HOW WHITE AMERICANS REMEMBER THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

*MLK* marches in streets
*White Americans* "Ok! Let's desegregate and stop being racist!"

THE REALITY:

Ask your white relatives who post MLK memes how they think the civil rights movement achieved its goals. How did non-violence create change? How did black people sitting in restaurants and marching in the streets lead to the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act?

Here's how:

MLK strategically used non-violence to provoke violent reactions from racist systems. Then he relied on media coverage to broadcast the violence into white households, so that white Americans could see the violence that black Americans lived with every day.

Protests work by forcing us to pay attention to things we'd rather ignore. They work through *disruption*. Kneeling during the anthem disrupts a sacred ritual. Sitting in a highway disrupts routines. Protests that don't disrupt are just noise.

There is a lot of evidence that, in at least some cases, police are escalating the violence at otherwise peaceful protests by arriving overly armed, initiating confrontation, using excessive force, etc. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/05/george-floyd-protests-police-violence.html?via=taps_top That tracks with the civil rights movement of the 60s

(There's also plenty of evidence of cops doing their jobs, supporting protestors, preserving public safety. In Topeka on Saturday one cop flashed us the Black Power fist. In Wichita, cops joined with protestors. I'm not here to malign cops in general.)

Critique the looting and the property damage if it bothers you. But understand that it comes through a much wider context: of state violence against protestors (and black people more generally), and of the need for protest to disrupt if it is to be effective.