PROTESTS IN THE LONG TERM
How is a lasting legacy cemented? What counts as success?
NEW YORK — 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 — both in the United States and elsewhere — 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 women’s suffrage movement in the United States more than 70 years before it won voting rights for American women. In the late 1980s, HIV/AIDS activists motivated by anger and fear made huge advances in just a few years thanks to a confrontational protest campaign.
The U.S. civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s achieved monumental changes over a 15-year period, 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. “After the major laws were passed, many white Americans felt that was adequate.”
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 Acts of 1964 and 1968, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
This year’s protest movement has mobilized larger numbers of people and is more diverse. But it’s too early to gauge what tangible 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,” says Parry, who advises both depth and endurance: “If you destroy a few Confederate monuments, don’t stop there.”
SINCE THE BEGINNING
Protest movements have been at the core of U.S. history since before independence, and the American Revolution itself commenced after a more than decade of protests against British-imposed taxes. Over the ensuing decades, there was scarcely a lull.
The Revolutionary 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 outbreak of the Civil War. The Seneca Falls convention in 1848 is widely viewed as the launch of the women’s suffrage movement, yet women didn’t gain the right to vote until ratification of the 19th Amendment in 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 daylong acts of 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 several hundred other U.S. cities and scores of foreign countries.
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 and caused hundreds of prominent men facing sexual misconduct allegations to lose jobs and reputations.
Some protest movements are shortlived but leave enduring legacies. Consider the Occupy Wall Street movement that emerged 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 and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 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, and penalizing anyone who assisted them. The bill passed the U.S. House but died in the Senate.
Chris Zepeda-Millan, a professor at UCLA in the departments of Chicana/o studies and public policy, credits the protests for stopping the bill and encouraging voter registration among Latinos. But he said the protests also intensified congressional polarization, dimming prospects for any immigration overhaul and citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — Sturgis is on. The message has been broadcast across social media as South Dakota, which has seen an uptick in coronavirus infections in recent weeks, braces to host hundreds of thousands of bikers for the 80th edition of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.
More than 250,000 people are expected to rumble through western South Dakota, seeking the freedom of cruising the boundless landscapes in a state that has skipped lockdowns.
The event — today to Aug. 16— could be the biggest anywhere so far during the pandemic, will offer businesses that depend on the rally a chance to make up for losses caused by the coronavirus. But for many in Sturgis, a city of about 7,000, the brimming bars and bacchanalia will not be welcome during a pandemic.
Though only about half the usual number of people are expected at this year’s event, residents were split as the city weighed its options. Many worried that the rally would cause an unmanageable outbreak of covid-19.
“This is a huge, foolish mistake to make to host the rally this year,” Sturgis resident Lynelle Chapman told city council members at a June meeting. “The government of Sturgis needs to care most for its citizens.”
In a survey of residents by the city, more than 60% said the rally should be postponed. But businesses pressured the City Council to proceed.
Rallygoers have spent about $800 million in past years, according to the state Department of Tourism. Though the rally has an ignominious history of biker gangs and lawlessness, bikers of a different sort have shown up in recent years — affluent professionals who ride for recreation and come flush with cash. Though the rally still features libertine displays, it also offers charity events and tributes to the military and veterans.
The attorney for a tourism souvenir wholesaler in Rapid City wrote to the City Council reminding a judge found the city doesn’t solely own rights to the rally and threatening to sue if the city tried to postpone it. Meanwhile, the Buffalo Chip, which is the largest campground and concert venue that lies outside the bounds of the city, made clear that it would hold some version of the rally.
Rod Woodruff, who operates the Buffalo Chip, said he felt he had little choice but to proceed with the rally. He employs hundreds of people in August and a smaller full-time staff.
“We spend money for 355 days of the year without any return on it, hoping people show up for nine days,” he said. “We’re a nine-day business.”
Woodruff felt he could pull off a safe event, allowing people to keep their distance from one another at the outdoor concerts at his campground. He said he was emboldened by the July 3 fireworks celebration at Mount Rushmore, where 7,500 people gathered without any reported outbreaks after the event, according to health officials.
In the end, Sturgis officials realized the rally would happen whether they wanted it or not. They decided to try to scale it back, canceling city-hosted events and slashing advertising for the rally.
Jerry Cole, who directs the rally for the city, said organizers are not sure how many people will show up, but that they’re expecting at least 250,000. Travel restrictions from Canada and other countries have cut out a sizeable portion of potential visitors, he said.
Others think the rally could be the biggest yet.
“It’s the biggest single event that’s going on in the United States that didn’t get canceled,” Woodruff said. “A lot of people think it’s going to be bigger than ever.”
When the rally is over, every year the city weighs all the trash generated to estimate how many people showed up. This year, they will also conduct mass coronavirus testing to see if all those people brought the pandemic to Sturgis.