‘It felt like history itself’ – 48 protest photographs that changed the world
The Guardian
Protest can change everything. Which is why governments around the world want to suppress it. In a week when thousands in the US expressed their fury over Roe v Wade, we look back at some of the images that helped rewrite laws and change the way we think.
Governments tend to define democracy as narrowly as possible. The story they tell goes as follows: you vote; the majority party takes office; you leave it to govern on your behalf for the next four or five years. (...)
We have seen what happens if we leave politics to governments. Fairly elected or not, they will, without effective public pressure, abuse their power. (...)
Trust in governments destroys democracy, which survives only through constant challenge. It requires endless disruption of the cosy relationship between our representatives and powerful forces: the billionaire press, plutocrats, political donors, friends in high places. What challenge and disruption mean, above all, is protest. (...)
A government that cannot tolerate protest is a government that cannot tolerate democracy.
Such governments are becoming a global norm. In the UK, two policing bills in quick succession seek to shut down all effective forms of protest. (...)
In the US, state legislatures have been undermining the federal right to protest, empowering the police to use catch-all offences such as “trespass” or “disrupting the peace” to break up demonstrations and make arrests. (...) In Russia, a new law against “discrediting the armed forces” has been used to prosecute dissenters engaging in actions as mild as writing “no to war” in the snow. Similar draconian laws are being imposed by governments in many other nations.
Why do governments want to ban protest? Because it’s effective. Why do they want us to accept their narrow vision of democracy? Because it makes our power ineffective. (...)
The extraordinary people in these images understand this – from suffragettes picketing the White House in 1917 to Patsy Stevenson being manhandled by police at last year’s Sarah Everard vigil; from relatives of those killed at Amritsar in India in 1919 to those taking to the streets after George Floyd’s murder in the US.
Almost everything of importance is disintegrating fast: ecosystems, the health system, standards in public life, equality, human rights, terms of employment. (...) Business as usual is a threat to life on Earth. Disrupting it is the greatest civic duty of all. (...)
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