peaceful protest essay

Are peaceful protests more effective than violent ones?

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As unrest erupts across the world after the killing of a Black man, George Floyd, by a white police officer, even some peaceful protests have descended into chaos, calling into question the efficacy of violence when it comes to spurring social change. 

“There’s certainly more evidence that peaceful protests are more successful because they build a wider coalition,” says Gordana Rabrenovic , associate professor of sociology and director of the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict. 

Gordana Rabrenovic is an associate professor of sociology and director of the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict. Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University

Who’s responsible for inciting this violence—the protesters or the police—is another debate entirely. But, Rabrenovic says, one thing is clear: in order for a movement to gain support and inspire lasting change, peace and consensus are essential.

“Violence can scare away your potential allies. You need the people on the sidelines to say, ‘This is my issue, too,’” she says. “For the people who say, ‘All lives matter,’ that’s true, but not all lives are in danger. You need to convince them.”

Still, it’s not always easy, or even feasible, for groups of oppressed people to take this moral high road, Rabrenovic says. 

“The system doesn’t work for them,” she says. “They may think the only way to deal with the system is to destroy it.” 

Black people in the U.S. are not only three times more likely to be killed by police than white people, but they’re also less likely to be armed than white people during these interactions with police. 

For Black people who experience violence at the hands of the people and institutions that are supposed to protect them, the question becomes: “If they use violence, why shouldn’t we use violence?” Rabrenovic says. “They know that violence works, otherwise they wouldn’t use it.” 

Exactly how that violence manifests is another matter entirely, but, Rabrenovic says, one thing is almost always true: violence is the spark that ignites the movement.

The civil rights movement of the 1960s is one example. The overall ethos of Martin Luther King Jr.’s movement was peace. But the catalyst was violence—hundreds of years of lynchings, lawful inequality, and oppression. 

In fact, peace was strategically used during the civil rights movement to emphasize the violence Black people in the U.S. endured. Protesters were intentionally peaceful to prevent any question of who started the violence and whether it was justified. The results were inarguable visuals of peaceful Black protesters being attacked by dogs and beaten by police.

“Even peaceful civil rights movements are violent because it’s violence that motivates people to take action,” Rabrenovic says. Translating a violent history into a peaceful future is the hard part. 

“Violence might be the quickest way to achieve your goals, but in order to sustain your victory, you would need to use coercion and have some kind of apparatus in place that keeps people in constant fear of punishment,” she says. “And nobody wants to live like that.” 

While the George Floyd protests are a good starting point, the protests alone aren’t enough to sustain an entire movement, Rabrenovic says. “We need to give people other tools.”  

Voting is one example. “We need to vote,” she says. “The government is us.” 

One could argue that for Black and other disenfranchised people in the U.S., voting seems futile . But Rabrenovic counters, “If voting didn’t work, there wouldn’t be voter suppression.”

“You can’t suppress everyone,” she says. “That’s why it’s important to build a wide coalition, to bring in as many people as you can.”    

We can’t keep living with only ourselves in mind. We need each other, she says. And protests are only the beginning. 

For media inquiries , please contact [email protected] .

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Why Martin Luther King Jr.’s Lessons About Peaceful Protests Are Still Relevant

The following feature is excerpted from TIME Martin Luther King, Jr.: His Life and Legacy , available at retailers and at the Time Shop

Revolutions tend to be measured in blood. From Lexington and the Bastille to the streets of Algiers, the toll on a repressed people seeking freedom is steep. But what does it take for a people to absorb degrading insults, physical attack and political repression in hopes that their oppressors will see the error in their ways? For Martin Luther King Jr. , it was a dream.

Over the course of a decade, King became synonymous with nonviolent direct action as he worked to overturn systemic segregation and racism across the southern United States. The civil rights movement formed the guidebook for a new era of protest. Whether it be responding to wars or protesting an unpopular administration at home, or the “color revolutions” across Europe and elsewhere overseas, the legacy of moral victory begetting actual change has been borne out time and again. The movement’s enduring influence is a far cry from its humble beginnings.

In March 1956, 90 defendants stood in wait in an aging Greek-revival courthouse in Montgomery, Ala. They faced the same charge: an obscure, decades-old anti-union law making it a misdemeanor to plot to interfere with a company’s business “without a just cause or legal excuse.” Their offense? Boycotting the city’s buses.

Step Into History: Learn how to experience the 1963 March on Washington in virtual reality

Young, old and from all walks of life—24 were clergymen—what united them was their dark skin and their act of quiet rebellion. First to face the judge was Martin Luther King Jr., 27, the youthful pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery. Almost four months earlier, a black seamstress named Rosa Parks had sparked a boycott of the city’s privately owned bus services after she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white patron. Within days, the Montgomery Improvement Association was formed to organize private carpools to compete with the buses. King, who had moved to the city only two years earlier, was quickly elected its leader.

For 381 days, thousands of black residents trudged through chilling rain and oppressive heat, ignoring buses as they passed by. They endured death threats, violence and legal prosecution. King’s home was bombed. But instead of responding in kind, the members of the movement took to the pews, praying and rallying in churches in protest of the discrimination they suffered. In the courthouse, 31 testified to the harassment they endured on the city’s segregated buses, not so much a legal strategy as a moral one. Unsurprisingly in a city whose white–supremacist “White Citizens’ Council” membership skyrocketed after the boycott, King was found guilty and jailed for two weeks. As he said later, “It was the crime of joining my people in a non-violent protest against injustice.”

The boycott ended on Dec. 20, 1956, after the Supreme Court ruled that the racial segregation of buses was unconstitutional. But the enduring victory of Montgomery belonged not to the lawyers but to King and his fellow pastors—and the tens of thousands who followed them. Their protest shone a spotlight on the absurd lengths (enforcing an arcane and rarely invoked law) to which an entrenched power would go to protect a system designed to rob citizens of their worth solely because of their skin color.

“The strong man is the man who will not hit back, who can stand up for his rights and yet not hit back,” King told thousands of Montgomery Improvement Association supporters at the city’s Holt Street Baptist Church on Nov. 14, 1956. The black citizens of Montgomery would demonstrate their humanity while victims of a broken society. Nonviolence was the “testing point” of the burgeoning civil rights movement, King explained. “If we as Negroes succumb to the temptation of using violence in our struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and bitter night of—a long and desolate night of bitterness. And our only legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.”

King had made the plight of the nation’s oppressed black citizens too plain to ignore, and it was a sharp blow to the “Christian conscience” of the white South. “They’ve become tortured souls,” Baptist minister William Finlator of Raleigh, N.C., told TIME then of his colleagues. “King has been working on the guilt conscience of the South. If he can bring us to contrition, that is our hope.”

Read more: John Lewis: Why Getting Into Trouble Is Necessary to Make Change

King became the symbol of nonviolent protest that had come to the fore in Montgomery. Inundated with speaking requests and interviews, and beset by threats of violence, King become a national celebrity both for what he accomplished and how. “Our use of passive resistance in Montgomery,” King told TIME, “is not based on resistance to get rights for ourselves, but to achieve friendship with the men who are denying us our rights, and change them through friendship and a bond of Christian understanding before God.”

On Jan. 10, 1957, weeks after black residents returned to unsegregated buses in the Alabama capital, King convened a gathering at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, the church where his father preached and that he would later lead. He invited influential civil rights activists, like strategist Bayard Rustin and organizer Ella Baker, and prominent black ministers from across the South to discuss how to expand the nonviolent resistance movement. After weeks of discussions, they formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a confederation of civil rights groups across the South, with King at the helm, that would go on to spread his philosophy.

Central to the SCLC’s mission was the notion that the Montgomery model could be replicated across the segregated South, to strike a blow against the entire Jim Crow system, which entrenched racial division in law and practice. But it wasn’t an easy sell. As the SCLC worked to recruit black churches and ministers, the organization faced real concerns of retaliation—both physical and economic—against those who signed on. Some doubted the method of nonviolent protest, believing the courts would eventually provide for integration. Others, especially younger groups, called for more-aggressive efforts.

But by 1960, nonviolent protests were sweeping across the South. In just one week in April, hundreds of black students were arrested as young people sat in and picketed segregated stores and diners from Nashville, Tenn., to Greensboro, N.C. Yet progress was painfully slow. In Savannah, Ga., the white mayor, Lee Mingledorff, demanded that the city council outlaw unlicensed picketing. “I don’t especially care if it’s constitutional or not,” he said. There were even more arrests, but the protests tired before achieving change.

The following year’s efforts were hardly more effective. A summer of Freedom Rides —in which black and white activists would jointly challenge segregation on buses—resulted in thousands of arrests and dozens of incidents of violence against demonstrators. But Jim Crow held. Groups consisting of younger and more impatient activists, like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality, shifted strategy, borrowing the lessons of Montgomery. In late 1961, the SNCC and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People targeted the heavily segregated city of Albany, Ga., with boycotts and sit-ins. The SCLC and King joined the effort, and in July 1962 King was jailed.

Days later, King was quietly bailed out and ejected from prison by Albany police chief Laurie Pritchett, who had studied the nonviolence protest method and released King to undermine it. In other cities, violence by police against peaceful demonstrators brought outcry and sympathy. But Pritchett met nonviolence with nonviolence. Within weeks, the protest fizzled out. For King, Albany was largely a failure, and his takeaway was for the movement to better pick its spots.

That place was Birmingham, Ala., “probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States,” King would say. Racially motivated bombings against blacks had earned the city the nickname “Bombingham,” and many of its majority-black residents were denied all but the most menial jobs—if they could find work at all. Unlike in Albany, where the goal had been to desegregate the city, in Birmingham King focused on the downtown shopping district. And unlike in Albany, he had a foil of the first degree: Birmingham’s commissioner of public safety, Eugene “Bull” Connor. Connor told TIME in 1963 that the city “ain’t gonna segregate no niggers and whites together in this town.”

The tactics changed too. While there were sit-ins and kneel-ins and demonstrations, the SCLC also encouraged an economic boycott of the city. Birmingham’s economic heart, its shopping district, was crippled when black residents refused to shop in segregated stores. Boycott organizers patrolled the streets to shame black residents into toeing the line. The protests were designed to force a crisis point, and Connor only aided the effort. When business took down “Whites Only” signs, the avowed racist threatened to pull their licenses. On Good Friday, King was jailed for his 13th time for more than a week. Using the margins of scrap paper smuggled into his cell, King drafted his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” among the clearest representations of his philosophy.

“Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue,” King wrote. “It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.”

Children provided the movement with some of its most powerful images, and the SCLC and King encouraged students to skip school to join sit-ins and marches. On May 2, the Children’s Crusade saw the arrest of hundreds of students in Birmingham, some under the age of 10, who sang and prayed as they awaited arrest. The New York Times compared the scene to a “school picnic” as they were transported to the city’s jail by every available city vehicle. Within hours, the prison was at capacity, filled with hundreds of school-age children.

Unbowed, Connor changed tactics, and the next day he deployed fire hoses and police dogs against a peaceful protest march in the downtown business district. The images, some of the most grotesque and iconic of the era, dominated nightly news broadcasts and national newspapers and magazines nationwide. In Washington, lawmakers took up the issue of civil rights legislation with renewed vigor. President John F. Kennedy said the day’s events were “so much more eloquently reported by the news camera than by any number of explanatory words,” calling the scene “shameful.”

In a paralyzed Birmingham, more than 2,000 people had been arrested, with officials turning the state fairgrounds into a makeshift holding area. The fire department bucked Connor’s orders to redeploy its hoses against demonstrators. The city’s chamber of commerce pleaded for talks, even as political leaders were steadfast in their commitment to Jim Crow. By May 8, the white business leaders had acceded to most of King’s demands, promising to desegregate diner counters, rest-rooms and water fountains within 90 days.

It was far from total victory, but King had something more important: the attention of an outraged and rapt nation. The legacy of the water cannons and dogs, of callused feet and imprisoned children, would be incarnated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act and the Twenty-Fourth Amendment, which banned poll taxes. Montgomery and Birmingham also formed the script for peaceably countering injustice in a nation founded on protest. From antiwar protests during Vietnam to Occupy Wall Street and beyond, King’s commitment to nonviolent protest lives on.

Imprisoned in Birmingham Jail, King wrote in praise of those nonviolently demonstrating outside “for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes.”

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In her book, “Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict,” Harvard Professor Erica Chenoweth explains why civil resistance campaigns attract more absolute numbers of people.

Photo by Hossam el-Hamalawy

Nonviolent resistance proves potent weapon

Michelle Nicholasen

Weatherhead Center Communications

Erica Chenoweth discovers it is more successful in effecting change than violent campaigns

Recent research suggests that nonviolent civil resistance is far more successful in creating broad-based change than violent campaigns are, a somewhat surprising finding with a story behind it.

When Erica Chenoweth  started her predoctoral fellowship at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs in 2006, she believed in the strategic logic of armed resistance. She had studied terrorism, civil war, and major revolutions — Russian, French, Algerian, and American — and suspected that only violent force had achieved major social and political change. But then a workshop led her to consider proving that violent resistance was more successful than the nonviolent kind. Since the question had never been addressed systematically, she and colleague Maria J. Stephan began a research project.

For the next two years, Chenoweth and Stephan collected data on all violent and nonviolent campaigns from 1900 to 2006 that resulted in the overthrow of a government or in territorial liberation. They created a data set of 323 mass actions. Chenoweth analyzed nearly 160 variables related to success criteria, participant categories, state capacity, and more. The results turned her earlier paradigm on its head — in the aggregate, nonviolent civil resistance was far more effective in producing change.

The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs (WCFIA) sat down with Chenoweth, a new faculty associate who returned to the Harvard Kennedy School this year as professor of public policy, and asked her to explain her findings and share her goals for future research. Chenoweth is also the Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

Erica Chenoweth

WCFIA:  In your co-authored book, “ Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict ,” you explain clearly why civil resistance campaigns attract more absolute numbers of people — in part it’s because there’s a much lower barrier to participation compared with picking up a weapon. Based on the cases you have studied, what are the key elements necessary for a successful nonviolent campaign?

CHENOWETH:  I think it really boils down to four different things. The first is a large and diverse participation that’s sustained.

The second thing is that [the movement] needs to elicit loyalty shifts among security forces in particular, but also other elites. Security forces are important because they ultimately are the agents of repression, and their actions largely decide how violent the confrontation with — and reaction to — the nonviolent campaign is going to be in the end. But there are other security elites, economic and business elites, state media. There are lots of different pillars that support the status quo, and if they can be disrupted or coerced into noncooperation, then that’s a decisive factor.

The third thing is that the campaigns need to be able to have more than just protests; there needs to be a lot of variation in the methods they use.

The fourth thing is that when campaigns are repressed — which is basically inevitable for those calling for major changes — they don’t either descend into chaos or opt for using violence themselves. If campaigns allow their repression to throw the movement into total disarray or they use it as a pretext to militarize their campaign, then they’re essentially co-signing what the regime wants — for the resisters to play on its own playing field. And they’re probably going to get totally crushed.

In 2006, Erica Chenoweth believed in the strategic logic of armed resistance. Then she was challenged to prove it.

Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer

WCFIA:   Is there any way to resist or protest without making yourself more vulnerable?

CHENOWETH: People have done things like bang pots and pans or go on electricity strikes or something otherwise disruptive that imposes costs on the regime even while people aren’t outside. Staying inside for an extended period equates to a general strike. Even limited strikes are very effective. There were limited and general strikes in Tunisia and Egypt during their uprisings and they were critical.

WCFIA: A general strike seems like a personally costly way to protest, especially if you just stop working or stop buying things. Why are they effective?

CHENOWETH: This is why preparation is so essential. Where campaigns have used strikes or economic noncooperation successfully, they’ve often spent months preparing by stockpiling food, coming up with strike funds, or finding ways to engage in community mutual aid while the strike is underway. One good example of that comes from South Africa. The anti-apartheid movement organized a total boycott of white businesses, which meant that black community members were still going to work and getting a paycheck from white businesses but were not buying their products. Several months of that and the white business elites were in total crisis. They demanded that the apartheid government do something to alleviate the economic strain. With the rise of the reformist Frederik Willem de Klerk within the ruling party, South African leader P.W. Botha resigned. De Klerk was installed as president in 1989, leading to negotiations with the African National Congress [ANC] and then to free elections, where the ANC won overwhelmingly. The reason I bring the case up is because organizers in the black townships had to prepare for the long term by making sure that there were plenty of food and necessities internally to get people by, and that there were provisions for things like Christmas gifts and holidays.

WCFIA: How important is the overall number of participants in a nonviolent campaign?

CHENOWETH: One of the things that isn’t in our book, but that I analyzed later and presented in a TEDx Boulder talk in 2013 , is that a surprisingly small proportion of the population guarantees a successful campaign: just 3.5 percent. That sounds like a really small number, but in absolute terms it’s really an impressive number of people. In the U.S., it would be around 11.5 million people today. Could you imagine if 11.5 million people — that’s about three times the size of the 2017 Women’s March — were doing something like mass noncooperation in a sustained way for nine to 18 months? Things would be totally different in this country.

“Countries in which there were nonviolent campaigns were about 10 times likelier to transition to democracies within a five-year period compared to countries in which there were violent campaigns — whether the campaigns succeeded or failed.” Erica Chenoweth

WCFIA:   Is there anything about our current time that dictates the need for a change in tactics?

CHENOWETH: Mobilizing without a long-term strategy or plan seems to be happening a lot right now, and that’s not what’s worked in the past. However, there’s nothing about the age we’re in that undermines the basic principles of success. I don’t think that the factors that influence success or failure are fundamentally different. Part of the reason I say that is because they’re basically the same things we observed when Gandhi was organizing in India as we do today. There are just some characteristics of our age that complicate things a bit.

WCFIA: You make the surprising claim that even when they fail, civil resistance campaigns often lead to longer-term reforms than violent campaigns do. How does that work?

CHENOWETH: The finding is that civil resistance campaigns often lead to longer-term reforms and changes that bring about democratization compared with violent campaigns. Countries in which there were nonviolent campaigns were about 10 times likelier to transition to democracies within a five-year period compared to countries in which there were violent campaigns — whether the campaigns succeeded or failed. This is because even though they “failed” in the short term, the nonviolent campaigns tended to empower moderates or reformers within the ruling elites who gradually began to initiate changes and liberalize the polity.

One of the best examples of this is the Kefaya movement in the early 2000s in Egypt. Although it failed in the short term, the experiences of different activists during that movement surely informed the ability to effectively organize during the 2011 uprisings in Egypt. Another example is the 2007 Saffron Revolution in Myanmar, which was brutally suppressed at the time but which ultimately led to voluntary democratic reforms by the government by 2012. Of course, this doesn’t mean that nonviolent campaigns always lead to democracies — or even that democracy is a cure-all for political strife. As we know, in Myanmar, relative democratization in the country’s institutions has been accompanied by extreme violence against the Rohingya community there. But it’s important to note that such cases are the exceptions rather than the norm. And democratization processes tend to be much bumpier when they occur after large-scale armed conflict instead of civil resistance campaigns, as was the case in Myanmar.

WCFIA:  What are your current projects?

CHENOWETH: I’m still collecting data on nonviolent campaigns around the world. And I’m also collecting data on the nonviolent actions that are happening every day in the United States through a project called the Crowd Counting Consortium , with Jeremy Pressman of the University of Connecticut. It began in 2017, when Jeremy and I were collecting data during the Women’s March. Someone tweeted a link to our spreadsheet, and then we got tons of emails overnight from people writing in to say, “Oh, your number in Portland is too low; our protest hasn’t made the newspapers yet, but we had this many people.” There were the most incredible appeals. There was a nursing home in Encinitas, Calif., where 50 octogenarians organized an indoor women’s march with their granddaughters. Their local news had shot a video of them and they asked to be counted, and we put them in the sheet. People are very active and it’s not part of the broader public discourse about where we are as a country. I think it’s important to tell that story.

This originally appeared on the Weatherhead Center website . Part two of the series is now online.

The artwork, “Love and Revolution,”  revolutionary graffiti at Saleh Selim Street on the island of Zamalek, Cairo, was photographed by Hossam el-Hamalawy on Oct. 23, 2011.

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Lesson 1: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nonviolent Resistance

Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C. (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mathew Ahmann in a crowd.)

U.S. National Archives and Records Administration

"I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek." ⁠—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1963

These words were spoken by Martin Luther King, Jr. during his ten-day jail term for violating a court injunction against any "parading, demonstrating, boycotting, trespassing and picketing" in Birmingham. He came to Alabama's largest city to lead an Easter weekend protest and boycott of downtown stores as a way of forcing white city leaders to negotiate a settlement of black citizens' grievances. King wrote his "Letter from Birmingham Jail" in response to a public statement by eight white clergymen appealing to the local black population to use the courts and not the streets to secure civil rights. The clergymen counseled "law and order and common sense," not demonstrations that "incite to hatred and violence," as the most prudent means to promote justice. This criticism of King was elaborated the following year by a fellow Baptist minister, Joseph H. Jackson (president of the National Baptist Convention from 1953–1982), who delivered a speech counseling blacks to reject "direct confrontation" and "stick to law and order."

By examining King's famous essay in defense of nonviolent protest, along with two significant criticisms of his direct action campaign, this lesson will help students assess various alternatives for securing civil rights for black Americans in a self-governing society.

Guiding Questions

To what extent was King's nonviolent resistance to segregation laws the best means of securing civil rights for black Americans in the 1960s?  

Learning Objectives

Explain Martin Luther King, Jr.'s concept of nonviolent resistance and the role of civil disobedience within it.

Analyze the concerns regarding King's intervention in Birmingham and King's responses to those concerns.

Evaluate the arguments made against King's protest methods and the alternatives recommended.

Evaluate the arguments regarding non-violence and the effect these strategies had on civil rights in the United States.

Lesson Plan Details

If students know anything about the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and '60s, it will probably be Martin Luther King, Jr.'s role in leading the Movement along the path of nonviolent resistance against racial segregation. Most likely, they will have seen or read his "I Have a Dream" speech (August 28, 1963), delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, which closes with the famous line, "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!" Next to the "I Have a Dream" speech, King's most famous writing is his "Letter from Birmingham Jail." He began writing the lengthy essay while jailed over Easter weekend in 1963. He eventually arranged its publication as part of a public relations strategy to bring national attention to the struggle for civil rights in the South.

The Birmingham campaign of March and April 1963 followed a less successful protest the previous year in Albany, Georgia. Albany police chief Laurie Pritchett did not want to draw media attention to the Albany protest led by King and local citizens. He dispersed jailed protesters to surrounding jails to avoid overcrowding, and had local city officials post bail for King any time he got arrested. King eventually left Albany in August 1962 when the protest movement stalled for months and when the city reneged on its promise to desegregate bus and train stations. Discouraged by the Movement's inability to provoke a reaction that would precipitate change, King and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference decided to accept the invitation of Birmingham activist Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth to agitate for change there. In Birmingham they devised a new strategy called "Project C" (for "confrontation").

Birmingham was Alabama's largest city, but its 40 percent black population suffered stark inequities in education, employment, and income. In 1961, when Freedom Riders were mobbed in the city bus terminal, Birmingham drew unwelcome national attention. Moreover, recent years saw so many bombings in its black neighborhoods that went unsolved that the city earned the nickname "Bombingham." In 1962, Birmingham even closed public parks, playgrounds, swimming pools, and golf courses to avoid federal court orders to desegregate. Nevertheless, the fight to hold onto segregationist practices began to wear on some whites; the question remained, how best to address the concerns of local black citizens?

When eight white clergymen (Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish) learned of King's plans to stage mass protests in Birmingham during the Easter season in 1963, they published a statement voicing disagreement with King's attempt to reform the segregated city. It appeared in the Birmingham News on Good Friday, the very day King was jailed for violating the injunction against marching. The white clergymen complained that local black citizens were being "directed and led in part by outsiders" to engage in demonstrations that were "unwise and untimely." The prudence of the Movement's actions in Birmingham was also called into question by local merchants who believed the new city government and mayor—replacing the staunch segregationist Eugene "Bull" Connor (the commissioner of public safety who later employed fire hoses and police dogs against protesters, many of whom were high school and college students)—would offer a new opportunity to address black concerns. Even the Justice Department under President John F. Kennedy urged King to leave Birmingham. The clergymen advised locals to follow "the principles of law and order and common sense," to engage in patient negotiation, and, if necessary, seek redress in the courts. They called street protests and economic boycotts "extreme measures" and, thus, saw them as imprudent means of redressing grievances. Finally, if peaceful protests sparked hatred and riots, they would hold the protesters responsible for the violence that ensued.

In spite of the court injunction, King went ahead with his protest march on Good Friday, and was promptly arrested, along with his close friend and fellow Baptist preacher Ralph Abernathy and fifty-two other protestors. King served his jail sentence in solitary confinement, but soon began reading press reports of the Birmingham campaign in newspapers smuggled into his cell by his lawyer. Both local and national media expressed greater optimism for reform from the new city government and lesser sympathy for King and his nonviolent, direct action campaign. But what irked him most was the criticism from the Birmingham clergymen, most of whom had actually criticized Governor George Wallace's inauguration proclamation of "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!" So King began to write, using the margins of the Birmingham News .

King's reply to the clergymen's public letter of complaint grew to almost 7,000 words, and presented a detailed response to the criticisms of his fellow men of the cloth. Employing theological and philosophical arguments, as well as reflections on American and world history, King defended the legitimacy of his intervention to desegregate Birmingham. He explained how the nonviolent movement employed peaceful mass protest and even civil disobedience to bring pressure to bear on the social and political status quo. Given that the immediate audience of his letter were religious leaders, his letter made numerous references to biblical and historical events and figures they might find persuasive. King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" was a plea for a more robust and relevant participation of white church leaders (and members) in the affairs of this world, starting with the just complaints of their black neighbors and fellow Christians.

The following year, a longstanding critic* of King delivered an address that focused on an alternative way for black Americans to secure progress in civil rights. Dr. Joseph H. Jackson, president of the National Baptist Convention, was known as "the black pope" because of his leadership of the largest religious organization of blacks in the United States. Jackson thought King's civil disobedience and nonviolent but confrontational methods undermined the very rule of law that black Americans desperately needed. Appealing to the historic contribution of blacks to the development and prosperity of America, Jackson counseled that less controversial and provocative means should be adopted in the struggle for civil rights. He also encouraged them not to neglect their "ability, talent, genius, and capacity" in efforts of self-help and self-improvement. Citing the 1954 Brown v. Board decision and 1964 Civil Rights Act as important signs of progress and hope for black Americans, Jackson argued that to advance in America, blacks had to work with and not against the structures and ideals of the nation.

* In 1961, after failing to oust Jackson from the presidency of the National Baptist Convention, King broke away from the organization and founded a rival group, the Progressive National Baptist Convention. In 1967, Jackson would publish Unholy Shadows and Freedom's Holy Light , which reaffirmed his "law and order' approach to the civil rights struggle.

NCSS. D1.2.6-8. Explain points of agreement experts have about interpretations and applications of disciplinary concepts and ideas associated with a compelling question. NCSS. D1.3.6-8. Explain points of agreement experts have about interpretations and applications of disciplinary concepts and ideas associated with a supporting question. NCSS. D2.Civ.2.9-12. Analyze the role of citizens in the U.S. political system, with attention to various theories of democracy, changes in Americans’ participation over time, and alternative models from other countries, past and present.  NCSS. D2.His.1.9-12. Evaluate how historical events and developments were shaped by unique circumstances of time and place as well as broader historical contexts.  NCSS.  D2.His.2.9-12. Analyze change and continuity in historical eras.  NCSS.  D2.His.3.9-12. Use questions generated about individuals and groups to assess how the significance of their actions changes over time and is shaped by the historical context.  NCSS. D2.His.4.9-12. Analyze complex and interacting factors that influenced the perspectives of people during different historical eras. NCSS.  D3.1.9-12. Gather relevant information from multiple sources representing a wide range of views while using the origin, authority, structure, context, and corroborative value of the sources to guide the selection.

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" and the public statement of the white Birmingham clergymen make a natural pairing for a discussion of the pros and cons of nonviolent resistance. However, because the "Letter to Martin Luther King from a Group of Clergymen" is a relatively short document compared with King's 6,800-word reply, this lesson includes a longer statement critical of King's campaign of mass protest and civil disobedience: Joseph H. Jackson's 1964 Address to the National Baptist Convention.

This lesson contains written primary source documents, photographs, sound recordings, and worksheets, available both online and in the Text Document that accompanies this lesson. Students can read and analyze source materials entirely online, or do some of the work online and some in class from printed copies.

Read over the lesson. Bookmark the websites that you will use. If students will be working from printed copies in class, download the documents from the Text Document and duplicate as many copies as you will need. If students need practice in analyzing primary source documents, excellent resource materials are available at the EDSITEment-reviewed Learning Page of the Library of Congress . Helpful Document Analysis Worksheets may be found at the Educator Resources site of the National Archives .

Activity 1. Understanding the Primary Sources: What Do They Tell You?

This activity is arranged around the following primary sources:

• Birmingham's Racial Segregation Ordinances (1951)
• " Letter to Martin Luther King from a Group of Clergymen " (April 12, 1963)
• Audio recording of Martin Luther King, Jr., "I Have a Dream" (August 28, 1963)
• Martin Luther King, Jr., " Letter from Birmingham Jail " (April 16, 1963)
• Photograph of fire hoses turned against Birmingham demonstrators
• Joseph H. Jackson, "Annual Address to the National Baptist Convention" (September 10, 1964)
• Photograph of voter registration in Mississippi
• In the video clip below, Dr. King discusses the place of love within his philosophy of non-violence:

In addition to primary source documents, this activity contains questions that will help students interpret the content. The questions are included below for review and are also found on pages 5, 11–12, and 17–18 of the Text Document .

Divide the class into small groups in which they will begin working on the questions together, and then assign the unfinished questions for homework.

To provide some background on the sort of discrimination faced by African-Americans in Birmingham (as well as in most of the South), have students read Sections 369, 597, 359, and 1413 of the Birmingham Segregation Ordinances (1951) at the EDSITEment-reviewed site "American Studies at the University of Virginia ." The relevant sections from the 1951 Ordinances, found on pages 1–2 of the Text Document , can also be printed out and distributed to students.

Then have students read the " Letter to Martin Luther King from a Group of Clergymen " (April 12, 1963) and answer the questions that follow (also available in worksheet form on page 5 of the Text Document ). A link to the text of the "Letter to Martin Luther King" can be found at the EDSITEment-reviewed site " Teaching American History ." The letter is also included in the Text Document on pages 3–4 , and can be printed out for student use.

• In 1963, what two recommendations did a group of Alabama clergymen propose to resolve the racial conflict in Birmingham, Alabama?
• Identify two or three criticisms they gave of the political demonstrations and protests taking place in Birmingham.
• What praise did they give to "local news media and law enforcement officials" for their conduct during the demonstrations?

Next, for an introduction to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s stirring rhetoric, have students listen to a brief excerpt from his " I Have a Dream " speech. Go to the EDSITEment-reviewed site "Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project: Popular Requests" and click the Quicktime or Realmedia link for a three-minute, audio excerpt from " March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom ."

Next have students read King's reply to the Alabama clergymen, known as the " Letter from Birmingham Jail ," and answer the questions that follow below (available in worksheet form on pages 11–12 of the Text Document ). A link to the full text of King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" can be found at the EDSITEment-reviewed site " Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project ." For purposes of this lesson, use the excerpts from the essay, located on pages 6–10 of the Text Document .

• Does King consider himself an "outsider" by staging a civil rights protest in Birmingham? List three reasons he gives in response to this criticism.
• List and explain the four-step process King outlines for their nonviolent campaign. [Note: for an example of the nonviolent mindset King wanted to instill in his protest movement, have students read the Commitment Card that participants were asked to sign in preparation for the protest, which is located at the " Teaching American History " site
• If King admits that breaking laws in order to change them is "a legitimate concern," how does he still justify civil disobedience? List two reasons for his defense of civil disobedience, and explain how King thought a law can be disobeyed without leading to anarchy
• How does King's appeal to "eternal and natural law" help him examine human laws?
• Explain why King thinks the tension stirred up by his protest movement promotes social and political reform.
• How does King respond to the charge that he is an extremist? Whom does he identify as the real extremists?
• Why is King hopeful about the prospects for equal rights for black Americans? Give specific examples and reasons he mentions to support your answer.
• What is King's response to the clergymen's approval of how the police kept order during the demonstrations?

For a visual image of a police response to nonviolent resistance, described in King's letter, have students access online the famous Charles Moore photograph of a water hydrant being turned against Birmingham demonstrators. This photograph can be found at a link from the EDSITEment-reviewed " American Studies of the University of Virginia ." (To view additional photographs in the Charles Moore collection, scroll down to Section VIII, Extending the Lesson, and click on the link provided there.)

Finally, have students read Joseph H. Jackson's "Annual Address to the National Baptist Convention" (September 10, 1964) and answer the questions that follow ( available on pages 17–18 of the Text Document ). A link to the full text of Jackson's "Annual Address to the National Baptist Convention " can be found at Teaching American History . For a shorter version (about half the length), print out and distribute an excerpted version on pages 13–16 of the Text Document .

• Why does Jackson think "street marches, boycotts, and picket lines" on behalf of civil rights are counterproductive? How does his view of America, and especially the role of black Americans in its development, inform his reaction to the mass protest movement?
• Why does Jackson disagree with civil disobedience, which he calls "open opposition to the laws of the land"?
• How do his references to Thurgood Marshall's victory in the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 strengthen his argument? Note: Students can find helpful background on the 1954 Brown decision at " Teaching With Documents: Documents Related to Brown v. Board of Education " at the EDSITEment-reviewed National Archives Education site. For a brief explanation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, students can read " Congress and the Civil Rights Act " at the EDSITEment-reviewed National Archives site.
• What recommendations does he make to black Americans for securing equal rights?
• Why does he think that direct confrontation is not likely to be successful?

For a visual image of the pursuit of civil rights by following principles of law and order, have students access online a Charles Moore photograph of the registering of black voters in Mississippi. This photograph can be found at Powerful Days in Black and White , linked from the EDSITEment-reviewed " American Studies of the University of Virginia ." (To view additional photographs in the Charles Moore collection, scroll down to Extending the Lesson, and click on the link provided there.)

Activity 2. Student Debate: "Law and Order" or "Nonviolent Resistance"?

Divide students into two teams for a debate based on the sources they studied in the previous activity. One team will represent King's nonviolent resistance and the other team will represent the clergymen's and Jackson's "law and order" position. Inform students at the outset that they will be given participation points for listening, helping to develop team arguments, and questioning/dialoguing with the opposing side.

Arrange desks so that each team faces the other. Each team chooses three speakers, one to make the main points of the argument (principal speaker), one to focus attention on one or two key points (second speaker), and one to summarize the argument (summarizer).

Armed with their answers to the questions from Activity 1, each side should spend one 45-minute class period developing arguments and preparing speakers. If the class is too large to make this feasible, have each side divide into three groups, with one speaker in each group. Each small group will then help its speaker to develop his or her argument.

During the following class session give the principal speaker for each side an allotted amount of time to make his or her speech. Do the same for the second speakers (usually less time than the first). Then throw the debate open so that team members from each side can question or make comments to the other side. Alternate this process back and forth several times, as interest requires or time permits, so that each side has an equal chance to state its views. The summarizer concludes the debate by making the team's best case, using the earlier input from his team and the strongest points of the team's two speakers and the open debate.

Allow students additional discussion time, if needed and time permits. Tell them that they will be making a decision about which side of the debate they found more persuasive. Point out that it is quite possible to argue from one perspective in the debate, but to actually hold the opposing view as a matter of preference, principle, or belief.

Assessment 1. To Obey the Laws of the Land or To Resist Them Peacefully—That Is Your Question!

Instruct students to put themselves in the position of someone who must decide which course of action to take: the path of following "law and order" or the path of nonviolent protest and civil disobedience.

• Have students evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the arguments of each side. This can be done in paragraph form, or by filling the worksheet located on pages 19–20 of the Text Document . You may want to have students fill out this form before and during the debate in Section VI, Activity 2.
• Ask students to make a decision: Which route will they take? Obedience to the laws of the land (through the courts and the legislature), or nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience? Ask for a one- or two-paragraph essay giving reasons for their choice. They should justify their decision in light of their understanding of the issue.

Assessment 2. Evaluate, Reflect, Predict

Instruct students to give a one- or two-paragraph answer to each of the following questions:

• Give your evaluation of the strongest argument of each viewpoint and justify your choice.
• Do you think evidence shows that King's viewpoint carried the day? Why or why not?
• Predict what might have happened in the struggle for civil rights if Jackson's "law and order" argument had prevailed, and create a scenario of possible events. If time permits, ask for volunteers to read their answers to this question to spark class discussion of their answers.

Photographs

The Civil Rights Movement was widely photographed by photojournalists, and these photos, printed in the media, in turn acted as a catalyst to propel the Movement forward and give it more favorable reception in the realm of public opinion. One such group of photographs is the Charles Moor Collection, located at " Powerful Days in Black and White ," linked from the EDSITEment-reviewed American Studies at the University of Virginia site. Students may view additional photographs capturing images of segregated public places at the Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information Photographers site, linked from the EDSITEment-reviewed American Memory site at the Library of Congress.

More Information on Birmingham and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Students may learn more about Martin Luther King, Jr., and the site of the 1963 Birmingham protest, by visiting the following EDSITEment-reviewed National Park Service sites:

• Martin Luther King, Jr., National Historic Site , Georgia
• West Park (Kelly Ingram Park) , Birmingham, Alabama

Selected EDSITEment Websites

• Photographs of Signs Enforcing Racial Discrimination —Farm Security Administration, Office of War Information
• American Studies at the University of Virginia
• Charles Moore Photographs
• Birmingham's Racial Segregation Ordinances
• Letter from Birmingham Jail
• Documents Related to Brown v. Board of Education
• Congress and the Civil Rights Act of 1964
• Congress and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (description)
• Martin Luther King, Jr. , National Historic Site, Georgia
• West Park (Kelly Ingram Park), Birmingham, Alabama
• Joseph H. Jackson, Annual Address to the National Baptist Convention (September 10, 1964)
• Martin Luther King Jr., Commitment Card (1963)
• Letter to Martin Luther King (April 12, 1963)

Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project : This NEH supported project brings together speeches, letters, curriculum, and other resources about the life and accomplishments of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Materials & Media

Martin luther king, jr. and nonviolent resistance: worksheet 1, related on edsitement, lesson 2: black separatism or the beloved community malcolm x and martin luther king, jr., dr. king's dream, i have a dream: the vision of martin luther king, jr., "sí, se puede": chávez, huerta, and the ufw.

The Power of Peaceful Protests

From the Salt Marches to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, history is littered with examples of peaceful protests having a powerful and lasting impact; shaping the world to become a fairer, freer and more peaceful place.

In recent weeks, over 50 demonstrations occurred across the United Kingdom, focussed on a broad range of issues ranging from environmental concerns to rising living costs 1 .

While driven by different triggers and motivations, these instances are not unique. The last few years have seen an increasing prevalence of demonstrations related to civil liberties and human rights. New technologies and social movements have enabled campaigns to gain traction and spread globally, encouraging their potential to become hugely influential.

Despite this, the latest Global Peace Index highlights a number of worrying trends. Violent demonstrations have risen by almost 50% since 2008. During this period, 126 countries deteriorated in their violent demonstrations score, compared to only 22 countries improving.

Positive Peace is defined as the attitudes, institutions and structures that create and sustain peaceful societies. While the other domains have improved since 2008, the attitudes domain has deteriorated by 1.8%, demonstrating a clear link between Positive Peace and the global trend in violent demonstrations.

Impact of peaceful protests

Building consensus is a critically important part of ensuring movements maintain momentum. The use of violence in a protest movement risks undermining that consensus and can alienate those who would otherwise support a cause. An example of this consensus building can be seen with the Salt Marches of the Indian Independence Movement.

Led by Mahatma Gandhi in 1930, during the height of Britain’s colonial occupation of India, dozens of activists marched over 240 miles to collect salt from the Arabian sea to protest a law preventing Indians from buying or selling salt in the country. This act of resistance was met with a crackdown from the British authorities, leading to the imprisonment of 60,000 people. That a peaceful protest was met with such a response drew publicity for the Indian Independence movement, garnering support from all over the world. This event was a significant turning point, triggering widespread civil disobedience that eventually led to India gaining its independence in 1947. The actions of Gandhi and his peers also heavily influenced the American civil rights movement.

Furthermore, the use of non-violence does not necessarily mean taking to the streets in protest. Techniques such as boycotts and strikes can be equally effective ways of making a change. Economic disinvestment and boycotts of South African goods, for example, played a key role in helping to end apartheid. In 1955 perhaps the most famous coordinated peaceful boycott occurred, Montgomery Bus Boycott. African-American activist Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on the racially segregated public transport system in Alabama. This triggered a 13-month mass boycott of public transportation by protesters, which had an enormous financial impact. The protest ended with the US Supreme Court ruling the policy of segregation unconstitutional, a watershed moment in the civil rights movement.

While mass boycotts are effective, even protests with a small number of participants can communicate messages and achieve change. Research suggests that it only requires 3.5% of the population to engage in non-violent resistance for these movements to be effective 2 . One such example was the infamous Black Power Salute at the 1968 Summer Olympics. After winning medals in the 200m sprint, African-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists while wearing black gloves during the American national anthem. This powerful message was seen around the world, drawing attention to the civil rights movement in America.

More recently, in 2018, 15 year-old Swedish school student Greta Thunberg decided to sit outside the Swedish parliament for three weeks. She held a sign reading “School Strike for Climate” to protest her government’s response to the growing climate emergency. What began with an individual protest by one teenager, triggered student-led protests all over the world and became part of a global movement against climate change. Thunberg’s activism has given her a platform, through which she has inspired millions. Thunberg’s actions and the actions of the 1968 Olympians show how it is possible, even for individuals, to make an enormous impact and inspire change.

The wave of aggressive anti-protest laws

While the impact and influence of protests and demonstrations continue to grow, this is being met with a wave of aggressive legislative restrictions, policies and responses designed to limit their effectiveness.

For example, 93% of the protests against racial injustice in the United States in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer were peaceful; however, the narrative around the protests was that they were largely violent demonstrations and as such triggered an excessive police response 3 .

In Sri Lanka, which ranked 90 on the Global Peace Index (GPI), the new government responded to protests with the widespread use of draconian emergency regulations. These laws granted the authorities sweeping powers to suppress protests and detain and punish activists 4 . The rise in demonstrations, and the violent crackdown, will likely be reflected in Sri Lanka’s ranking in next year’s GPI.

The United Kingdom ranked 34 on the GPI, has also recently strengthened its anti-protest laws; granting the authorities greater power to disrupt and limit protests, particularly those such as the Extinction Rebellion 5 . Furthermore, a number of territories within Australia (ranked 27 on the GPI) have recently passed anti-protest laws granting authorities more powers to specifically target non-violent environmental protesters 6 .

In their early days, digital tools such as social media played a key role as a tool for mobilisation. However, increasingly they are being weaponised by authoritarian states and used as a tool to quell protests and identify protesters.

As can be seen with the violent crackdowns on protests security forces often carry out – protests, demonstrations and social movements are not without their challenges. More often than not, the establishment does not support change and protesters are often vilified as well as legislated against.

Non-violent resistance is approximately ten times more likely to lead to democratisation than violent resistance

The expansion of legal restrictions and obstacles to protest presents a growing challenge to non-violent resistance. Despite this, non-violent resistance remains an incredibly effective tool for triggering substantial, supported and long-lasting social change. The research suggests that non-violent resistance is approximately 10 times more likely to lead to democratisation than violent resistance 2 .

Peaceful protests are a way for ordinary people to have their voices heard. Inherent power imbalances in society can result in people feeling marginalised and disenfranchised. Non-violent civil movements can offer anyone the opportunity to become involved and have a voice.

Between climate-related threats, widespread conflict and displacement, and increasing food insecurity, the challenges facing the world are complex and innumerable. Time and again, the power of peaceful protest has been proven as a tool to meet these challenges and make a positive change.

The interconnected and globalised world in which we live enables movements and ideas to spread, despite the many challenges they face. It is this power that continues to drive activists to the streets to pursue change.

1. ‘It’s scary – things are escalating fast’: protesters fill UK streets to highlight climate crisis and cost of living | Protest | The Guardian

2. Why nonviolent resistance beats violent force in effecting social, political change – Harvard Gazette

3. 93% of Black Lives Matter Protests Have Been Peaceful: Report | Time

4. Sri Lanka: Heightened Crackdown on Dissent | Human Rights Watch

5. What is the Police and Crime Bill and how will it change protests? – BBC News

6. Victorian and Tasmanian governments under fire for laws that target environmental protesters | Environment | The Guardian

Jerome Gavin

Jerome is studying a Masters of International Security at the University of Sydney, specialising in Peace and Conflict studies.

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Why So Many Police Are Handling the Protests Wrong

Disproportionate use of force can turn a peaceful protest violent, research shows..

MINNEAPOLIS — Last Wednesday, Marcell Harris was hit by a rubber bullet. He had joined the second day of protests in this city over the killing of George Floyd , a black man who died after a police officer kneeled on his neck for more than eight minutes while bystanders filmed. Though these protests began with peaceful demonstrations outside the city’s 3rd Precinct, interactions between police and protesters had escalated. Police unleashed pepper spray, projectiles and tear gas. Protesters threw water bottles, built barricades and destroyed nearby property.

Harris said he had used his backpack as a shield and maneuvered close enough to take the baton of the officer who shot him. On Thursday night, he returned to the same spot to watch the precinct burn. With no police presence to be seen, he and other protesters were celebrating a victory. “I’m nonviolent,” he said. “But this feels emotional. George Floyd popped the bubble. It feels like the beginning of the end.” The end of what? “What we’ve been going through,” he said, referring to heavy-handed and often deadly policing of African Americans . “All the bullshit.”

Watching a peaceful protest turn into something much less palatable is hard. There has been a lot of hard the past few days, as people in dozens of cities have released pent-up anger against discriminatory police tactics. Cars and buildings have burned. Store windows have been smashed. Protesters and police have been hurt. When protests take a turn like this we naturally wonder … why? Was this preventable? Does anyone know how to stop it from happening?

Turns out, we do know some of these answers. Researchers have spent 50 years studying the way crowds of protesters and crowds of police behave—and what happens when the two interact . One thing they will tell you is that when the police respond by escalating force—wearing riot gear from the start, or using tear gas on protesters—it doesn’t work. In fact, disproportionate police force is one of the things that can make a peaceful protest not so peaceful. But if we know that (and have known that for decades), why are police still doing it?

“There’s this failed mindset of ‘if we show force, immediately we will deter criminal activity or unruly activity’ and show me where that has worked,” said Scott Thomson, the former chief of police in Camden, New Jersey.

“That's the primal response,” he said. “The adrenaline starts to pump, the temperature in the room is rising, and you want to go one step higher. But what we need to know as professionals is that there are times, if we go one step higher, we are forcing them to go one step higher.”

Interactions between police and protesters are, by their very nature, tough to study. Even when researchers get a good vantage point to observe protests in the real world—for example, by embedding within a crowd—the data that comes out is more descriptive and narrative as opposed to quantitative. Some kinds of protests are highly organized with top-down plans that are months in the making. Others, like many of the events across America this past week, are spontaneous outpourings of grief and anger.

The social and political context of the time and place also affect what happens. Even a single protest isn’t really a single protest. “You have lots of mini protests happening in many places,” said Edward Maguire, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at Arizona State University. “There’s different dynamics. Some peaceful. Some not. And different police tactics.” In Baltimore on Saturday, for example, a police lieutenant mollified a crowd by reading out loud the names of victims of police brutality, while protesters outside City Hall threw bottles at police in riot gear and police used tear gas on the crowd, WBFF-TV reported .

But just because there’s no data about protests that can be easily compared in a chart doesn’t mean we’re bereft of information, said Pat Gillham, a professor of sociology at Western Washington University. There’s 50 years of research on violence at protests, dating back to the three federal commissions formed between 1967 and 1970 . All three concluded that when police escalate force—using weapons, tear gas, mass arrests and other tools to make protesters do what the police want—those efforts can often go wrong, creating the very violence that force was meant to prevent. For example, the Kerner Commission, which was formed in 1967 to specifically investigate urban riots, found that police action was pivotal in starting half of the 24 riots the commission studied in detail. It recommended that police eliminate “abrasive policing tactics” and that cities establish fair ways to address complaints against police.

Experts say the following decades of research have turned up similar findings. Escalating force by police leads to more violence, not less. It tends to create feedback loops, where protesters escalate against police, police escalate even further, and both sides become increasingly angry and afraid.

“Do we know [this] in the way that you know if you put two chemicals together things explode?” said John Noakes, professor of sociology, anthropology and criminal justice at Arcadia University. “No. But there is a general consensus.”

De-escalation, of course, does not guarantee that a protest will remain peaceful, and when protests take an unpredictable turn, it can be challenging for police to estimate the appropriate level of force.

Former law-enforcement officials also said good policing of demonstrations isn’t as simple as just showing up with an approachable demeanor. “The time to make friends isn’t when you need them,” Thomson said. “You have to be in front of it."

James Ginger, a veteran police monitor who is now overseeing the Albuquerque Police’s settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, agreed that only this longer-term trust-building exercise works. “Trying to find folks at the last minute that you can put out there in soft clothes and talk to people, frankly and in my opinion, wouldn’t work that well,” Ginger said. “You’ve got to till the soil before you can grow the beans.”

Still, if researchers know it’s not a good idea for police to use force against protests and demonstrations, and that information has been available for decades, why do we still see situations like this happening all over the country?

That part is harder to answer. At one point, in the 1980s and 1990s, many police departments in the U.S. did try different strategies, Noakes and Maguire said. The “negotiated management” model of protest policing called for officers to meet with protesters in advance to plan events together to specify the times, locations and activities that would happen, even when that included mass arrests.

“There was a time when the playbook was much more straightforward. The police would meet with the organizers of the protest, and they would lay out ground rules together that would provide for an opportunity for protesters to do exactly what they have a right to do,” said Ronal Serpas, a former police chief in New Orleans and Nashville who’s now a professor of criminology at Loyola University in New Orleans.

But the era of negotiated management basically fell apart after the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle in 1999 , when protesters blocked streets, broke windows and successfully shut down the WTO meeting and stalled trade talks. When protesters violated the negotiated terms, police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets and took away the wrong lessons, Maguire said. “What a lot of people took from that in policing is, we can’t trust these people. We need to be smarter and overwhelm them to nip these things in the bud,” he said. “We sort of went backwards.”

Of course, as Gillham pointed out, negotiating and managing a protest can’t really work if the protest wasn’t organized ahead of time. That goes double, he said, if the topic of the protest is police brutality. It’s hard to negotiate with someone about the best way to demand they be fired.

Instead, it’s become normal in the U.S. for police departments to revert to tactics that amplify tensions and provoke protesters, Maguire said, including wearing intimidating tactical gear before its use would be warranted. Maguire does training for police officers and has tried, for years, to get buy-in on the idea that there could be a different way. “I have good relationships with police and I’ve been working with them for 25 years, and I’ve never experienced pushback like I do on this,” Maguire said.

De-escalation strategies definitely exist. Anne Nassauer, a professor of sociology at Freie Universität in Berlin, has studied how the Berlin Police Department handles protests and soccer matches. She found that one key element is transparent communication —something Nassauer said helps increase trust and diffuse potentially tense moments. The Berlin police employs people specifically to make announcements in these situations, using different speakers, with local accents or different languages, for things like information about what police are doing, and another speaker for commands. Either way, the messages are delivered in a calm, measured voice.

Communication is also a cornerstone of what police know as “the Madison Model,” created by former Madison, Wisconsin, chief of police David Couper. His strategy for dealing with protesters was to send officers out to talk with demonstrators, engage, ask them why protests are made, listen to their concerns and, above all, empathize.

Former Madison Police Chief David Couper in his office with posters of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, in Wisconsin.

Not all police officers trust this model, however. “When you have overly aggressive crowds you have to address them,” said Anthony Batts, who led departments in Long Beach and Oakland, California, as well as Baltimore. Batts was police commissioner during the violent clashes between police and protesters that followed the 2015 death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore police custody.

Reached by text, Batts said that certain events, like fires and police retreats, “inspire” crowds. He said from his point of view, methods like the Madison model make crowds “go ballistic.” He said he was speaking generally, and that he does not advocate a harsh police approach to the ongoing demonstrations.

A lot of this pushback from police has to do with some legitimate officer safety concerns related to de-escalation, Maguire said. “But we make the argument that [de-escalation] makes officers more safe, by reducing violent confrontations with protesters. If officers come into a situation already wearing protective body armor and face shields, that can make protesters feel uncomfortable and under attack long before there’s any kind of confrontation,” Maguire said.

It’s also just hard to change police culture. Maguire compared it to trying to change hospital procedures by using evidence-based medicine. Even if the evidence is, “don’t perform this surgery in that way or someone could die,” it can still take 20 years for the new technique to be widely adopted .

The disconnect between rank and file and executive leadership—commonly cited as an impediment to policing reform—also seems to get in the way of improving policing of protests. Take the Atlanta Police Department as an example. On Saturday the city’s chief Erika Shields earned plaudits for meeting face to face with protesters, empathizing with their grief and fear, and even reprimanding some of her own officers: “I’m standing here because what I saw was my people face to face with this crowd and everyone is thinking, ‘How can we use force to diffuse it,’ and I'm not having that.” But mere hours later, her department was trending on social media again—this time because officers had used tasers to force two college students out of their vehicle , even though they did not appear to be posing any threat.

That, experts say, speaks to a cultural attitude that is endemic to the profession, and is hard to change with new chiefs or rules.

Thomson encountered this when he tried to make change in Camden. The police department was so dysfunctional that the city took the unprecedented step of disbanding the force and reconstituting a whole new agency from scratch. “When I had the opportunity to build a new police department, I was able to do in three days what would normally take me three years to do, because of work rules, because of the bureaucracy of collective bargaining agreements—there are a lot of impediments to reform,” Thomson said.

Couper, the creator of the Madison Method, said, “It’s this whole attitude of, ‘We keep order because we kick ass, and it’s us against them.’ (...) We've got to root those people out and say, ‘Look, this is the job that we expect. This is how a democracy is policed. If you can't buy into it. I'm sorry. You just have to find another job.’”

This story was updated to include additional comments from Anthony Batts.

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Peaceful Protest Definition & Examples

Sasha Blakeley has a Bachelor's in English Literature from McGill University and a TEFL certification. She has been teaching English in Canada and Taiwan for seven years.

Deborah has 4 years of teaching experience and a master's degree in program development & management.

What is an example of a peaceful protest?

The Occupy Wall Street protests were an example of peaceful protest. They used sit-ins as the primary method of protest against wealth inequality.

What is the difference between a peaceful protest and a riot?

A peaceful protest does not employ any violence on the part of the protesters. A riot is a more chaotic event in which a group of people act in a way that is considered disorderly and out of control. Some riots have political aims, while others do not.

How do peaceful protests work?

Peaceful protests involve a large group of people engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience to enact political change. Acts of civil disobedience can take a variety of forms, including sit-ins, marches, boycotts, and public speeches. It is important to keep in mind that just because a protest is peaceful does not mean that it does not break any laws.

Table of Contents

Peaceful protest explanation, peaceful protest examples, pros and cons of peaceful protest, lesson summary.

What is a peaceful protest ? A peaceful protest, also known as nonviolent resistance, is a form of protest in which participants do not engage in any action that could be deemed violent. Participants in a peaceful protest are unarmed, they do not fight back against attempts to stop their actions, and they refrain from damaging any private property. This nonviolent resistance is appealing to many, as people feel uncomfortable supporting protest movements that do not explicitly fit a nonviolent protest definition. While nonviolent resistance can have its advantages, it is by no means the only form of protest that exists.

Legal Definition of Peaceful Protest

The legal definition of peaceful protest, as well as the rights of protesters, varies from country to country. In the United States, there are certain kinds of protests that are legal and others that are illegal. Legal protests are always nonviolent. In the US, protests are permissible under the following conditions:

• They do not take place on private property.
• They do not impede traffic.
• They do not pose a safety hazard of any kind.
• There is no clear and present danger of riot, disorder, or threat to public safety.

Protests that do not fit these restrictions can be ordered to disperse by police officers, even if nobody involved has committed any kind of violent act. Many protests that are actually entirely peaceful are still not technically legal because they cause some degree of public disruption. This can make organizing a peaceful protest challenging because being nonviolent is by no means a guarantee that a protest will be permitted to continue.

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• 0:00 What Is a Peaceful Protest?
• 0:49 Examples of Peaceful Protests
• 2:45 Lesson Summary

There have been many examples of peaceful protests throughout history. Their effectiveness has varied wildly based on a variety of factors. Many of these protests are based on a concept called civil disobedience. Civil disobedience means breaking the law in a non-violent way to achieve a desired result. The vast majority of peaceful protests throughout history have still involved breaking some laws because protest movements are, at their core, an attempt to enact change in society.

The Salt March

Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) was an Indian political activist who opposed British colonial rule in India. He believed in the effectiveness of civil disobedience and led a number of nonviolent protest movements. One of these was the Salt March of 1930, in which many people joined Gandhi on a long-distance march to collect salt, which was being heavily regulated and taxed by the British at the time.

Occupy Wall Street

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement was a nonviolent protest movement that was at its most popular in 2011 and 2012. It was a grassroots movement seeking to protest wealth inequality in America, though it did have some international reach. The most common form of protest that OWS employed was the sit-in, where many people would occupy the land around (and sometimes inside of) government buildings, financial centers, and other important symbols of wealth disparity. The movement suffered to some extent because it lacked coherent leadership and clear goals.

• Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women

One of the Canadian/American ongoing peaceful protest examples is the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) movement. This movement seeks justice for the lost lives of many indigenous women and girls who have been murdered or who have gone missing in Canada and the United States in recent decades. The movement is a direct criticism of police and government inaction when it comes to cases involving indigenous women. In many cases, crimes involving indigenous women as victims receive relatively little police, government attention or investigation due to systemic racism. A nonviolent march on February 14th of each year in many major cities is one of the cornerstones of the MMIW movement. It is important to note that because MMIW is a large movement, some branches and some activities undertaken by its members do not always strictly fall into the category of nonviolent protest. However, the major marches are nonviolent as a general rule. The MMIW movement has had several successes, including the passing of Savanna's Act in the United States Congress which strengthens the guidelines for training and coordination of police efforts in investigating crimes involving indigenous women.

It is important to understand the pros and cons of peaceful protests. Protests are a challenging topic that can quickly create heightened emotions. Understanding the different kinds of protests, including how peaceful protests fit into the larger category of activism in general, can improve one's ability to parse and analyze the process of activism and protest, including its goals and its impacts.

Pros of Peaceful Protests

There are several positive attributes of peaceful protests that can make them a popular choice for protest organizers. These pros include:

• Accessibility: Nonviolent protests can be attended by more people than other kinds of protests. More people are likely to feel safe and comfortable attending the protest, and individual protesters are less likely to require any specific kind of training or information.
• Popular support: The general public is usually quicker to support the actions of nonviolent protesters than those of other activists. Nonviolent protest movements engender public sympathy and support for protesters' goals.
• Simplicity: It is simpler and often more efficient to organize nonviolent protests. Fewer contingencies need to be put in place and organizers can feel more confident that things will go according to plan.

Many activists attend peaceful protests. They can be utilized for a wide variety of different issues and can be effective.

Cons of Peaceful Protests

Unfortunately, peaceful protests are not always the easy and effective kinds of activism that they are designed to be. There are several cons of peaceful protests, including:

• Lack of impact: Peaceful protests are often relatively easy for lawmakers to ignore compared to other kinds of activism. They may not be as impactful as desired because they cause relatively little public inconvenience and do not demand attention. It is possible for the message of a protest movement to be watered down in large-scale peaceful protests in order to appeal to a wide audience.
• Police violence: Organizing and participating in an explicitly peaceful protest does not guarantee that police will abstain from violence against protesters. It is unfortunately very common for police officers to show up to peaceful protests in riot gear and to instigate violence against protesters if the protest's cause is sufficiently controversial or inconvenient. This is particularly common in protests against police brutality, but it can happen at any time.
• Unprepared members: If a peaceful protest does become violent, the danger is that protesters will be unprepared. A large crowd of people who were expecting to be part of a peaceful protest may not be prepared for the violence that ensues if police choose to use force to disperse the crowd. This can result in protesters being injured or even killed.

For example, in Quebec City, Canada, in 2015, a peaceful protest organized by students was declared illegal, and police began to disperse the crowd using tear gas. One officer fired a tear gas canister directly into the face of one of the young women protesting, even though she did not pose a danger to officers at the time.

Peaceful Protest vs. Direct Action

One alternative to peaceful protest is called direct action . Direct action is activism that directly contravenes the law to produce a desired political impact. Blockades, violent insurrection, and property damage are all considered direct action. While this practice is highly controversial, it does solve the problems posed by peaceful protests: direct action is generally impactful and, because it anticipates police violence, it generally involves people who are better prepared for the experience of taking part in a potentially violent protest. The 2014 police brutality protests in Ferguson, Missouri, were a mix of peaceful protests and direct action.

While direct action is often less popular with the media and the general public, it can be an effective form of activism grounded in compassion and solidarity with oppressed groups who are facing severe injustice. Which kind of protest movement is a better choice depends on the needs of the protesters, the issues in question, and the likelihood that protesters are going to face violence for their activism.

A peaceful protest is any activism in which protesters do not engage in violent acts in the pursuit of their aims. Examples of famous peaceful protests include:

• The Salt March, led by Gandhi
• Occupy Wall Street, which consisted largely of sit-ins

Gandhi, as well as many other activists, have expounded on the virtues of civil disobedience as a way of protesting injustice. Protests where protesters deliberately engage in direct action are not examples of peaceful protests. Even in acts of nonviolent resistance, protesters run the serious risk of experiencing police violence. There are pros and cons to peaceful protest and many ways to organize a successful act of nonviolent resistance.

Video Transcript

What is a peaceful protest.

Have you ever felt that a law was unjust? Or, has your country gotten involved in a war that you did not support? There are a number of different ways that you can express your dissatisfaction with these issues, and one of them is through peaceful protesting.

A peaceful protest , also known as nonviolent resistance or nonviolent action , is the act of expressing disapproval through a statement or action without the use of violence. This type of protest has been used to advocate for a number of different causes, including human rights issues, anti-war campaigns, and expressing disapproval of various political/governmental policy issues. Some general methods include boycotting certain products, participating in a march or a sit-in, displaying a particular symbol, and handing out flyers.

Examples of Peaceful Protests

One of the most well-known peaceful protesters was Indian activist and spiritual leader Mohandas Gandhi . His efforts to liberate British-ruled India would later inspire a number of other nonviolent action movements all around the globe. Gandhi believed that civil disobedience , instead of violence, would help India to gain its independence. An excellent example of his efforts was the Salt March of 1930. At the time, Britain had made it illegal for the people of India to collect or sell salt. This forced citizens to purchase the mineral from the British, who taxed them heavily. Gandhi decided to form a demonstration. He traveled 240 miles along the coast encouraging others to collect salt to show their disapproval of both the law and tax. Thousands ended up joining the movement. Consequently, many were arrested, including Gandhi himself. However, because of this protest and the other peaceful protests that followed, India eventually gained its freedom.

One of the more recent peaceful protests took place in New York City's financial district. This movement began in September 2011 and was called Occupy Wall Street . The protesters, who were committed to nonviolence, took up camp in a local park to show their condemnation of certain social and economic structures. They felt there were numerous inequalities and injustices within the economic system. It was at this protest that the phrase, ''we are the 99%'' became popular. The phrase refers to the wealth inequality in the United States, with 1% of the nation holding the majority of the country's wealth. They felt that the other 99% of the population had to pay for the errors of this elite, upper-class group. The movement generated so much attention in the media that it grew from a group of 2,000 protesters in New York City to demonstrations in 951 cities in 82 different countries in only a month's time.

There are many examples of this practice in history. One of the most well-known peaceful protesters was Indian activist and spiritual leader Mohandas Gandhi . His efforts to liberate British-ruled India would later inspire a number of other nonviolent action movements all around the globe. An excellent example of his efforts was the Salt March of 1930 where he encouraged others to collect salt to show their disapproval of British law and tax on salt.

One of the more recent peaceful protests was the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York City. The protesters, who were committed to nonviolence, took up camp in a local park to show their condemnation of certain social and economic structures. It was at this protest that the phrase ''We are the 99%'' became popular, referring to the wealth inequality in the United States.

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120 Protest Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best protest topic ideas & essay examples, 👍 good essay topics on protest, ⭐ simple & easy protest essay titles, 📑 good research topics about protest.

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• The Arab Spring’s Protests and Transformations This paper explores the factors, which triggered the demonstrations, the nature of the riots, the aftermath of the events, and some of the lessons that the world has learnt from the uprisings.
• Police Response to the Ningbo Protest: Justified or Inappropriate? Although the main reason why the Chinese citizens held demonstrations was to stop the government from implementing the proposed extensions of the petroleum refinery plant, the protestors continued demonstrating even after the government shelved its […]
• A Protest Song We Shall Overcome as an Expression of the People’s Resentment and Hopes In the middle of the past century, in the United States arose the African-American Civil Rights Movement. We Shall Overcome demonstrates that one song can serve as a tool of forming the identity and collectivity.
• South African Non-Violent Protests Against Apartheid In spite of the largely peaceful demonstrations, which the locals believed would limit casualties and bring the change they yearned for; security forces were deployed by the government to contain the protests.
• Syrian Protests: Political and International Reaction Firstly, the international reactions to the Syrian unrest and the Syrian government’s response have raised the concerns of Western governments including the United States and European countries.
• Nonviolent Action Protests: Civil Disobedience Thus, ordinary protest is for the intetrst of the organizer and has no respect to the implications of the actions on the wider society.
• U.S. Civil Rights Protests of the Middle 20th Century Politically, the protest was held to oppose the law that demanded the blacks to give up seats for the whites in a bus.
• Philosophy of Nonviolent Protest The name of Martin Luther King Junior is associated in the whole world with release of African Americans from the limits, which they were put in by white Americans. Martin Luther King Junior was awarded […]
• The Protest Movement in Egypt Similarly, the Emergency law in Egypt that was enacted in 1967 and suspended in 1980 by President Sadat for eighteen month in 1981 continued to affect the lives of citizens as the law extended the […]
• Was the Response by Chinese Government to Ningbo Protest Justified? Since the beginning of the protests, the police and local government officials tried to quell the riots. The protesters in Ningbo had a reason to stage a protest since the government started the project without […]
• Protest Songs in the 1960s The folk music of that period addressed matters of social injustices and folk music eventually transitioned to protest songs in the1960s as a result of the dissatisfaction of the public and their current political and […]
• Protests and Music of the Vietnam War As the public absorbed the announcement, and the truth behind the war, they were angered by the fact that many American lives had been lost in the war, and the fact that the government was […]
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Fifth-graders end persuasive writing unit with action

Grandville — “Stop smoking now!”

“Let kids have more sleep!”

“Above-ground trampolines are the best kind!”

Waving carefully hand-lettered and illustrated signs, the fifth-graders made their way through the halls of East Elementary as though they were on a picket line. Marching single-file and weaving in and out of second-, third- and fourth-grade classrooms, they chanted messages that mirrored the words on their signs:

“Kids should have cell phones!”

“No more plastic bags!”

“Orcas should not be in aquariums!”

Teacher Samantha Iciek had the fifth-graders stage the in-school “protest” as a culmination of their persuasive writing unit. After spending so much time researching and writing their essays, she said she wanted to give them an activity that was “a little bit more realistic” to help them share their arguments with their peers. 

“You’re trying to persuade people to believe your thoughts, and it’s not realistic for them to just read their essay in front of the class, which oftentimes is the celebration for persuasive essays — there’s nothing super-authentic (about that),” Iciek said. “We talked about different protests they’ve seen in the past, from any movement, and how protesting can be a type of persuasive claim. We also went back and talked about (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.) as a tie-in to the holiday, and the ways he protested to persuade others.

“The biggest thing we talked about is that persuasive writing is meant to have your voice be heard and help others understand why you believe what you believe.” 

Research and Reasoning

Every fifth-grader got to pick their own topic for their persuasive essay. To put together a cohesive argument, they had to research evidence supporting their claim, paraphrase information, include direct quotes, interview other students and use their own personal knowledge to support their reasoning. They also learned about revisions and editing, how to type up their information and how to structure an essay. 

While a handful of his classmates picked similar topics, like “Dogs are better than cats,” or “Kids should have cell phones,” Maxwell Tett-Williams went in a different direction. His topic? Why above-ground trampolines are better than in-ground trampolines.

“I have a trampoline in my backyard and so I decided to write about that,” he explained, clarifying that his family’s trampoline is, indeed, an above-ground model. “One of my reasons (above-ground) is better is because on an in-ground trampoline, you have to wear socks or shoes, and on an above-ground trampoline, you don’t — you can be barefoot if you want to.”

In researching his topic, Maxwell said he only found a few articles that discussed safety, so he had to supplement his essay with a fair bit of personal knowledge to support his claim. He also interviewed a classmate who had helped his father put together a trampoline. 

Read more: Lola and Maxwell shared the final drafts of their persuasive essays with School News Network; read them here.

By contrast, classmate Logan “Lola” Wallace found lots of articles and evidence to support her argument — almost too much, she said, which made it hard to whittle things down for her essay. 

“My topic is that smoking should be banned, because it’s very dangerous and I just felt really strongly about it,” she said. “It damages your lungs and it’s the leading cause of lung cancer in the entire world, and also, even without it being bad for you, it’s a fire hazard, and that can be very dangerous. When you smoke, it doesn’t just affect you, it affects everyone around you, so I just really wanted to go with that topic and tell everyone.”

The Power of Persuasion

On “protest day,” Maxwell said he wasn’t too nervous to present his topic to other classrooms, and even saw some students nodding and making the “I agree” hand sign when they saw his poster. 

While she was nervous to present her topic to the younger students at East, Lola said she liked the idea of peacefully protesting as a way to spread information.

“I think it’s a good way to get people to hear your ideas, as long as you’re not, like, violent or anything, and all we did was walk around the classroom so that people could hear us,” Lola said. “I feel like, if a kid were to read (my essay), I think they would be thoroughly convinced that they weren’t gonna smoke when they’re older.”

While her students didn’t actually need to convince anyone of anything to complete the assignment, Iciek said she hopes they’ve all learned the importance of both thorough research and sharing their voice. 

“I think so many kids don’t feel like their voice is valued, or think their ideas aren’t good enough because they’re young,” the teacher said. “So the idea we carried through this (assignment) is asking, ‘How are you going to prove your point? How will you get others to believe you?’ Not everyone will agree with you, but you do have the power to change opinions and the power to change the world by using your voice. 

“You don’t have to wait until you’re a grownup to change things.” 

Read more from Grandville:  • Scrub up, it’s time for English • Reading, writing and serving, in memory of Ryan

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Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Social Movements — Protest

Essays on Protest

What makes a good protest essay topics.

When it comes to writing a protest essay, choosing the right topic is crucial. The topic sets the tone for the entire essay and determines the direction of the research and writing process. So, What Makes a Good protest essay topic? A good protest essay topic is one that is relevant, thought-provoking, and has the potential to spark meaningful discussions. It should be something that the writer is passionate about and has a strong opinion on. In order to brainstorm and choose a good protest essay topic, it's important to consider current events, social issues, and personal experiences. It's also important to consider the audience and what topics are likely to resonate with them. Ultimately, a good protest essay topic is one that is unique, engaging, and has the potential to make a real impact.

Best Protest Essay Topics

• The impact of social media on modern protests
• The role of women in the civil rights movement
• The history of protest music and its influence on social change
• The effectiveness of nonviolent protest strategies
• The portrayal of protests in the media
• The impact of protests on policy change
• The intersection of race and protest in America
• The role of youth in contemporary protest movements
• The global impact of the Black Lives Matter movement
• The history of LGBTQ+ protest movements
• Environmental activism and the fight against climate change
• The role of art in protest movements
• The impact of protest on mental health and well-being
• The history of student protest movements
• The role of technology in organizing and executing protests
• The impact of protest on government accountability
• The history of indigenous protest movements
• The role of religion in protest movements
• The impact of protest on public opinion
• The future of protest in a digital age

Protest essay topics Prompts

• Imagine a world without protests. How would society be different?
• If you could participate in any protest in history, which one would it be and why?
• Write a protest manifesto for a cause that is important to you.
• How has the internet changed the way protests are organized and executed?
• If you could create a new form of protest, what would it be and what would it aim to achieve?

Choosing the right protest essay topic is essential for creating a compelling and impactful essay. By considering current events, social issues, and personal experiences, writers can brainstorm and choose a topic that is both unique and engaging. The best protest essay topics are those that are thought-provoking and have the potential to spark meaningful discussions. With the right topic, writers can create essays that make a real impact and contribute to important conversations about social change.

Reflecting on a Non Violent Form of a Protest

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The Controversial Question of The Use of Civil Disobedience as a Method of Protest in a Democracy

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A protest (also called a demonstration, remonstration or remonstrance) is a public expression of objection, disapproval or dissent towards an idea or action, typically a political one. Protests can be thought of as acts of cooperation in which numerous people cooperate by attending, and share the potential costs and risks of doing so.

Rally or demonstration, march, vigil, picket, civil disobedience, ceremony, motorcade, riot, strike, boycott, prayer walk, lawsuit, symbolic display, information distribution, attack, etc.

Literal, symbolic, aesthetic and sensory; solemnity and the sacred; institutional and conventional; movement in space; civil disobedience; collective violence and threats.

Protestant Reformation (16th century), American Revolution (1770s), French Revolution (1789), Mohandas Gandhi's Salt March (1930), he Stonewall riots (1969), the Tiananmen Square protests (1989), Bersih rally (2007), Arab Spring (2010s), Occupy Wall Street protests (2011-2012), etc.

Relevant topics

• Civil Disobedience
• Emmett Till
• Montgomery Bus Boycott
• Me Too Movement
• Gun Violence
• Human Trafficking
• Martin Luther King
• Controversial Issue

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• Free Speech

‘Is Our System of Free Speech Failing Us?’

In a Q&A with Inside Higher Ed, Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, discusses the impact of the pro-Palestinian protest movement on campus speech.

By  Jessica Blake

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Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University

As the academic year comes to a close, the wave of pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli protests that consumed college campuses across the country may be dying down , but discussions of their effect on anti-discrimination , free speech and academic freedom policies are not.

Administrators continue to face investigations from lawmakers on Capitol Hill who allege they have failed to protect Jewish students and faculty from antisemitism. Meanwhile, many students and faculty say punishing instructors for discussing controversial issues in class—never mind calling in law enforcement to sweep encampments—is an overstep.

The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, a nonprofit research, litigation and public education group focused on threats to freedom of speech and the press, has dedicated the second season of its podcast series, Views on First , to exploring the impact of the Israel-Hamas war on academia. Topics range from the specific, such as the origins of the Columbia protests, to the sweeping, such as the historic tensions between anti-discrimination and free speech law.

Knight First Amendment Institute

Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the institute and host of the podcast, responded in writing to a series of questions from Inside Higher Ed about the state of First Amendment rights in higher education and the ethos of the campus protest movement.

The interview, lightly edited for length and clarity, follows.

Q: What do you hope that the second season of Views on First and its particular focus on campus speech amidst the war in Gaza will achieve?

A: There’s been a wave of censorship and suppression here in the United States in the months since the October 7 attacks—a lot of it on university campuses. We launched this project because we wanted to consider whether our system of free speech was failing us, and to explore what might be done to better protect the space for inquiry, debate and dissent.

Q: Based on your conversations on the podcast so far, to what extent has controversy over the Israel-Hamas war actually impeded or repressed free speech on college campuses?

A: There’s certainly been a great deal of suppression and attempted suppression of one kind or another. Universities have suspended student groups, imposed new restrictions on protests and demonstrations on campus, and canceled film screenings and events. Alumni have sent letters demanding that universities fire faculty said to have celebrated the attacks. Students have torn down posters and shouted-down speakers … A congressional committee berated university presidents for their failure to suppress what legislators described as calls for genocide … And many universities called in the police to end protests that were overwhelmingly peaceful. I could go on.

But there’s a kind of paradox here, too—and this is something I discussed in the podcast’s first episode with Genevieve Lakier, who is a First Amendment scholar at the University of Chicago. On one hand, there’s this extraordinary wave of censorship and suppression—reminiscent in some ways of what we witnessed during the McCarthy era. But on the other hand, debate in the United States about Israel and Palestine is surely more open and uninhibited than it’s been in decades. There are demonstrations and protests every day. There’s a ton of political commentary on this topic in the newspapers and on television and on social media platforms. The range of ideas being expressed now is much broader than it’s been in a very long time. Professor Lakier suggested to me that many of the efforts at suppression are a reaction to the sudden opening-up of this long-suppressed debate. That sounds right to me.

Q: One of your episodes talks about the long-held tension between anti-discrimination law and the First Amendment, and the blurry line between free speech and hate speech. Has the war shifted conversations on the difference between the two at all, particularly on college campuses, and if so, how?

A: Well, let’s start by recognizing that the Supreme Court has understood the First Amendment to protect hate speech. The First Amendment, as the Supreme Court has interpreted it, protects a great deal of speech that many of us would find offensive and even abhorrent. That’s not to say the First Amendment doesn’t have limits … But the mere fact that speech is hateful doesn’t take it outside the First Amendment’s protection. The consequence is that public universities, which are bound by the First Amendment, can’t suppress speech merely because it’s hateful, or because some listeners say it’s hateful. And while private universities aren’t bound by the First Amendment, most of them give very broad protection to speech … because they want to foster intellectual environments in which no idea is immune from scrutiny and challenge.

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All of this said, universities have to reconcile their commitments to free speech and academic freedom with their commitments to equality and inclusion. And all universities have a legal obligation, under federal anti-discrimination law, to protect students from discrimination and harassment. My sense is that … uncertainty over the meaning of federal anti-discrimination law, and fear of liability, has led some universities to suppress speech that the First Amendment certainly protects.

Q: Do you consider “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” an example of free speech or hate speech? How should institutions handle it when campus constituents have opposing views of the same phrase?

A: I don’t think a political slogan like this can fairly be said to have a single meaning. People use phrases like this in different ways, and people hear them in different ways, too. That’s true of Palestinian symbols and slogans, and it’s true of Israeli ones as well. Some Jewish students hear “river to the sea” as a call for genocide. Some Palestinian students see the Israeli flag as a symbol of their people’s dispossession and even elimination. The question of what universities should do when campus constituents have radically different understandings of a particular slogan or symbol isn’t easy to answer. I spoke with Michael Dorf, a constitutional scholar at Cornell Law School, about this; he pointed out that the courts have been struggling for many years to sort out whether it’s the speaker’s perspective or the listener’s perspective that should determine whether speech is constitutionally protected. The one thing I’d say is that if universities made a rule of deferring to listeners—that is, of adopting listeners’ interpretations of speakers’ speech—they’d end up suppressing a lot of speech.

Q: In the context of higher education, free speech and academic freedom tend to be closely tied—is there a distinction between the two? And if so, how would you define it?

A: “Academic freedom” is sometimes understood to refer to the right of universities to determine for themselves—without outside interference—who can teach, what can be taught, how it should be taught, and who should be admitted to study. The phrase is also sometimes understood to refer to the right of individual faculty members to direct their own research, and to teach as they see fit, within disciplinary boundaries. Jeannie Suk Gersen, a Harvard Law School professor who has been a prominent defender of academic freedom, told me that she thinks of academic freedom as a kind of “collective good.” Sometimes academic freedom is conceived of as a value or right independent of free speech, and sometimes it’s conceived of as an aspect of free speech. The Supreme Court has made some lofty pronouncements about academic freedom, but the pronouncements are imprecise and unsatisfying.

Q: Do you think academic freedom is being threatened by administrators’ and/or lawmakers’ response to the protests?

A: Academic freedom is under pressure right now from a lot of different directions—from the government, donors and alumni, university administrators, and political movements and ideas on the right and the left, though in different ways and to different degrees. I found it alarming to see legislators call on university administrators to suppress peaceful protest on campus, and to demand that they sanction professors for their speech—and even more dispiriting to see some university administrators accede to legislators’ demands. I understand the pressure that university administrators are under, but universities can’t afford to treat free speech and academic freedom as negotiable. They have to make a strong defense of these freedoms, because ultimately it’s these freedoms that enable universities to play their distinctive and vital role.

Q: I know that the situations have varied widely from campus to campus, so for this question let’s narrow in on what you know best—the protests at Columbia University. Have President Shafik’s responses, including calling in law enforcement, been justified?

A: Columbia’s leadership had to make quick decisions, under a lot of pressure, in relation to a situation that was very complex and constantly evolving. I don’t envy them. But they made some serious errors, as leaders at many other universities did. The Knight Institute sent two letters to Columbia’s administration about its response to the student protests. In the first letter , which we sent in November 2023, we raised concerns about the University’s decision to suspend two student groups—Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace.

We sent the second letter in April 2024, after President Shafik and the Co-Chairs of Columbia’s Board of Trustees had testified before Congress, and after Columbia’s administration had called in the police to dismantle a student encampment. We expressed concern that Columbia’s decisions and policies had become disconnected from the values that are central to the University’s life and mission—including free speech, academic freedom and equality—and we called for an urgent course correction. With respect to the decision to call in the police, we noted that the University had a legitimate interest in enforcing reasonable restrictions on the time, place and manner of protests—and that the encampment was in violation of those rules. We also observed, though, that the University’s own regulations provide that the police should be called on to end a campus protest only when there is a clear and present danger to the functioning of the University. We didn’t think the encampment presented that kind of danger, and we said so. It’s notable, I think, that the police themselves said that the students were protesting peacefully and offered “no resistance” when they were arrested.

Q: Campuses have long been centers of protest and political debate. Is there anything in particular Inside Higher Ed readers should note that makes this wave of protests and the responses to them different than, say, those during the Vietnam war?

A: I just read the report of the Cox Commission, which was a fact-finding commission appointed to investigate the events at Columbia in May 1968. I was struck by some of the similarities between the events of 1968 and the events that have unfolded over the past eight months. One of the students’ principal complaints in 1968 had to do with the University’s perceived complicity in the war in Southeast Asia—students were upset that the CIA was recruiting on campus, and that the University had not been fully transparent, in their view, about links with the military. The campus was starkly divided, and university administrators feared that there would be violence between protesters and counterprotesters. The ferment on campus was closely connected to a larger, national political debate about the war. And the conflict between students and the administration escalated when students perceived the University to be acting arbitrarily or autocratically. There are lots of parallels here. Of course, there are differences, too. One thing that’s distinctive about the current wave of protests is the extent to which they’re tied up with questions about language. There’s this chasm between what speakers think they’re saying and what listeners think they’re hearing.

Q: I know it's impossible to predict the future, but when you look ahead to the next academic year, what kind of campus climate do you anticipate? And do you have any thoughts on how this current season of events will impact free speech in academia?

A: I really don’t know what to expect, but it’s safe to assume that students will continue to care deeply about what’s happening in the world around them. They’ll continue to organize, gather and speak out, and so there will be protests and counterprotests, perhaps especially in the weeks before and after the November election. The fall will bring a new set of challenges, I’m sure.

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Intense Security at Peaceful Parade for Israel in Manhattan

The annual parade focused this year on the hostages in Gaza. Thousands marched, and with many streets blocked off, there were few protesters.

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By Chelsia Rose Marcius ,  Maia Coleman and Erin Nolan

Thousands of supporters of Israel marched along Fifth Avenue on Sunday during a heavily policed Israel Day parade that took on a more somber tone this year as the war in Gaza enters its eighth month.

The normally jubilant event, which has been held annually since 1964, had fewer spectators in Midtown Manhattan than usual because of intense security. The parade — expected to draw 40,000 participants, all of whom needed credentials to march — has been previously called “Celebrate Israel.” This year, it was renamed “Israel Day on 5th” and focused on remembering the hostages seized by Hamas on Oct. 7.

The event was mostly peaceful and drew very few protesters. Police barricades, chain-link fences and checkpoints limited access to the route.

New York has had roughly 3,000 demonstrations related to the Israel-Hamas war since October, according to Mayor Eric Adams, most of them pro-Palestinian, and hundreds of protesters have been arrested. No Palestinian flags were in evidence along the parade route on Sunday.

Still, moments of tension erupted between participants and politicians. At the start of the parade, the arrival of elected officials, including Gov. Kathy Hochul; Letitia James, the attorney general of New York; and Senator Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, drew jeers from the crowd.

As Mr. Schumer began to speak, at least one person shouted “you betrayed us,” a reference to Mr. Schumer’s sharp criticism of the Israeli government in a Senate speech in March.

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“All of a Sudden I Was Just Being Hit”

I was at columbia when police raided the protest. few understand what really happened—and what’s coming now..

“Get the EMT!” Cameron Jones shouted through a tiny opening in a dormitory window after he spotted a protester lying motionless at the bottom of a set of concrete steps on Columbia University’s campus. Jones was with a dozen or so other students who were huddled next to two tall panes of glass and looking out in horror at Hamilton Hall, an administrative building that Columbia protesters had broken into and occupied in the early hours of April 30. Some 20 hours after the building had been occupied by students—who were pushing for their school’s divestment from Israel over the war in Gaza, and were inspired by occupations of the building by students in 1968, 1972, and 1996—hundreds of police had arrived at the university, some armed with handguns and wearing riot gear and body armor.

“I saw my fellow students being pushed, shoved, and thrown down stairs by police,” Jones said of the police crackdown. He was one of a few who actually witnessed what happened to the protesters once the police raid began. Moments earlier, police had cleared the area around Hamilton Hall of students and press, threatening to arrest anyone who did not leave. Officers pushed Jones and many other students into an on-campus residential building, John Jay Hall, before guarding the doors and blocking their sight of Hamilton. But Jones knew this building connected to another dorm called Hartley Hall, and from there, he got an unobstructed view of the occupied building. He squeezed his phone through a gap in the window and pressed record. If he couldn’t help, he felt he had to at least document it.

As protests spread across campuses nationwide in April and police responded with various forms of violent crackdowns, many horrifying interactions between students and professors and law enforcement officers circulated in videos online. At the University of Texas at Austin campus, students were slammed to the ground, dragged around, and blasted with pepper spray . At Dartmouth, law enforcement in riot gear arrested 89 students, faculty, and community members, including a 65-year-old professor who they yanked to the ground while she was recording officers. At UCLA, 200 students were arrested as officers used flash bangs, rubber bullets, batons, and tear gas . Three days earlier, violent attacks by counterprotesters at a UCLA encampment lasted three hours before law enforcement intervened. (The UCLA police chief has since been removed from his post and reassigned.)

But so many other interactions were not recorded. Even at Columbia—the campus that seemingly every media organization swarmed to in the days after university president Nemat Shafik first called the police to arrest students and clear the campus of tents on April 18—so many stories of students’ interactions with the police have not yet surfaced. It may take months, as lawsuits make their way through the court system, for much more documentation of what actually happened at Columbia—and so many other campuses—to come out.

So far, there hasn’t been any sort of national reckoning on the use of force against student protesters. It’s as if the outraged movement to improve police accountability after the summer of 2020 never happened. But as the violence in Gaza worsens and the U.S. heads into yet another volatile election season, the lack of introspection at a national level about police tactics is plainly dangerous.

I was on Columbia’s campus on the night Hamilton Hall was raided by police and had been reporting on the protests since the Gaza Solidarity Encampment there began. Since April 30, I’ve been in touch with several students who were both inside and outside of Hamilton Hall and experienced the police raid, some of whom shared their accounts and medical records to shed light on police action. I have seen documentation of lacerations, broken bones, extensive bruising, and hearing loss. Many of the students who were injured and shared their records with Slate asked to remain anonymous so as not to risk their legal cases. But thanks to them, we know that what actually happened during the police raid that night was far uglier than the NYPD’s highly edited, propagandistic narrative of it.

Iam Clay, a student at the nearby Columbia-affiliated Union Theological Seminary, was one of the protesters inside Hamilton Hall. In a written testimony shared with me with Clay’s permission, he wrote that an officer “kicked him directly in the head,” and that he “fell to the ground with his ears ringing and then had an officer on top of him cuffing him while still disoriented.” Clay received no medical care while detained, and it was only after he was released that medics (who were waiting outside the jail to help protesters) told him he likely had a concussion. He later went to urgent care, where he was officially diagnosed with one. “Three days later his eye swelled up and he went to Mt. Sinai Emergency Room, where he was diagnosed with the orbital lobe fracture,” the written account of Clay’s injuries reads, a description that is corroborated with medical records and photos.

Clay’s friend Linnea Norton was arrested in the previous police sweep at Columbia on April 18, and she was later suspended from her Ph.D. program. After Clay was released from detention, she accompanied him to collect his personal belongings from One Police Plaza, where he had been held before being taken to central booking. He was charged with criminal trespassing. He told Norton how police threw him to the floor in Hamilton Hall before kicking him in the face as he was sitting up. They flipped him onto his belly, lifted him up, and slammed him to the ground, she said.

“I saw his face was swollen, and he was, you know, a bit loopy and delirious,” said Norton. “He was in jail without water or anything for 16-plus hours.”

“My friend is a seminary student; he is like the most peaceful, chill guy,” Norton added. He “just cares a lot about Palestine.”

Before police cleared the area around Hamilton Hall on April 30, 30 or so students interlocked arms outside the building in a human barricade to protect the protesters inside. By this time, everyone present was bracing themselves for arrests. That afternoon, students had received a note from the university administration with a warning to shelter in place due to “heightened activity on the Morningside campus,” or face disciplinary action. (As a journalism graduate student, I received the same email. It was unclear if students who were reporting were classified as press and therefore excluded from this order, but I stayed close to the protesters.)

Around 400 police arrived in buses and vans, organizing themselves around all the exits. They also barricaded the streets along five blocks on either side of the campus.

The officers began ordering all of us, student reporters and protesters alike, to move backward away from the students who formed the human chain, threatening to arrest us if we did not. Dalia Darazim, a 19-year-old Palestinian undergraduate who had taken part in the encampment, recorded it on her phone as they forced her back with their hands and batons. I was pushed along with all the other student reporters while insisting on our right to report. But once we were at the edge of the university grounds, officers ordered us to either enter John Jay Hall if we lived there or exit through gates onto Amsterdam Avenue and West 114 th Street, where they barricaded us onto the sidewalk. They would not allow us back into Pulitzer Hall, the school’s journalism building. Anyone who was inside Pulitzer from earlier that day was not allowed out.

Then, police marched up to those in the human chain. Watching from the dorm window, Jones saw officers grab, throw, and beat the protesters, using shields and batons to try to separate the students, who were singing.

“It was just kind of a feeling like if you’ve gone to the beach and you get hit by a really big wave, where you all of a sudden feel like you can’t stand and you can’t control where your body is going,” Allie Wong, a 38-year-old Ph.D. candidate who was in the human barricade, told me. “All of a sudden I was just being hit by, you know, multiple police officers coming from multiple directions without a single conversation or a single warning.”

As police cleared the line of students, 24-year-old Gabriel Yancy was inside Hamilton Hall. Yancy had worked as a research staff assistant at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute, a neuroscience research center, for nearly two years. He heard banging and the whirring of electric saws that police were using to cut through the metal of the doors and the locks of chains that were keeping them shut. The protesters chanted: “Free, free Palestine.” To get into the building, police were flinging parts of the chairs and tables that students had stacked against the door the previous night. The flying debris pushed Yancy onto his back.

“When many of the police came in, they were still holding these giant, massive power tools,” he said. “Then they threw in flashbangs, and I am unclear whether it was one or multiple, but it had multiple detonations.”

Flashbangs are stun grenades that flash blinding light and make a loud explosive noise. In NYPD body camera footage published by CNN, eight consecutive flashbangs are heard.

“We were not anticipating that, and it’s not something we had talked about. I didn’t even really know they existed,” Yancy recalled. “All you can think is that you’re being fired at. I thought they had just decided to shoot into the building.”

A few days later, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office confirmed to the local outlet the City that in fact, an officer had fired his gun inside Hamilton Hall that night, albeit accidentally. (The NYPD likewise later confirmed the incident .) The bullet traveled through the glass in an office door, hit the frame of a wall, and landed on the floor.

After being knocked to his back, Yancy stood up and sat with other protesters at the back of the room. While they waited to be arrested, Yancy saw some of the other protesters being thrown to the ground and against a marble staircase.

“Some people were being stepped on and kicked by police,” Yancy said. “I did see officers put the boot on the back, holding people down, and also kicking their bodies.”

An officer pushed Yancy onto his chest with his face against the back wall, attached zip ties to his wrists, then kept him restrained in that position so Yancy was not able to see what else was happening.

He was one of two people who were Columbia staff members who were inside Hamilton Hall that evening. The university terminated both of their positions the next day.

Meanwhile, Wong, still outside, spotted a female student who had rolled down the steps leading from Hamilton Hall toward a grassy area. She rushed over to her, finding the student groaning and in and out of consciousness. Police ordered Wong to back away.

From his vantage point, watching from the window, Jones saw Wong and a few others huddled over the girl to protect her—but then he saw police hit them and drag them apart. That’s when an officer pulled Wong’s arms behind her back and cuffed her with zip ties. They walked her toward the gate to West 114 th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. She says she was behind a female student who was beaten so badly that three police officers had to carry her out.

In total, 109 people were arrested, including the 34 inside Hamilton Hall, some of the students who had been singing outside it, and some outside the gates. Once Wong was in the bus with other students, as police drove them to the NYPD headquarters, she realized how badly one of her hands was hurt from being crushed. She later found her ribs were injured.

It was a horrible night, and not only on Columbia’s campus. The officers the NYPD sent into Hamilton Hall and to the City University of New York that same night were from the Strategic Response Group that was formed in 2015 for counterterrorism and the policing of political protests. The unit has become notorious for its violence against protesters .

Norton is still stunned that “the school invited the most violent section of the NYPD inside of campus with students and young people who are just trying to raise their voices and who feel the administration has not listened to them,” she said. “I’m just honestly feeling so relieved that nobody died.”

“These police officers were literally brutalizing people and treating them like animals, tying their zip ties so tight that they’re bleeding; it was just awful,” Wong recalled.

In a statement sent to me, an NYPD spokesperson denied police responsibility for any student injuries. A demonstrator’s footage showed “a protester dramatically rolling himself down the wide front steps,” the statement read. “Ultimately, no injuries were reported to police before, during, or after the trespassers’ removal.”

“The men and women of the NYPD take their public-safety role in society very seriously,” the statement continued. “The NYPD has more experience protecting and facilitating First Amendment rights than any other municipal police department in the nation. And what we have learned is that reversing the roles between offender and victim is a tactic often employed by professional demonstrators and their sympathizers (the same method, incidentally, exploited by serial sex offenders and perpetrators of domestic violence against their victims). It is an insidious form of psychological manipulation – “gaslighting” – usually displayed through outlandish claims and hyperbolic statements.”

Finally: “Those arrested at Hamilton Hall were not victims, a fact that will not be reversed by any amount of urgent imploring to the contrary,” the statement concluded. On May 18, NYPD officers were captured on video repeatedly punching , tackling, and otherwise attacking several pro-Palestinian protesters in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn .

Why go through every detail of the Columbia police raid? In short, it may prove to be a serious harbinger of things to come.

The NYPD accusing college students of “gaslighting” them would be funny if it weren’t so grim and, frankly, juvenile . It shows just how little soul-searching has been done in the aftermath of the decisions made to arrest students engaging in political speech on their own campuses. The NYPD also ended up dropping all trespassing summonses they gave to students on April 22 and April 30. This included those arrested inside the encampment and most who were part of the human chain outside Hamilton Hall.

From Friday to Sunday night, around 70 students created a new encampment, “Revolt for Rafah,” at Columbia during the school’s alumni reunion. The demonstration included eight tents and a life-sized cardboard replica of an MK-84 bomb, which the Israeli military has used in Gaza . The university’s public safety officers tried to drag protesters out and dismantle their tents, but the students only took down the installation as the reunion wrapped . In a statement, Columbia University Apartheid Divest said: “Disruptions and demonstrations like these will continue throughout the summer and beyond until Columbia ceases to align with occupation and genocide.”

Already, the same police unit that came to Columbia on April 30 has responded to other protests with violence, including a protest at the Brooklyn Museum this past weekend . The scene at the museum was chaotic. But it’s no surprise that as police have responded to peaceful protests aggressively, some protests are getting more aggressive in kind.

It’s a chilling preview of what could be a chaotic, violent, and protest-filled summer. There is already lots of planning going toward protests at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August, an echo of the 1968 DNC, when Vietnam War protesters battled police in the same streets. And there will be money behind the efforts to shut protesters down. The Washington Post reported, about the police raid on Columbia, that a group of billionaires had pressured New York Mayor Eric Adams to send in the NYPD to break up the protests at the school.

It’s no surprise that the NYPD tried to keep reporters out of Hamilton Hall that day, but as the stories of those inside Columbia continue to come out—and as the police are called to respond to more and more protests—the story the police have been telling will become harder and harder to maintain.

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Hamas is using people of Gaza as human shields. You can't avoid that fact. | Letters

I have two issues with the op-ed in the Ideas Lab of May 19 (“ Student protesters won’t be silent about genocide unfolding in Gaza ”).

For starters, I should state that I believe there should be an immediate cease fire in Gaza and that the continued loss of civilian life only harms the long-term efforts for peace and stability. I also support the right to peaceful protest , but if protests turn into racist confrontations, it is counterproductive. Violence and inflammatory rhetoric are never the answers.

However, the first issue is that she wrote that Israel is populated by “European ‘settlers.’” But nearly a million Jews fled or were expelled by Muslim countries and settled in Israel. There are also Muslim and Christian citizens of Israel.

The second is she avoids dealing with Hamas, which started this current conflict and is using the population of Gaza as human shields. Having traveled to the Middle East, I believe there is much to make amends for. I do believe that Israel as a nation should have done more to try to find lasting solutions, but Islamic terrorist groups have made that more difficult.

Both sides in this conflict need to come together and create a state for the Palestinians and use the resources being used for war to bring some measure of social justice.

Joseph Geck, Waukesha

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