What the History of U.S. Protests Illuminates About Today  ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Protests Aren't Instant TV Victories** - People expect protests to produce instant wins because TV compresses long struggles into neat endings. - Gloria J. Brown Marshall warns real protest work is iterative and faces organized backlash over time. Transcript: B.A. Parker Watching all this unfold, I've been thinking about what it means to be a protester these days. I mean, you've got thousands of people coming out in Minneapolis in sub-zero degree weather, fighting against what they see as the inappropriate actions and policies of ICE and DHS. But it's at best unclear as to whether any of this will have a long-term effect on how this country polices immigration. And meanwhile, people are out there in the freezing cold getting pulled over, detained, pepper sprayed, tear gassed, and in two cases, killed by masked government officials. And I don't think it's any coincidence that all of this is going down in Minneapolis. I mean, we have to remember that Minneapolis is where George Floyd was murdered in 2020. The protests there were enormous. I mean, Minneapolis essentially launched the racial reckoning that overtook the entire country that year, and people in Minnesota have spent years organizing, strategizing, and Honing their tactics to protest perceived injustices. So if any city in the country is prepared to take on a fight right now, it's arguably Minneapolis. And it's got me thinking about an episode we did back in July of last year. It was about how protests work, what they do and don't do, and why they matter. One of the people we spoke to was Gloria Brown Marshall. She's an historian, and she wrote a book about protests. And she said one of the things that a lot of people do, and I admit I can't be guilty of this, is they think protests should work almost instantly, like in TV. Gloria J. Brown Marshall Because in the TV version, you have the problem, then you have the protest, you have the dark night of the soul where the protest doesn't work, then the next night it does and now people Are happy and that's the end of the show. And so they don't show that the other side is saying we're going to take this ground back you just took from us. The ground you took is mine. ([Time 0:01:56](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9d25c378-81b0-433e-84d0-a45abc6ba135)) - **Everyday Rights Stem From Long Struggles** - Many everyday rights we take for granted, like the eight-hour workday, resulted from prolonged protest and labor organizing. - Gloria J. Brown Marshall highlights strikes, slowdowns, and outside solidarity as crucial tactics that made legal rights real in practice. Transcript: Gloria J. Brown Marshall Workday. Yes, that's why people, you don't think that came from protests. Is eight-hour workday a good thing? An eight-hour workday is a good thing because people used to work 16 to 20 hours. They used to work whatever amount of time the employer wanted them to work. And see, that's why I was saying basic things like that we take for granted. And we don't realize that the eight-hour workday was in law in the 1860s. But in practice, it didn't take place till the 1900s. People had to protest to make it a reality. You had people in the street. You had strikes. You had work shortages or slowdowns. ([Time 0:09:12](https://share.snipd.com/snip/50aa4ae5-25d7-4d57-b01f-aadda948b3ad)) - **Broaden What Counts As Protest** - Expand the definition of protest beyond street marches to include boycotts and individual acts like refusing to buy. - Use varied tactics so more people can participate and pressure systems in different ways. Transcript: Gloria J. Brown Marshall We don't think of Rosa Parks with a bullhorn in the street with a sign, but her protest was internationally known and effective all the same. So for that mother talking to that young person, just think, protest doesn't have to be just out in the street. It could be a singular decision not to buy at a certain store. That's protest. So I look at it, somebody wants to take a knee. That's protest. That's an individual part or could be part of a group. And if we expand the idea of protests, it can involve more people and do more things. You don't have to go out into the street. ([Time 0:10:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/05012dcb-83ed-41f9-afcf-196f4b1f62ac)) - **Use Multi-Level Organizing Strategies** - Combine local organizing, outside support, and federal lobbying when building a movement. - Study past labor and civil rights tactics to craft multi-level strategies and sustain pressure. Transcript: Gloria J. Brown Marshall Barons back then because they were basically taking from the European models. They would come here and with the same mindset, many of them, of serfdom, that the worker is a serf. And at the time in Europe, the serf was connected to the land. That's why you get that word landlord, because, yes, they were lord of the land. It became the version of south of sharecropping, the farmer would get, you know, a little part of what they produced and the lion's share of it would go to the plantation owner. And so what we have now are people who are working in the coal mines. They find this massive amount of coal in the mountains of West Virginia. And so there's no eight-hour work day. They work them as long as they need to work them. They're going into these dangerous conditions, and people are dying. People are losing a limb. But the corporation owns the land. They own the homes. They own the schools. They own the church. The corporations own the stores. And so the people who are working there are paid in what is called scripts. Their piece of paper is not real money. It's a piece of paper with the company's name on it. Say it's $10. And then you go to the company store. And then the company store, which is owned by the corporation, then, you know, writes down how much you bought at the company store and takes it off of the script and writes it down how Much you now owe. From the rent, from the store, from clothes, the worker had nothing. So the workers want to join unions. They want to become united and have a power to sit at the table and decide certain things. So they want to renegotiate their wages. And to do that individually, they would have, they call yellow dog contracts. And in the contract, it said you could not negotiate your wage. You could not be part of a union. And if you did, you would be evicted from your home. And so what they had to do, they had someone named Mother Jones. And Mother Jones was this little, she's like a little grandmother, this little white-haired white woman with this fierce voice. And she would tell them, you know, get together. Everybody come together. So you had this strategy of how much money we should make. What should be the union? How can we bring in somebody from outside to help organize us? Then you have this union organizer and Mother Jones. So you have all these things coming together. But you also had people who were not going to allow that to happen. So folks were evicted. And once they were evicted, they would live in a tent. But then the corporation owned the land where the tents were. So they were evicted from the tents. So you had a high price paid in order for them to continue to have union organizers, but because unions were in other parts of the country, outside people came in to help them organize Their unions. So you had pressure from the outside. You had lobbying of federal government to recognize the unions and recognize the ability to have a union. ([Time 0:11:47](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b2bc8a7f-e16d-457c-b60a-7be1d9af0685)) - **Trash Strike Shows Disruption's Power** - Gloria J. Brown Marshall remembers living through a Philadelphia trash strike and its daily disruptions. - She emphasizes strikes' power to force attention by creating practical pain that demands resolution. Transcript: Gloria J. Brown Marshall What did you think about that? I used to live in Philadelphia, and I lived in Philadelphia during a trash strike. How'd it go? Rats were everywhere. Right. You know, they were jumping out of baskets on my way home. You had to dodge things. Yes, it was bad. And, you know, once again, what is it doing? Disrupting. It's making you stop your day-to going back and forth to whatever you're doing to say, pay attention to this issue over here. And so now you have this standoff. How long are people going to go without wages? Part of what I say in my book is my father was part of a protest. And when he protested, you know, they were out so long, we lost our house. Yes, we lost our house. You know, he got another job in the end and worked his way up. And, you know, he's passed on now. But, you know, we ended up getting he ended up back on his feet and all of that. But yes, you can have devastating economic effects. I'm not trying to gloss this over at all. People can get arrested. The police can be accused of assault in many instances. Those people who are out protesting will have economic effects. That is part of it, too. ([Time 0:15:31](https://share.snipd.com/snip/09567c70-a4ec-4cd1-afef-4e39fcee8c0f)) - **Youth Often Drive Protests** - Young people historically carry disproportionate weight in protests because they have time and fewer economic constraints. - Gloria J. Brown Marshall notes children and students often lead when adults risk losing jobs or livelihoods. Transcript: Gloria J. Brown Marshall So many high school students have played major roles in protests. They haven't recently because so many people refuse to give young people their due as far as effective protesters. They became effective during George Floyd because older people like myself who had respiratory issues or whatever couldn't protest as much as we would have. And so that gave the entree for young people to take their true role. But protests are usually by the young. They have the time to read the issues, but they also have the type of jobs that would allow them to protest. And the children's marches, for example, during the Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King had children, high school students, because if the parents marched and they lost their Job, the whole family would lose their income. And so they would have high school students participating or college students participating in sit-ins and marches. ([Time 0:20:22](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4f5a5bac-43f5-4c8a-ba7a-11c4ff33d3e9)) - **Childhood March For A School Levy** - Gloria J. Brown Marshall recalls marching as a child to save her school and losing the levy. - The loss taught her early that protests can fail yet still shape future understanding of civic struggle. Transcript: B.A. Parker I remember my first protest. Gloria J. Brown Marshall I was in grade school and this was during the time period in which a lot of white parents were taking their kids out of school and moving to the suburbs. I didn't understand any of this. All I knew was they wanted to pass what they called a levy, a tax levy. I wasn't even sure what a tax levy was. All I knew was that we needed the tax money to sustain the school. I didn't know as a child that, you know, people, working people, disliked taxes. Had no clue. But we went to the streets and we had our little sign, you know, vote for the levy. And I had a little sign, vote for the levy to save our school. Vote for the levy. We're depending on you. And so, yes, now you know I didn't go in and sing it. And so I wrote the little song and we were there. We were marching the street with our signs and everything like that. And the levy did not pass. We did not have the taxes to sustain the school system with all of the people who had, like, the higher incomes leaving, you know, the school district after Brown versus Board of Education. This wasn't right after Brown. Thank you very much for anybody trying to add stuff up. B.A. Parker This was 1950. Gloria J. Brown Marshall Thank Thank you. This was not in the 50s at all. Thank you very much for folks going on Google already. But what really got me about losing was just what you said, that feeling. How can we lose? This was something very important. This was necessary. Didn't they understand? This was to help our education. This was a good thing. So that was my first time going all in on a protest as a little kid, not understanding, not being mature enough to realize all the different levels of what was going on at the time. ([Time 0:21:26](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8efa8994-ff6b-408a-a6c3-4b5782343ae4)) - **Research Before You Protest** - Study the issue deeply before protesting so tactics target the right levers of power. - Use facts, votes, budgets, and clear demands to change hearts, minds, and policy effectively. Transcript: Gloria J. Brown Marshall Some of the anti-war protests, very successful protests, because those college students studied the Vietnam War. They understood what they were protesting against. They knew what the votes were. They knew how the money was being spent. They knew what the body counts were. So they would use that in their protests, you know, in trying to change the hearts and minds of people in positions of power and the presidency. I mean, Lyndon Johnson did not run for a second term because of the Vietnam War and the protests against the war. And the high school students, U.S. Supreme Court case, the Tinker's case, is high school students protesting silently. They wore an armband to school as a protest of the Vietnam War. So there are so many ways in which people are protesting, but I think it's important for us to understand the issues that we're battling against and what it's going to take that would Allow us to have substantive change so that when you have the two steps forward, when you have that one step back, the one step back is not so deep that it's devastating. ([Time 0:23:34](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9b4853b9-ea14-4c77-9e48-580b7237f704)) - **Protest As Perpetual, Necessary Work** - Protest in the U.S. is cyclical: gains are followed by backlash and legal limitations, especially for marginalized groups. - Gloria J. Brown Marshall frames protest as necessary ongoing work to prevent long-term regression. Transcript: B.A. Parker Like this country has been in this perpetual state of protest since maybe 2020, maybe earlier 2017. Does what we're looking at right now seem to be working, or have you seen it shift? I've seen a shift because I haven't seen the use of strategy the way it was used previously. Gloria J. Brown Marshall And there's an impatience. This is the 21st century. People don't want to re-protest what was already protested and won. You know, so consider the Montgomery bus boycott was in 1955. We gained the civil rights legislation in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965. And so many lives were lost. So many people were assaulted. So many protests happened during that time period of 1955 to 1965. But people want the TV version and they want to see the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Some protests happened and it was all done. And it was all done. It was 1965. I saw that movie. Yeah, you saw the movie, Selma? B.A. Parker We heard them say we don't deserve to be here. But today, we stand as Americans. Gloria J. Brown Marshall You know, it was like, yeah, and you even get a theme song. Speaker 3 One day, when the glory comes, it will be ours, it will be ours. Oh, one day. Gloria J. Brown Marshall Kind of, you know, dual personality of stating we want liberty while on stolen indigenous land and kidnapped African people. So there's always been this conflict between what's been stated as liberty and freedom and what's actually been given. So perpetual protests, I would agree with that. The Enemy Aliens Act was something that was passed by federal legislation in the 1700s. So we had just gotten to be a country when they started to limit the protest rights of immigrants. So that's why I'm telling you, once you look at the history of it and you realize this is something that's two steps forward, one step back, but it's two necessary steps. Necessary, or else you're always going backwards. ([Time 0:25:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9409417d-9f70-4e21-9e7c-97a644d12cab)) - **Sustain Movements By Prioritizing Rest** - Balance protest work with rest and family needs so movements remain sustainable. - Invest time, energy, and resources now to create protections future generations will inherit. Transcript: Gloria J. Brown Marshall I think what's missing as well is not that the people before were naive. Yes, they wanted to just live their life. I think they believed in rest as well. Rest didn't just start in the 21st century. So they wanted to rest. But they decided to use their honest rage in ways that would be progressive for the community, for their families, and for the future. And I think that's something I want people to understand, that folks before weren't just so giving of their time and money and energy. They didn't think about anything else. They wanted to be with their families. They wanted to enjoy their lives too. But they also knew there was something bigger than themselves that they needed to be a part of. And that's why we have the rights and protections we have today, because they protested. Those rights were on the paper, just like the eight-hour workday was on the paper in 1800s. But the protests made them a reality that we today can take for granted. So I think we need to think about and look at the future. And are we going to be freedom freeloaders? Or are we going to invest in a future in which there are people who gain rights and protections based on our work the same way we gain them based on other people's work? ([Time 0:28:33](https://share.snipd.com/snip/cf647d25-63cb-472e-a82e-328b98cdb474))