Conservatives who are now saying "violence is never the answer!" must be forgetting these previous seminal events in our nation's history:
--The Boston Tea Party
--The American Revolution
--The Civil War
--WWII
--Heck: the implicit threat of violence every time mysterious green men armed to the teeth show up on the doorsteps of state capitols to protest wearing face masks or whatever. Have we seen that recently?
I still lean against violence since it has a tendency to spin out of control, and can backfire and be a justification for tyranny. But a little bit of force (or the threat of force) in the service of a righteous cause sure does work wonders in focusing the minds of those who are inclined to dismiss and ridicule peaceful protest.
Example: we've sure seen a lot more police reform and movement toward racial equality in this country happen more quickly after the George Floyd riots than over the past several years of mostly peaceful protest and Kaepernick taking a knee, etc.
There is also emerging research that Malcom X and MLK were not mortally opposed to one another's methods as is commonly thought, but rather played off one another in the service of the same goals.
Feel free to post anything you want about the suffragettes in the new stream linked below. I am learning more about it myself. It tends to be taken for granted these days, but the 19th Amendment was the product of 70+ years of activism.
