A case for disruption

In the United States, the First Amendment is best known for granting the right to freedom of speech, but it also includes freedom of assembly. According to a publication by Veera Korhonen, 18,356 demonstrations in the U.S. were recorded from January 2023 through August 2024. (statista.com, Sept. 5)

And as that number grows due to Washington’s stubborn endorsement of the destruction of Palestine, there is continuing pressure for protests to not only remain “peaceful” but remain palatable to bourgeois dictates. In most states, a permit is required to do things like march or block traffic.

Other forms of peaceful protest involve calling your local politician and stating your grievances. This is a simpler and supposedly more dignified way to advocate for a cause, especially for marginalized groups who are targeted immediately by police, while counterprotesters are all but given permission to attack if they step out of line. However, there’s also a certain virtue the media attaches to being the politest, most docile demonstrators. 

As a population addicted to convenience, there are those in the U.S., especially right-wingers, who have often expressed a desire to physically harm those who aren’t sitting on the sidewalks — but would rather stand in the middle of the road to make their point or spray-paint graffiti slogans that will wash off.

Peaceful protests, including mass ones, have their place especially for the most marginalized sectors of our class, like migrants, who are threatened with deportation if arrested by the repressive state. The double-edged sword with peaceful protests is that they’re very easy to ignore, especially when no one is being inconvenienced. What happens when you do everything right and still don’t get an acknowledgement of your demands? Where are you supposed to turn when you’re nice but the systems aren’t?

State-sponsored murder despite evidence

On Sept. 24, the state of Missouri murdered an innocent man via lethal injection. Imprisoned since 2001, 55-year-old Marcellus Williams had been serving nearly 24 years on death row for first-degree murder, robbery and burglary. 

The state’s Supreme Court Judge Zel Fischer defended the execution, stating, “Despite nearly a quarter century of litigation in both state and federal courts, there is no credible evidence of actual innocence or any showing of a constitutional error undermining confidence in the original judgment.” (Zhou, Li. “The Urgent, Futile Calls to Halt Marcellus Williams’s Execution, Explained.”)

Fischer was willfully ignoring the evolving forensic technology showing that the murder weapon, a butcher knife, was tested for DNA. The results revealed the initial mishandling of the weapon and that fingerprints belonged to the assistant prosecuting attorney and an investigator, but not Williams. 

However, this was not enough to exonerate him. Nor was the joint brief — not just from Williams’ defense lawyers but from his prosecuting attorney as well. Nor were the pleas of the victim’s own family not to go through with the death penalty. Although all parties, including the carefully cultivated jury of his “peers” (11 white jurors and one Black juror) would rather have him serve life in prison, according to Williams’ attorney Tricia Rojo Bushnell, the state wanted him dead.

This is where the people sprang into action. When Missouri Gov. Mike Parsons came into office, he quickly dissolved the Board of Inquiry for Marcellus Williams, stating, “It is time to move forward.” He argued that keeping Williams alive is “leaving a victim’s family in limbo,” even though said family didn’t want him killed. As months turned to weeks, demonstrations and protests blossomed across the country. 

Fundraisers in his name received donation after donation. As weeks turned into days, over 100 people marched to Gov. Parson’s office. Protesters carried hefty stacks of paper in each hand. Within these stacks were petitions with 1.5 million signatures calling for the sparing of Williams’ life. This was also the only way to contact the governor’s office, because when the outpouring of the public’s outcry flooded the phone lines, officials simply stopped answering the phone.

Then the state killed Marcellus Williams. The people who had spent their time and money to fight the injustice weren’t even acknowledged. 

Stop the U.S./Israel siege of Gaza!

It has been 430 days since Israel began the modern genocide of Palestinians. Such an ethnic-cleansing war has been a Zionist goal 76 years in the making. In the wake of the single October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, a resistance group fighting against Israel’s occupation, the occupying power retaliated quite disproportionately by leveling at least two-thirds of the Gaza Strip with U.S.-supplied bombs and murdering over 45,000 reported members of its Palestinian population, nearly half children. 

Keep in mind that since nearly all buildings used for record-keeping in Gaza have been destroyed, documenting the rapidly growing numbers of lives taken has become a near impossible task, and the actual number of martyrs are projected to be much higher than reported.

Over a year later, the Israel Occupation Forces continue to constantly and flagrantly violate the Geneva Conventions by sniping at journalists, bombing humanitarian aid trucks and impersonating doctors to attack patients in hospitals. 

The reason Israel is so overt in its ethnic cleansing is because the Zionist state is fully backed and funded by the United States — despite large, loud and consistent dissent from its people. By Dec. 5, 2023, over one million people living in the U.S. had participated in about 2,600 demonstrations regarding Israel’s siege. The good news is that 2,100 of the protests — the vast majority, some 80% — opposed the genocide and supported the Palestinian people! Only 20% were carried out by Zionists supporting the Israeli state’s heinous, murderous bombardment of Gaza.

The National March on Washington: Free Palestine mobilization on Nov. 4, 2023, brought out hundreds of thousands of participants from across the country to the White House. This marked the largest Palestine solidarity protest in U.S. history — a truly monumental event. And it was coordinated with the global protests that day opposing the U.S.-backed war, which brought out millions of people.

In response, the protesters received silence from the administration, while Israel got a $14.5 billion allocation from the U.S. that month for bunker-buster bombs to annihilate mainly women and children, including babies, as well as food and medical aid workers and journalists. Israel claims they all are “insurgents,” including children. 

The classic “War on Terror” propaganda the U.S. relied on after 9/11 to sell war in West Asia doesn’t work like it used to, as it is greatly outweighed by the photographs of severed limbs of Palestinian civilians, including children, being broadcast on our telephones. 

Campuses in action

College students on over 500 different campuses set up encampments demanding an end to the genocide. Repressive tactics became much more aggressive by the spring of 2024, starting with Columbia University. While protesting peacefully on the lawn of the university they pay for, Columbia students were threatened with suspension if they didn’t exit their encampments. So they did. 

And then they blockaded themselves in the Hamilton (renamed “Hind’s”) Hall building. This was a tactic used by students generations before — in the very same building — to protest the Vietnam War.

In response, hundreds of New York City cops called in by the university administration showed up in riot gear, manhandling students and arresting 300 people. The student occupation of Hind’s Hall resulted in broken windows, furniture used as barricades and doors zip-tied shut. 

Resistance spreads

While only property was hurt, the protesters were no longer so easy to ignore, and in response to this resistance, students at other universities raised their own encampments — and the police raised their batons. 

Police officers forcibly tore down the student encampment at the University of Wisconsin. Cops released tear gas on protesters as they gathered at the University of Arizona. At Emory University in Atlanta, police slammed students and professors alike onto the concrete ground with excessive force.

And with rhetoric flowing from news station to news station saying that these protesters were spoiled Ivy League kids who needed to be taught a lesson, whipped-up pro-Israel counterprotesters were allowed to attack these students and supporters at multiple campuses across the country. In one case at the University of California in Los Angeles, they used fireworks to bomb the students’ tents, with little police intervention. 

Other white supremacist groups, brandishing weapons, took the opportunity to agitate and intimidate a diverse, often marginalized group of people, such as the counterprotesters of the University of Mississippi, also known as “Ole Miss.” There, a crowd of majority young white men, waving mostly U.S. flags with the occasional Israeli flag sprinkled in, taunted pro-Palestine protesters by hurling racial slurs and at one point imitating a monkey when confronted by a Black woman. Only one student faced expulsion. 

Those standing against oppression are pressured to act with civility while those standing with the oppressors get to act as violently as they please. According to the issue brief of the Bridging Divides Initiative: “At the vast majority of encampment demonstrations — 95% or almost 1,090 events — there were no reports of participants engaging in physical violence or destructive activity.” 

The report continues: “[O]f the approximately 60 events that did include reports of violent or destructive activity, these incidents involved physical confrontations with law enforcement, physical confrontations with counterdemonstrators, the throwing of projectiles (e.g., bottles, cans) at law enforcement or damage to occupied buildings.” (May, 2024)

And despite the protests going strong to this day — and the Palestinian death toll reaching at least 45,000 and counting since October 7, 2023 — the U.S. continues to coddle the genocidal state with billions of dollars and 2,000-pound bombs. 

Both President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris made it clear before the Nov. 5 election that support for Israel’s genocide will continue no matter the public outrage. Trump is prepared to ignore the majority of the population who do not want any more of their tax dollars going to Israeli military “aid.”

Longshore workers’ strike shakes up bosses

What history has shown is that the United States only listens to its people when motivated by two things: loss of profits and fear of the united action by the masses. 

So when the 50,000 members of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) went on strike on Oct. 1, 2024, after their contract expired, the U.S. Maritime Alliance — threatened greatly by financial losses — went into negotiations immediately, reaching a temporary deal by Oct. 3, just two days later.

The union members struck, because they weren’t happy with the pay or the automation of tasks which had become a growing threat to their job security. So at midnight, they decided to walk off the job, halting the flow of goods for almost all cargo ports from Maine to Texas. This would become the country’s “most disruptive work stoppage in decades,” according to CNN. A loss of $2 billion in supply flow was prevented as well.

And because these longshore workers’ way of striking is inherently disruptive to the economy, a lot more bargaining power is allotted to them. They have the ability to demand a 77% raise over six years — and they got agreement on 62%. Meanwhile, the bosses seethe and continue to implement automation with the dream of one day treating their cargo workers like the rest of the working class.

The establishment does not like people to exercise their First Amendment right to assemble if their demands oppose the interests of the oppressing class. What keeps people in the U.S. in line and remaining peaceful is the looming threat of immediate state violence — or the long-term financial ruin that comes with exponential fines for acts like damaging property or protesting without a permit. 

But what happens when the oppressed class becomes so enraged that the veneer of respectability is thrown out of the window? When the oppressed are no longer dictated to by those who intend to ignore them? 

Mass protests against racist murders

The birth of the Black Lives Matter movement arose after the 2012 killing of 17-year-old Travyon Martin at the hands of George Zimmerman, a local racist who decided to play cop and fatally shot Martin for “looking suspicious” in Sanford, Florida.

Wrongfully, the state’s courts did not convict and imprison Zimmerman, and he proceeded to make a spectacle of his evasion of legal responsibility for his crime by auctioning off his gun, signing autographs and even suing Martin’s parents for emotional damages!

The Black Lives Matter Movement grew as Black people specifically witnessed death after death of innocent people, such as Michael Brown (2014), Philando Castile (2016), Sandra Bland (2015) and many more over the years at the hands of police. None of them served jail time. 

Years of peaceful demonstrations and moments of silence yielded nothing on a national level, except demonstrations for the next victim and tireless arguments on what resisting arrest looks like.

Then, on May 25, 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the police murder of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man in Minneapolis, was the spark that ignited the raging protests, which later turned into rebellions after much police agitation. That characterized that entire summer. 

So when the video spread of Officer Derek Chauvin casually placing his knee on a handcuffed George Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes, 46 seconds, while staring at the camera, it was especially enraging. Even more so since at that time people were primed to expect the murderous cop to get off and go free in this case as the cops always do. Not only were people angry by the time boots were on the ground marching against Floyd’s death, but they were tired after almost a decade of hearing the same song.

Once again, the march in Minneapolis was peaceful, and, once again, the police — knowing that the crowd was predominantly Black and that they could therefore have a field day with their terror — unleashed rubber bullets, pepper spray and a huge amount of tear gas into the crowds. 

In an effort to flush their eyes, protesters ran to the local Target for gallons of milk. When denied the milk, this crowd of teargassed, injured protesters stripped themselves of the inclination to remain peaceful in the face of injustice. Some protesters “looted” the milk, because this was the only way to get what they needed. This was the first instance of “looting” during those protests. Then, with the ability to expropriate other things besides milk, groups of people began to ransack the Target that wouldn’t have been under siege if the police officers hadn’t brutalized the crowd. 

What was also under siege was the Third Precinct of the Minneapolis Police Department. On May 28, 2020, after days of attempts, the police station was finally surrendered to the civilians, with cops fleeing from the scene. It was burned to the ground shortly thereafter, marking the first time in U.S. history when protesters took over and brought down a police station

Angry millions cry out ‘Justice for George Floyd!’

Across a country of protesters at their boiling point with the same anger and agitation, fires raged, windows were broken and property was destroyed. For the first time in a long time, the protesters were on the other side of violence, and the higher-ups were scared. With government officials frantically finger-wagging at the violence, owners of expensive stores boarded up their windows.

When it was time to reveal murderer Derek Chauvin’s verdict a year later, national emergencies were declared preemptively, with establishment forces clearly still scarred from the prior events. Throughout the year, hundreds of company, corporate and athletic team bosses were terrified of being seen as anti-Black in the period of heightened awareness of systemic racism. 

This led to almost 200 cosmetic changes made to flags, team names, pancake boxes, etc. in one year, to quell the masses who were more concerned with systematic change — like, at least, defunding the police. But nonetheless, these were changes that were purely motivated by the fear struck into the bosses by constant street rebellions. 

To this day, many people condemn the actions of an oppressed population who are at the end of their rope. But on April 20, 2021, Derek Chauvin was found guilty of every charge against him: second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. After years of police officers walking free after murdering Black people, many people consider the rage of the 2020 protests to have been a driving force behind the sigh of relief the next year when Chauvin finally got the guilty verdict.

When the rebellions raged on in Atlanta, former Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms evoked the name of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as most politicians do when the people’s protests aren’t exceedingly polite and non-intrusive. She stated: “This is not a protest. This is not in the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. This is chaos. A protest has purpose. When Dr. King was assassinated, we didn’t do this to our city.” (Danner, Chas. “Watch Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms Give Emotional Speech on Unrest in Atlanta.” Intelligencer, 30 May 2020)  

‘To rebel is justified’

What happened when Dr. King was killed was described by Digital History: “The last major wave of violence occurred following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. Violence erupted in 168 cities, leaving 46 dead, 3,500 injured and $40 million worth of damage. In Washington, D.C., fires burned within three blocks of the White House.” This was also dubbed “The Holy Week Uprising.” (2021)

So, in the spirit of Dr. King, militant rebellions erupted in 168 cities with the purpose of signaling unrest — and outrage. Even the president at the time, Lyndon B. Johnson — who voted against anti-lynching laws as a senator in the 1950s — was forced to adopt a respectful stance to the unrest, saying: “What did you expect? I don’t know why we’re so surprised. When you put your foot on a man’s neck and hold him down for three hundred years, and then you let him up, what’s he going to do? He’s going to knock your block off.” (Longley, Kyle. “Our Leaders Can Look to Lyndon Johnson to See How to Minimize Damage Today.”)

The Civil Rights Act of 1968 — also known as the Fair Housing Act — was passed on April 11.

In this day and age, it feels as though the bourgeoisie is less accessible and that concessions or victories are more out of reach, while the average civilian is more accessible than ever. We can be traced, doxxed and tracked much more easily and faster than in the past because of the technological advancements being weaponized against us. On the other hand, new technology like social media makes our class more able to see the truth of what’s happening in Gaza, without the filter of bourgeois editorial control. 

While today the capitalist class barely tolerates our protests and tunes them out, because they assume we come from a place of powerlessness — and our voices are hoarse from the thousands of sit-ins, demonstrations and marches calling for a free Palestine — the time will come when we become more numerous, unruly, disruptive and impossible to ignore!

Until then: Walk out, occupy, picket, strike, boycott, march and rally. But when the ruling class gets used to drowning out your voice and ignoring your demands, disrupt and rebel!