Mass Protest Movements in My Lifetime

We have been here before

Protests in and around Columbia University in support of Palestine and against Israeli occupation. [source: Wikimedia Commons]

It is May 2024 and we are witnessing a growing campus protest movement in support of Palestinians and against the Israeli war/genocide against them. It feels familiar to me.

I was born in 1955. In my almost seven decades of living, I have witnessed many mass protest movements in the USA. My witnessing was via the news media. Shamefully, I have never attended a protest.

• For civil rights in the late 1950s through the 1960s (the Rosa Parks bus thing was December 1, 1955) — opposed by many southern local and state cops and citizens.
  Result: The Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 solidified voting rights and introduced integration.
• Against the Vietnam war in the 1960s through early 1970s. Then California Governor Ronald Reagan sends 2,000 National Guard troops to suppress Free Speech protests at Berkeley’s Peoples Park. Hippies. Four dead in Ohio. Your author was just a little too young for these protests, and, fortunately, too young to be drafted.
  Result: The war ended and the US has not had a military draft ever since.
• Protests were held for Women’s liberation, including the famous burning of bras. (Or not?) But I wouldn’t really call it a mass protest movement, not compared to these others. It was much more of a mass learning movement, at least as I remember it. However, I was living as a dude at the time; maybe it would have seemed more prominent to me if I had been living as a woman.
  Result: Roe v Wade in 1973 guaranteed the right to access abortion services. However, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the Constitution of the United States, introduced in 1923, is still not ratified today, an entire century later.
• Save the Whales! I think this was less of a mass protest movement and more of a right-wing attack on liberal values.
  Result: Regulations were passed requiring greater assessment of impacts on sea life (and the environment in general) for large projects.
• No Nukes in the 1970s — Sparked by the Three-Mile Island partial nuclear meltdown, and inspired by the then recent Vietnam War protests.
  Result: Pretty much killed the nuclear power industry in the United States. Berkeley and Santa Cruz declared nuclear-free zones.
• Pro Gay Rights in the 1980s and 1990s— as HIV/AIDs ravaged the gay community. “We’re here. We’re gay. Get used to it!”
  Result: Ignored at first, but eventually (especially as the disease spread beyond the gay community, especially in Africa) antiretroviral drugs were produced that stopped HIV from being a death sentence; also PrEP for HIV prevention. The social stigma of being gay was greatly reduced. In 2015, the Obergefell decision made same-sex marriage legal in the United States.
• Occupy Wall Street in the 90s — Hard fascist crackdown on Occupy encampments.
  Result: Little beyond the popularization of the terminology and notion of the 1% vs the 99%.
• Anti-Iran war in the 2000s (short-lived).
  Result: Completely ignored by the powers that be.
• Black Lives Matter (BLM) — On-going.
  Result: To be seen. Already a bit more accountability for police departments in some cities.
• Against Global Warming. Is this a mass protest movement yet? In any case, it is more of a global movement than a USA movement.
  Result: Feeble attempts at climate change mitigation. Impending collapse of global civilization.
• Pro-Palestine. Now. Looks like another hard fascist crackdown.
  Result: To be determined…

“They tried to bury us, but they didn’t know we are seeds.”

Flares, arrests and a police ramp: NYPD break up student protests at Columbia — in pictures — The Guardian

Stunning police brutality will ignite a student anti-war movement in America — The Guardian

‘Like a war zone’: Emory University grapples with fallout from police response to protest — The Guardian