Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, many peoples' nomination for NBA basketball's GOAT, and I are the same age. We both came up in California in the 1960s. In this moment of Trump's attempted military coup in our state and nation, he speaks for me.
... I grew up in a time of massive political unrest that changed the
country from a fortress guarding the wealthy and their rules that
benefited only them to a country that questioned those rules and the
authorities enforcing them. Protests advocating for civil rights,
women’s rights, gay rights, and ending the Vietnam War were daily
occurrences. That shock to the system of seeing hundreds of thousands of
people take to the streets to demand change jump-started America into a
nation that was more aware of injustice and more committed to
addressing it.
Protest is an act of love, not one of anger.
U.S. Rep. John Lewis (1940-2020), civil rights activist
As
a human rights activist for 60 years, I’m used to the predictable
pattern of protests and the inevitable backlash. People who are outraged
by the government’s deliberate and callous acts of injustice march
through the streets to raise public awareness and gather enough support
to end the injustice. They do this after realizing that they will not be
getting any help from most elected politicians, who are too afraid of
compromising their jobs to do what’s right.
Instead, the
government party in charge wants to demonstrate to its supporters that
they are powerful and can protect the status quo against change. As they
did in the sixties, they send in cops and troops to force a violent
confrontation. This then justifies any action the government takes
because now they have news footage of violent protesters. The result of
this carefully manipulated photo-op violence is the curated disapproval
and scolding by politicians relieved to have an excuse to reject
protesters. Thousands of lives are being destroyed, but it only takes
one burning car to allow people to justify their lack of involvement.
Lost in all this political theater is the injustice that was being protested.
This government was founded on protest.
Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993), first Black Supreme Court justice
No
matter how peaceful protesters want to be, it rarely ends up that way.
There are too many people who benefit from having it turn violent.
First, some infiltrators are the political enemies of the protesters who
commit violent acts to discredit the cause. Second, there are hardcore
radicals who agree with the principles of the protesters but don’t agree
that their non-violent methods produce change fast enough. Third, the
police and troops who should be trained in how to de-escalate violence
after all these years of facing protests, know that de-escalation is not
why they were sent in. Their job is to punish protesters to scare
others from protesting. Ironically, they are there to protect a
political party’s power, not protect the country.
So, yeah,
protests are messy, impure, sloppy, and emotional. For many, it is a
last resort born out of frustration, anger, and disappointment for a
country that has not lived up to the promise it makes every time it
hoists a flag. They see a felon for a president who has been accused of
sexual assault more than two dozen times, who has used his office to
increase his personal wealth, who dishonors the U.S. Constitution to
gain more power, who ignores the U.S. Supreme Court in an effort to
cleanse the country of immigrants, legal and illegal, who demands law
and order, yet pardons horrible criminals who cheated average people out
of millions, and others who invaded the Capitol Building. That’s who we
picked as our leader and guardian of our values.
When
an individual is protesting society’s refusal to acknowledge his
dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on
him.
Bayard Rustin (1912-1987), Civil Rights Movement leader

Your rally is here. I'll be there. Will you?