Martin Luther King Day is a good time to reflect on the efficacy of street protests. My view has long been that these things are usually ineffective, often counterproductive and rarely successful.
The movement King led is a case in point because it was the rare exception that, after he was killed, degenerated into the rule.
King was not just a brilliant writer and orator. He was a master tactician who understood how to use street theater and television. He insisted on non-violence. His protests were meticulously organized. Marchers wore suits and ties and dresses. They looked middle class. So, when they were viciously attacked with water canons, dogs and batons and when those attacks showed up on nightly news programs, middle Americans reacted in horror.
Combine that with the political mastery of Lyndon Johnson and the result was the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Huge leaps forward.
But then things began to sour. King started to be overtaken by younger, more radical voices. Protesters no longer looked middle class. They started to look like the militant Black Panthers. Now the armed thugs had switched sides. The movement started to lose its support in the American middle where issues are ultimately decided.
And, in fact, this played a role in King’s assassination. Against the advice of his experienced, hardened and smart staff, King accepted an invitation to march with striking sanitation workers in Memphis. His aides strongly opposed his appearance there because they weren’t in charge of organizing the march.
And, sure enough, things got out of hand. There was some violence perpetrated by some of the young marchers. King’s aides had to get him off the street and out of Memphis lest he become identified with the mayhem. White supremacists chirped that King had fled in disgrace.
And that’s why he insisted on returning to Memphis a week later to get it right this time. And that’s what put him on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel and in range of the sniper who murdered him in April, 1968. So, in a way, the growing militancy of the civil rights movement played its part in the death of the most effective leader of nonviolent protest this country has ever had.
Unfortunately, this is an all too common trajectory. Street protests start out peaceful enough. The American middle class is sympathetic to their cause. Then the radicals and the simply unhinged hangers-on go too far. This is just what happened following the murder of George Floyd. Justified anger quickly morphed into calls to defund the police (rhetorical overreach) and then actual physical violence. Here in Madison protesters looted stores on State Street, torched a police cruiser and, inexplicably, tore down and beheaded the statue of Hans Christian Heg, an abolitionist who died fighting to end slavery.
The Vietnam War protests followed the same pattern. I think a pretty good case can be made that, in the end, the protests actually lengthened the war. LBJ and Richard Nixon didn’t want to be seen as caving to the protesters. It gave them less room to move toward peace. The American middle wasn’t turned against the war by what they saw on campuses, but by what they saw happening in Vietnam itself. The war became unpopular, but the protesters were never popular.
So, those are examples of effective protest and counter-productive protest and the tragic arc that often links the two. But the more common result is nothing. Let me offer two examples.
In 2011 there were massive, sustained protests in Madison against Scott Walker’s move to all but destroy public employee unions. The street protests were big, well-organized and orderly. I was Mayor at the time, so I can tell you that crime was actually down in downtown Madison during those protests when on a few days there were an estimated 100,000 people in the streets. The Streets Division also reported that the Square, where the protests took place, was actually cleaner and more tidy than on typical days. That’s what happens when you get tens of thousands of teachers together in one place. “People! Clean up your area before you leave today.”
But in the end it was all for naught. Act 10 became law. Scott Walker won both the subsequent recall election and reelection to a second term in 2014. Court challenges to Act 10 have been unsuccessful for a decade and a half. It will almost certainly be overturned in the next year or so but that’s because liberals have won a Supreme Court majority. It will have had nothing to do with the big protests of winter, 2011.
A more recent example of ineffective protest is the No Kings rallies. Here again, the protests are peaceful and well-organized, but they’re mostly opportunities for Baby Boomers to get together on street corners to relive the sixties. They’ve had no discernible effect on anything. The same was true of the Women’s Marches in 2017.
I’m inspired by Greenlanders protesting Trump’s outrageous bullying. It’s certainly not counterproductive. It demonstrates to the world where they stand. I hope these protests work, but I suspect they won’t figure much in the final resolution.
Which brings us to Minneapolis today. These protests against ICE are following the same tragic pattern. Like the King-organized protests, this starts out with images of peaceful protesters being harassed, bullied and sometimes attacked by heavily armed, masked men in military fatigues. It’s a really bad image for ICE.
But then some in the crowd go too far. They vandalize official vehicles and hurl objects and insults at, not only ICE officers, but Minneapolis police who are just there to keep the peace. Over the weekend they peppered a small, pathetic band of pro-ICE protesters with snowballs and water balloons and drove their leader into a hotel lobby, where reporters noticed blood on his shirt. They forced another pro-ICE protester to take off a tee shirt they found objectionable. And on Sunday, in a move almost calculated to alienate, they showed up at a church to interrupt the service because it was being led by an alleged ICE agent.
These protesters are doing all they can to turn public opinion against them and their cause. Are their acts of violence anywhere equal to the violence coming from ICE? Of course not. Is there reason to be angry about 3,000 ICE agents flooding a city with a very small number of illegal immigrants, to be furious that ICE agents essentially collect a bounty for every arrest, to be irate that there is obvious racial profiling running rampant? Yes, of course.
But protesters have to realize, as King did, that this is political theater. It’s not about self-righteous, narcissistic virtue signaling. What matters is what tens of millions of Americans see on their news and social media feeds. And if the protesters turn ICE and the Minneapolis cops and the conservative counter-protesters into sympathetic figures, well, that just plays into Trump’s hands. He wants an excuse to crack down even harder on Minneapolis. He wants to invoke the Insurrection Act. He wants to send in federal troops. And I don’t think I’m too paranoid in worrying that this is a dress rehearsal for this fall when Democrats should win back the House of Representatives or for the 2028 presidential election. Would Trump use force to try to steal an election? I put nothing past this guy.
What would make sense right now is to lower the temperature in that city. Suspend even the peaceful protests because, whatever the intent of the organizers, a small group of militants can destroy the message. Get off the street. Instead have controlled indoor rallies and what used to be called “teach ins.” Organize to send powerful rebukes to Trump and his party in this year’s elections. And I know activists in Minneapolis who are doing things like running to the grocery store for their Somali neighbors, who are afraid to leave their homes and for good reason. Those activists are doing the Lord’s work. (And let’s reflect for a moment about an America where any innocent person fears leaving their homes because of what might happen to them at the hands of their own government.)
I’m as outraged as anyone by what Trump and ICE are doing. But there are better ways to get to the same place. The longer the Minneapolis street protests go on the more support for the anti-ICE movement will erode.
Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos 