Dr. Jim Ellsworth<p>Cases like this highlight crucial nuances about the right of protest that deserve more discussion--in our homes and in our educational institutions. As others have long observed, our "safe," post-mortem lionization of the leaders of our Civil Rights era placed such emphasis on their PEACEFUL protests that it obscured the fact that people protesting THEIR OPPRESSION & MURDER aren't always GOING TO BE peaceful--especially when years of PREVIOUS protests that WERE peaceful were ignored and/or met only with lynchings and further oppression.</p><p>I honestly can't be too critical of <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/JusticeForPalestine" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>JusticeForPalestine</span></a> activists who get a bit disorderly and break a few things, when an entire nation is being brutally & systematically exterminated--men, women & children, indiscriminately--BY OUR ALLY & WITH OUR WEAPONS, and after GOING-ON TWO YEARS of (mostly) peaceful protests have basically been blown off (under <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/GenocideJoe" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>GenocideJoe</span></a>) or met with state violence and unconstitutional intimidation (under <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/AgolfShitler" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>AgolfShitler</span></a>) here at home, and escalation by <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/IsraelAtWarCrimes" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>IsraelAtWarCrimes</span></a> abroad. I kinda have to hear the echoes of the late John Lewis' <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/GoodTrouble" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>GoodTrouble</span></a>.</p><p>That said--and this piece is just as important--when John Lewis' generation crossed those lines, they did so FULLY EXPECTING to be arrested. Some, like the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and Brother Malcolm--and many, many more whose names are less famous--were even martyred for it (may God reward them and elevate them in station). The law in these cases is often unjust--that's often THE POINT--but a nation founded on the rule of law not of capricious men must accept BOTH the morality of (some) violence AGAINST injustice AND the necessity of accepting accountability for it under the law even when the law is LESS just: it isn't the laws against damaging other peoples' property that we're objecting to.</p><p>This is the balance that is necessary for a free people to remain so.</p><p>May God guide us, and preserve the resistance, and hasten the accounting for the oppressors. 🤲 </p><p><a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/protesters-university-washington-building/story?id=121505881" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">abcnews.go.com/US/protesters-u</span><span class="invisible">niversity-washington-building/story?id=121505881</span></a></p>