• Get in Touch
  • Get in Touch with our Support!
  • Privacy Policy
Monday, January 30, 2023
OvaNewsBlast.com
  • Home
  • News
  • African Americans
  • Business
  • Sports
  • Technology
  • Entertainment
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
  • African Americans
  • Business
  • Sports
  • Technology
  • Entertainment
No Result
View All Result
OvaNewsBlast.com
No Result
View All Result

Racial Justice Protests In The Long Term: How Is A Lasting Legacy Cemented? – WCCO

August 2, 2020
in Sports
Reading Time: 4min read
A A
Racial Justice Protests In The Long Term: How Is A Lasting Legacy Cemented? – WCCO
0
SHARES
0
VIEWS
Share ShareShareShareShareShare

NEW YORK (AP) — What sort of staying power does it take for a protest movement to be judged a success?

This year, without a centralized team of senior leaders, perhaps the largest protest movement in U.S. history has been unfolding nationwide since the May 25 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. By some calculations, more than 15 million Americans have taken part — decrying racial injustice, reinforcing the message of Black Lives Matter.

There’s no way to know now what the movement’s legacy will be — whether it will wither or compel major breakthroughs in curbing racism and inequality. But at this moment, other major protest movements of the past can offer clues about what endures or what, at least, leaves a tangible legacy.

“It’s important to see the changes over time and not be discouraged,” says Beth Robinson, a history professor at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.

By some measures, it took the U.S. women’s suffrage movement more than 70 years before it won voting rights for women. In the late 1980s, HIV/AIDS activists motivated by anger and fear made huge advances in just a few years thanks to confrontational protests.

The U.S. civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s achieved monumental changes over 15 years, including landmark federal laws. Yet racism and discrimination remain pervasive problems today.

“After Martin Luther King was assassinated, the movement kind of fractured and lost momentum,” says Tyler Parry, a professor of African American history at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.

The civil rights movement had some fundamental assets that helped sustain it, according to James Ralph, a Middlebury College historian. It had multiple prominent leaders in addition to King, and multiple national organizations that generally agreed on key goals even as they sometimes differed on tactics. That approach produced such tangible successes as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

This year’s protest movement has mobilized more people and is more diverse. But it’s too early to gauge what results it will achieve. Parry advises the new wave of activists to maintain the multiracial nature of the movement and work doggedly at every level to address inequities.

“What the modern movement needs to do is not be complacent if one or two things change,” Parry says.

Protest movements have been at the core of U.S. history since before independence. The American Revolution itself commenced after years of protests against British-imposed taxes.

The war had barely ended when, in 1791, the Whiskey Rebellion flared — a multistate protest against a liquor tax imposed by the new federal government. Anti-slavery protests hastened the Civil War’s outbreak. The Seneca Falls convention in 1848 is widely considered the launch of the women’s suffrage movement, yet women didn’t gain voting rights until 1920.

Compared to that long struggle, the protests of HIV/AIDS activists achieved tangible goals within a few years of organizing in the 1980s. Activists staged “die-in” demonstrations, provoked mass arrests, and in 1988 converged by the hundreds outside the Food and Drug Administration’s headquarters for day-long civil disobedience.

In response, the FDA agreed to speed testing and approval of new therapies — a key step in curbing the high death toll from AIDS. Activist Larry Kramer, who died in May, said the protesters’ sense of rage made a difference.

“Until you have anger and fear, you don’t have any kind of an activist movement,” he told Metro Weekly, a Washington-based LGBT publication, in 2011.

The largest single-day protest in U.S history — the Women’s March — came on Jan. 21, 2017, the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration. An estimated half million people marched in Washington, supporting women’s rights and assailing Trump’s misogynistic remarks. Millions more marched in other U.S. cities.

Assessing the march’s impact is difficult. With Trump in office and Republicans controlling the Senate, there’s been no breakthrough legislation on reproductive rights, immigration or other issues. Yet the mobilization lent strength to the MeToo movement, which began nine months later.

Some protest movements are short-lived but leave enduring legacies. Consider the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York City in 2011. It was criticized for lacking racial diversity and a specific agenda yet helped change the discourse about economic inequality with its “We are the 99%” slogan and denunciations of the wealthy 1%.

Nelini Stamp, a director of strategy and partnerships for the Working Families Party, cites Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders as politicians whose economic platforms reflect the spirit of the New York protest.

In 2006, millions turned out to protest legislation in Congress seeking to classify undocumented immigrants as felons. The bill passed the U.S. House but died in the Senate.

Chris Zepeda-Millan, a professor of Chicana/o studies and public policy at UCLA, credits the protests for stopping the bill and encouraging Latino voter registration. But he said the protests also intensified congressional polarization, dimming prospects for any immigration overhaul and citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

Congress also failed to pass tough new gun-control measures in the aftermath of the massive March for Our Lives protests organized in 2018 by students from the Parkland, Florida, high school where a gunman killed 17 people. Nonetheless, gun-control activists have taken credit for numerous election victories, notably helping Democrats take control of Virginia’s legislature in 2019.

One advantage for U.S. protest movements: Government security forces generally permit them to mobilize. The recent deployment of federal tactical teams in Portland, Oregon, outraged protesters and Oregon officials but has been the exception, not the norm — a contrast to nations where protest movements have violently repressed.

Texas A&M’s Robinson emphasizes that protest movements produced many of the freedoms and protections Americans treasure, including several Depression-era initiatives undertaken during the New Deal. Yet, she says, those reforms didn’t fully benefit women or people of color, setting the stage for the new wave of dissent from the 1950s through the 1970s.

“With protest movements, it’s three steps forward, two steps back,” Robinson says. “It’s always going to be a long march to justice.”

(© Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

Credit: Source link

ShareTweetSendSharePinShare
Previous Post

Mary Jackson, the feminist star that NASA hid for years

Next Post

Forty Fort’s newest business has a twist

Next Post
Forty Fort’s newest business has a twist

Forty Fort’s newest business has a twist

  • Trending
  • Comments
  • Latest
7-Year-Old Black Boy Writes His First Book About a Superhero Who Loves Making the World a Safer Place

7-Year-Old Writes First Book About Superhero Who Loves Making the World a Safer Place

January 15, 2023
Tyler Perry’s Sistas’ Devale Ellis and Crystal Hayslett Trumpet ‘Zatima’ — Plus, Get the Season 3B Premiere Date

Tyler Perry’s Sistas’ Devale Ellis and Crystal Hayslett Trumpet ‘Zatima’ — Plus, Get the Season 3B Premiere Date

August 25, 2021
Black Bears sweep series from Tomahawks | Sports

Black Bears sweep series from Tomahawks | Sports

October 30, 2022
Season 3, Episode 30 – Heart Health, Business Health, and History in the Black Community – Black Press USA

Season 3, Episode 30 – Heart Health, Business Health, and History in the Black Community – Black Press USA

October 29, 2022
Prime Time Calendar: May 2022 | Arts & entertainment

Prime Time Calendar: May 2022 | Arts & entertainment

April 11, 2022
Copy of MLK Commemorative Event

Copy of MLK Commemorative Event

January 30, 2023
Pitts: Mississippi’s water woes an embarrassment

Oregon voice for racial equality Willie Richardson dies

January 30, 2023
Federal Proposal of ‘MENA’ Category Long Overdue, Advocates Say – NECN

Federal Proposal of ‘MENA’ Category Long Overdue, Advocates Say – NECN

January 30, 2023
Westfield's Chinese Community Celebrates Lunar New Year with … – TAPinto.net

Westfield's Chinese Community Celebrates Lunar New Year with … – TAPinto.net

January 30, 2023
Breckenridge honors pioneering Black civil rights advocate and entrepreneur Barney Ford ahead of Black History Month

Breckenridge honors pioneering Black civil rights advocate and entrepreneur Barney Ford ahead of Black History Month

January 30, 2023

Recent News

Controversy, frivolity mark day one of Paris Fashion Week

Controversy, frivolity mark day one of Paris Fashion Week

January 23, 2023
Not everyone who needs temporary housing is on vacation, and this Vegas startup is addressing that need

Not everyone who needs temporary housing is on vacation, and this Vegas startup is addressing that need

January 23, 2023
Calabash African Kitchen brings tastes of Senegal, Gambia to Las Vegas

Calabash African Kitchen brings tastes of Senegal, Gambia to Las Vegas

January 24, 2023
Black Author’s Greenbook Helps Eliminate Excuses to Not Support the Black Community

Black Author’s Greenbook Helps Eliminate Excuses to Not Support the Black Community

January 27, 2023
OvaNewsBlast.com

A reliable source for African American news, from a different lens. Yours. News about us, by us.

Follow Us

Recent News

Copy of MLK Commemorative Event

Copy of MLK Commemorative Event

January 30, 2023
Pitts: Mississippi’s water woes an embarrassment

Oregon voice for racial equality Willie Richardson dies

January 30, 2023

Topics to cover !

  • African Americans
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • News
  • Sports
  • Technology
  • Get in Touch
  • Get in Touch with our Support!
  • Privacy Policy

© 2020 ovanewsblast.com - All rights reserved!   Download Our App   Read News on odbnewsblast.com

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
  • African Americans
  • Business
  • Sports
  • Technology
  • Entertainment

© 2020 ovanewsblast.com - All rights reserved!   Download Our App   Read News on odbnewsblast.com