Protests to Change a Nation

About the protests that have erupted and continued since George Floyd was murdered, you may hear some people say nothing has changed.

It is important not to go around saying nothing has changed, because that implies none of the civil rights movements of the past accomplished anything. That isn’t true.

A lot has changed. Speaking here mainly in an American context… Mixed race marriages are legal. Same sex marriages are legal. Neighborhoods I grew up in that were segregated are mixed now and seem unaware they ever weren’t. Even Vidor, where the Grand Wizard of the KKK lived and where no one with dark skin could be in town after sundown, has held a well attended peaceful demonstration in support of Black Lives Matter. When I was a child in Texas, my mother couldn’t give consent for medical procedures on us kids until my father had a special power of attorney drawn up.

The changes are too slow, too far short of what they should be, and the darker your skin the harsher the targeting has always been. These protests are long overdue.

But they most certainly are not pointless.

This is a clash we have been building up to for many years. We have every reason to hope it will turn back the takeover that the very wealthy have been carrying out. Historically, the USA’s finest advances toward the ideal of equality have been birthed in blood. Remember that! Abolishing slavery, suffrage for women, ending the war in Vietnam, ushering in the first waves of civil rights expansions… and now let’s do it again.

Do this with the knowledge that when enough people do it—peacefully, persistently, insistently, unrelentingly—change happens. This is the way The People can push a nation (the USA or another) to become better than its authorities want it to be. We can make it better. And we will, all of us together.