Amina Khan, Class II
Photo by Kelly Lacey
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, protest means “an objection or display of unwillingness usually to an idea or a course of action.” In the past, protests were objections that ranged from political to fundamental issues, but in today's society true protests are often washed out of their purpose and replaced with self-fulfilling ideologies.
To bring this into perspective, let's compare the very different responses to two protests that have happened in the past few months. The first being the George Floyd protests. Protesters across the United States fought for the recognition of Black lives and the way they are treated in the eyes of the public along with the police brutality endured by the Black community. After peacefully protesting, many people were attacked by police and had their right to protest peacefully taken away. On the other hand, protests led by the All Lives Matter movement were allowed to protest after attempting to invalidate the Black Lives Matter movement.
The ALM movement stands for a group of people who believe that all lives matter, but what they fail to recognize is that right now, the Black community specifically is suffering at the hands of police brutality, and if we do not value Black lives, how can we value all lives? An analogy of this is if a curtain in a house catches on fire, one would try to get rid of that fire so that the whole house does not catch on fire. If someone, however, were to just try and protect the rest of the house from burning while the curtain burned, then the whole house would still end up burning as that one curtain was not given any help. The rest of the house does not need any help as it is not a priority at that moment.
This goes hand in hand with ALM vs. BLM movements, as one of them needs our help at this moment, and the other wants to receive help when they are not struggling as much as others to be equal. The people behind movements such as ALM try to take away the value of meaningful and organized protests by trying to mirror their actions. By weaponizing these movements that actually need help, the value gets washed out over time and the essence of these very movements starts to be forgotten.
This is why it is important to recognize what true protests are. While some fight for the greater good and choose to work towards justice, others take advantage of and manipulate the action so that they don’t lose power. At the end of the day, protests are tainted and they lose their meaning if not treated as an objection to today's principle.
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