What Does Protest Accomplish Now?
The Israel-Gaza war, called a genocide by the International Criminal Court, is over eight months old. That war goes on and on and on ad nauseam. The latest, as if the latest isn’t the oldest with over 50 years of occupation, embargoes, “mowing the lawn,” racism, etc., continues. Netanyahu, that darling of right-wing Zionists, religious fundamentalists, and others, says that the war is entering a new phase (Guardian, June 24, 2024) and the US weapons keep on coming.
A question by those of good faith or goodwill might be: “How does a war that has gone on since before Israel’s founding in 1948 enter a new phase?
Here in the US when college and university campuses were still in session about a month ago, protesters were beaten by police mercilessly in many places. Police in these instances are the shock troops of a right-wing government now populated by Democrats. Casual observers could conclude that these militarized police are doing the bidding of their keepers, the elite. Does it matter if Trump or Biden is in charge, or Adams in New York City for that matter? The bludgeoning and marching orders for the “protect and serve” regime is about the same wherever a person is in the US. Remember that New York City is the capitol of the civilized and democratized world!
I have written about protests from the Vietnam era to the present, although I have sat this war out. No excuses, just an admission that standing on a traffic island in Massachusetts, while admirable, achieves nothing. In fact, getting bludgeoned has achieved nothing. I think that those on the streets and campuses across the US who have stood up to the war machine in Gaza, in the US, and elsewhere are the best people among us. No matter that the Newspaper of Record won’t let me even comment on this war most of the time, if indeed it allows any comments. The military-industrial-investment complex is in control of the media and the war machine, both here, in parts of Western Europe, and in Israel. The power elite permit this just as they permit a Trump or a Biden as figureheads, There’s lots of money to be made here as is documented by Brown University’s Costs of War Project. We can’t have adequate public education or nutrition for kids, but we have plenty of bombs and none of those bombs are particularly smart. Seniors can’t get vision or dental care as part of Medicare, but Israel has lots of munitions to torment civilians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Housing has become a debacle for millions of people. And that lost cause of war in Ukraine? Another weapons sinkhole.
I was part of the protest movement during the Vietnam era. The fundamental difference between protest then and now is that millions of people, young and others, threw themselves on the gears of the machine with a nod to the late Free Speech Movement leader, Mario Savio.
Those were the days as the song goes. Hundreds of thousands of us took great chances with our lives and futures and we finally stopped the war machine. We accomplished that on the streets and through war resistance that took a similar kind of courage as is seen by protesters on streets and on campuses today. The major difference is that the US political, economic, and social systems have moved so far to the right over the past 50 years that protest has questionable impact and that is a real tragedy for the future.
What Does Protest Accomplish Now?