> The Civil Rights movement succeeded because it was guided by leaders who had clear, specific, and realistic goals, and were able to negotiate to achieve them. Since neotoddlers “organize” mostly on social media [...]
The author somehow skips the part where Civil Rights activists were criticized for the exact same reason in their time (i.e. disrupting the daily life of people).
There are many points to make about methods of protest, but this is just not a good analysis piece.
Yeah, that quote is just objectively false, and exemplifies Dr. King's words about white moderates in Letter from a Birmingham Jail:
“…that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’ ”
That does not make all civil disobedience well considered or justified. But it's important to recall that we delay and delay and delay justice, and then waggle our fingers when people realize that if justice were really to be given by talking politely it would have already happened.
The author somehow skips the part where Civil Rights activists were criticized for the exact same reason in their time (i.e. disrupting the daily life of people).
There are many points to make about methods of protest, but this is just not a good analysis piece.