The climate activist blocked a port handling fossil fuels with a group of young activists in June.
Protests actually weren’t MLKs strongest tool, and he himself admits it. Getting arrested for doing something and then challenging it in court now that you have standing was his biggest tool. Most of the protests were just a means to get arrested. It’s revisionist history that says it was the protests specifically that worked because it’s better to emphasize the tactics that didnt work than to point out what actually did and risk a reoccurrence.
Can you provide any sources to back up what you’re saying?
It sounds nice, but when you mention ‘revisionist history’ without providing sources I’m immediately skeptical.
I’m not saying protests didn’t have a use. Just that their main use was overshadowed. Peacefully sitting in somewhere didn’t do much. It was the legal things it lead to that did something. Without the legal precedents set, it would have just been brushed back under the rug eventually. You need to incite change, not just annoyance.
I think it’s worth addressing that “the right people” are very often going out of their way to be absolutely unreachable by the average joe and are completely impossible for mere poors to meaningfully bother directly. Protest will always inconvenience average people first, because the little people are always affected more than the rich in any action, especially any that would manage to rattle the powerful in any way.
The powerful have managed to structure society and laws alike to make effectively all actions that would target them directly and spare the average joe from any collateral overspill either impractical - or significantly more illegal than protest actions that cast a broader net. The idea from the powerful is to ensure that protest must affect other citizens in order to reach them, and can’t just target them directly. Targeting them, alone, is harassment, or trespass on private property, or … etc.
