It seems like there's a tradition of protest, but there's also a tradition of protests being ignored. (In 2003, Bush said, "First of all, you know, size of protests--it's like deciding, `Well, I'm going to decide policy based upon a focus group.'")
There's also a tradition of trying to change things inside the system, though voting, funding candidates, running for office yourself, etc. You see a certain amount of advocacy for that in the comments on Scalzi's post also.
I think part of the reason that the civil rights protests had the success they did was that they exposed to the public view the horrible things the opposition did in response to the protests, and people just couldn't stomach it. A lot of what's going on today isn't in the public eye ... I applaud reporters and media outlets that do go to the trouble of tracking down and interviewing people who have been released from Guantanomo, etc.
My dad talked to me about the Weathermen once and said that he understood where they were coming from (although he himself has a strong commitment to nonviolence). In 1964, you had protests with a thousand people or so. In 1965, you had protests with 25,000 people. In 1967, 400,000 people marched on the UN in New York to protest the war. And yet the war continued to expand each step of the way (until 1973). It gets frustrating.
The US does have riots from time to time. I don't think they usually result in the overthrow of the government (which seems like an absurd thing to say, but I would accept 'the current folks in power getting tossed out in the next election and new people more sensitive to the concerns of the people who were rioting being installed', or anything along those lines, for this) but I don't know a whole lot about it, so I would be interested in learning of counterexamples.
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Re: hey Matt
Date: 2006-09-30 04:15 pm (UTC)There's also a tradition of trying to change things inside the system, though voting, funding candidates, running for office yourself, etc. You see a certain amount of advocacy for that in the comments on Scalzi's post also.
I think part of the reason that the civil rights protests had the success they did was that they exposed to the public view the horrible things the opposition did in response to the protests, and people just couldn't stomach it. A lot of what's going on today isn't in the public eye ... I applaud reporters and media outlets that do go to the trouble of tracking down and interviewing people who have been released from Guantanomo, etc.
My dad talked to me about the Weathermen once and said that he understood where they were coming from (although he himself has a strong commitment to nonviolence). In 1964, you had protests with a thousand people or so. In 1965, you had protests with 25,000 people. In 1967, 400,000 people marched on the UN in New York to protest the war. And yet the war continued to expand each step of the way (until 1973). It gets frustrating.
The US does have riots from time to time. I don't think they usually result in the overthrow of the government (which seems like an absurd thing to say, but I would accept 'the current folks in power getting tossed out in the next election and new people more sensitive to the concerns of the people who were rioting being installed', or anything along those lines, for this) but I don't know a whole lot about it, so I would be interested in learning of counterexamples.