7.2 - dissent

what is dissent?

• To have a minority opinion

• To disagree

  • Can dissent peacefully or violently

    • Legally (union on strike) or illegally (FLQ kidnapping)

why do people dissent

because they think their rights are not being respected/to keep governments in line

more on why ppl dissent

Voltaire famously wrote, “I may disagree with everything you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”  He believed the right to dissent was what would keep powerful kings from abusing their authority.

Today, the right to dissent keeps democratic governments in line.

But does dissent ever go too far??? And who gets to decide?

Of course there are laws against violent protest, but couldn’t one argue that sometimes violence is needed to remove an oppressive government??

enlightenment

• Reaction to high level of government controls, including freedom of speech (did not have right to question king)

  • Voltaire – freedom of speech essential 

• New belief in Democracy— rule by people = need to criticize and express opinions

Leads to revolutions in the 18^th and 19^th centuries around the world (French and US particularly)

civil disobedience

• A peaceful but illegal form of protest

  • E.g. occupying a tree to prevent logging

• Can include boycotting, picketing, unauthorized rallies, causing mass arrests

  • Suffragette movement; long gun registry defiance

disobeying unjust laws on purpose as a form of protest

other examples of civil disobedience

• Suffragettes and Women's Rights

• Ghandi/ India

• MLK/NAACP and the US Civil Rights Movement

• Hippies/Counter Culture Movement of the 1960s

civil disobedience movements: women’s suffrage

• The evolution of women’s rights extended over a century

  • Actions of dissent through

    • Letter-writing campaigns, legal protests, using the courts (Person’s Case)

  • Some actions of civil disobedience like

    • Illegal protests/parades, boycotts, property destruction, filling jails

civil disobedience and passive resistance movements: ghandi

• Use civil disobedience to wear down British occupation—to frustrate and irritate the British

  • Salt march (don’t wanna buy from british)

  • Making own fabric (illegal)

civil disobedience movements: US Civil Rights Movements

• For the most part, the US Civil Rights Movement adopted civil disobedience

  • Rosa Parks

  • MLK

    • Bus boycott

    • Million Man March

    • Selma

US Civil Rights movement - selma

The civil rights protests in Selma, Alabama, in 1965 were pivotal demonstrations that targeted the systematic denial of Black Americans' right to vote. The historic campaign is most famous for "Bloody Sunday"—where state troopers brutally attacked peaceful marchers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge—ultimately galvanizing support for the Voting Rights Act of 1965

what was the US civil rights movement protesting?

the jim crow laws:

• Named after a caricature of African Americans.  

• After the Civil War,  Southern States enacted laws that mandated “separate but equal” status for black Americans. (very much not equal)

• The most important laws required that public schools, public places and public transportation have separate buildings, toilets, and restaurants for whites and blacks.

reasons for unrest for the US civil rights movement

• Lynchings

• Emmett Till: Emmett Louis Till was an African-American boy who, at 14 years old, was abducted and lynched in Mississippi in 1955 after being accused of offending a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in her family's grocery store

• Poverty

• Power of the KKK

• “White flight”

• voter questionnaire disproportionalities

rosa parks

• 1955, Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Alabama and is arrested. 

• Inspires black leaders to mount a one-day bus boycott. A main speaker is a new minister in town, 26-year-old Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. 

• The boycott lasts until December 1956. The bus company suffers economically; violence erupts; bombs are thrown at organizers' homes; and the white Citizens Council and the Ku Klux Klan hold rallies. 

• At last, a Supreme Court decision integrates the buses, and soon thousands of black riders are on the buses again -- sitting where they please.

the little rock nine

• The Little Rock Nine were a group of courageous black students who integrated the Arkansas capital city's Central High School in September 1957. Initially thwarted by violent white mobs and National Guard troops who refused to help, the students eventually entered school after President Dwight Eisenhower ordered paratroopers to protect them.

the counter culture movement

• i.e. Hippies

  • Based many of their ideas on Enlightenment philosophers like Rousseau

  • Roots of the counter culture movement are vast, and include the rise of the baby boomer generation, the frustration over the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement, impact of the Cold War, and so on

• Government opposed – tried to repress, sometimes violently

• Violent actions like students getting shot at Kent State – protests were peaceful = civil disobedience 

examples of not very peaceful protests

• Black Panthers

• Techniques of Shock and Awe

• Canada- Land Claims 

• WTO- starbucks riots (seattle….)

• Starting a revolution- Arab Spring

what were the black panthers?

• More radical than the movement led by Dr. KIng

• Did many good works in communities but felt police brutality needed to be met with brutality

• Branded “America’s Greatest Threat” by the FBI

shock and awe

the goal: to shock people into taking action.

• Throwing paint on fur

• Graphic Anti-abortion media campaigns

• Ramming whale boats

• Burning down resorts to protect environment

• Spiking trees

FN land claims

• Oka: The Oka Crisis, also known as the Mohawk Crisis or Kanehsatà꞉ke Resistance, was a land dispute between a group of Mohawk people and the town of Oka, Quebec, Canada, over plans to build a golf course on land known as "The Pines" which included an Indigenous burial ground.

• Ipperwash: The Ipperwash Crisis was a dispute over Indigenous land that took place in Ipperwash Provincial Park, Ontario, on September 4, 1995. Several members of the Stoney Point Ojibway band occupied the park to assert claim to nearby land which had been expropriated from them during the Second World War.

Most Canadians agree that the First Nations groups were mistreated but don’t agree on the necessity of violence

modern lib vs classical lib on protesting

• A modern liberal  would want to protect freedom of speech but might struggle with the use of violence.

• classical libs ain’t protestin’

starbucks 1999

• WTO Summit (Seattle…)

  • Gain attention to the conditions of coffee growers

  • Led to fair trade coffee , etc.

the arab spring

This started in Tunisia in 2011 and led to a wave of revolutions across the region.  Tunisia briefly transitioned to a democracy but has since slid back to a score of 51 by Freedom House.  No other places affected by the Arab Spring have made significant gains toward a liberal democracy.

examples of dissent today

• Minutemen – named after militiamen in the US Revolutionary war, they patrol the border to prevent illegal immigration from Mexico

• Militias – various groups united in their beliefs of the federal government's threat to their freedom, especially the 2^nd amendment

• Those who question the election results

• QAnon and conspiracy theorists

• Vaccines/Masks/Etc