Methods of protest/campaign

[James]

Two reasons for this thread.
1) i'm sitting an exam on this subject (not just methods) in a weeks time (so its interesting me alot)
2) this sort of debate is important, because "we" can learn lessons about what methods work best, when they work best, and how they work best.


I'm going to focus on M. L. King (and peacful in general) and Malcolm X (violent including Black Panthers).

[Hampton]

I've always thought that it depends on what your stance on protesting in general is. Self defense with the possibility of violence or the love thy enemy approach, which of course Dr. King preached.

I've always had a lot of respect for what King and SNCC and some of the other groups for being peaceful and not striking back while at the same time disagreeing with it completely. To me it seemed and still seems foolish to stand there and be beaten without striking back, being treated less that human day after day in some cases, but of course there's the positive aspect of it.

When people saw them getting beaten everyday they began to sympathize with them and that put pressure on various lawmakers to and fix the problem, so in some way provided them with an answer to their problems. Of course no real law could fix the problems of racism and lynching that occurred, but what did America know?

The idea of self defense came from people who were tired of getting their asses kicked every time they went to protest. Robert F. Williams did it North Carolina and it scared the hell out of people. Dr. King pushed for him to be suspended from the NAACP but by that time he was already getting guns from Malcolm in New York and other places.

The whole idea of the "violent" form that came from the civil rights movement was people were tired of sitting in they wanted to stand up and hit when they got hit. This is what made them the threat, black dudes with guns you know the government isn't going to let that go on for to long, and that's what happened. It happened with Williams, Malcolm, and the Panthers. Williams fled to Cuba, Malcolm was murdered, and the Panthers were destroyed over time for preaching the idea of defending yourself and not teaching the masses how to take the blow and love your oppressor.

Which method works the best is probably how you look at it. In the way of getting policy and laws and other governmental things done, King and the others were the major influence. A disadvantage to what the Panthers did was the image or the beret and shotgun probably drew people in when the ideals of the Panthers, the ten point program and such things were not the main reason when they joined which would become a problem of course.

[James]

i am going to post - just got to collect all my stuff together first.



Which would you say was the more effective/succesful? Which do you prefer?
and of cause... why

[Hampton]

What was more effective was the peaceful MLK type march, being thrown in jail and beaten upon simply because when the cameras caught wind over what was happening and people got to see it night after night on the news it pressured the government to do something.

The other method is not as effective because it scares people however I think it does more in the realm of what went along with it. Free breakfast, shoes, and medical exams as well as the pride and ideology that went along with it.

What I prefer is self defense. The government on the other hand, does not. I don't see why I should be beaten and killed for rights that I should have had 100 years ago. Malcolm strikes home with a lot of the things he said during the time, about being beaten and letting the police beat up your wives and mothers and not fighting back, it makes you less of a man, less of a human. And that was a big idea during that time, to not be emasculated by a society content on calling them boy and other things.

But that's dangerous, dangerous to the status quo of a society who doesn?t care about the people and dangerous to the people who practice it, because as history has shown, they usually don't live to long.

[Kurai Tsuki]

Malcom X said in his autobiography that the King's march on Washington was carefully planned, to dilute the effects that a more aggressive march by suffering negroes, rather than, "intigration hungry," ones would have.

Protestors were told when to come, what signs to carry, what songs to sing and when to leave. He notes that not surprisingly, no changes in racial perspective or policy were announced by politiitions the next day.

[Hampton]

True that, it's widly known that John Lewis, chairman of SNCC at the time of the march, was to make a speech and that when those who were organizing the event got an advanced copy of the speech they made him remove some of the harsher stuff that critized the Kennedy Administration.

Some of the stuff that was taken out was "the revolution is at hand and we must free ourselves of the chains of political and economic slavery" and the statment that SNCC could not wholeheartly support the Kennedy civil rights bill. He also said:

"...we will not wait for the courts to act..We will not wait for the President, the Justice Dept, nor Congress, but we will take matters into out own hands and create a source of power, outside the national structure, that could and would assure us victory."

The committee to change the speech included the likes of Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy, Baynard Rustin, and John Lewis.