest violent because those in power struck back violently seems nonsensical to me.

    When the police run into a crowd with attack dogs and billy clubs, while members of a white mob drag black demonstrators off to the nearest large tree to be lynched, I can’t imagine how you define that as “peaceful”.

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    • 5too@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      The police running into the crowd are violent, certainly; as is the white mob. The response to a movement being violent doesn’t make the movement violent, any more than getting mugged makes the victim violent.

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      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        The response to a movement being violent doesn’t make the movement violent

        It makes the event violent, which poisons the movement and discourages more civilians from participating.

        The '60s Civil Rights Movement wasn’t the first such movement in the US. We’d had multiple protest waves and minority ethnic civil revolts going straight back to emancipation (and before it). They largely failed because they could not win enough support from the broader proletariat.

        The '60s movement was only seen as a success because it won legislative and private sector concessions in a way prior movements failed to achieve. That happened first and foremost in cities and states where the police didn’t come in guns blazing and the political apparatus was ready to negotiate concessions quickly, to avoid further economic disruption. Those that did failed to enjoy the 60s/70s era of rapid economic growth and lost national influence as a result.

        But to say the Civil Rights Movement succeeded where it began? In Selma, Alabama and Little Rock, Arkansas, and the Mississippi Delta? Absolutely not. State violence crushed it. The movement ended in violence in these early enclaves.

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