Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.
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.
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. It was not peaceful because it was not received peacefully.
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.
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. It was not peaceful because it was not received peacefully.