They want to talk about the Hammond’s case and express sympathy.
But they don’t want to take any meaningful action to stop the people out West losing their land and the use of their land to the federal behemoth.......
Because one side armed up I am guess it is harder for govt Republicans to show open support. If these protestors showed up unarmed and chained themselves in the building and did non violent (aka unarmed) disobedience it would garner a whole lot of sympathy. I don’t get why non violent disobedience is frowned upon by the right these days for our causes - it is a Christian aka Conservative invention we should take back from the leftists. The leftists - if you recall - were the ones arguing for armed uprisings in the 60s and 70s.
My sense of the 60’s is that King’s vision of ‘non-violent’ resistance was a pathway to ‘violent’ resistance in the end.
Kennedy and his people were petrified because when people saw the police dogs, water cannon stuff on television and so on, it ignited various kinds of racial protest across the country in the late spring and into the summer of 1963.
Some of the protest was non-violent, other protests were the first of the riots that would get worse as the 60’s went on reaching a climax with the orgy of riots following MLK’s assassination in 1968.
Sympathy among the white population in 1963 turned to anger and backlash as the decade went on and the tempo of the protests deteroriated into violence.
NON VIOLENT CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE MAY BE A COURSE TO TAKE, BUT THE HISTORY REMINDS US THAT IT CAN DETERIORATE INTO VIOLENCE AND THERE CAN BE A BACKLASH.
Howard K. Smith, a journalist who worked at ABC during this time, did a TV interview in 1974 stating people turned against the civil rights movement ‘when it became violent’.
“I don’t get why non violent disobedience is frowned upon by the right these days for our causes - it is a Christian aka Conservative invention we should take back from the leftists. The leftists - if you recall - were the ones arguing for armed uprisings in the 60s and 70s.”
I don’t either, especially when the founders themselves set that precedent. Years of correspondence, essays and emissaries were attempted first by American patriots. YEARS.
Sorry, but armed or not, theirs is not a leftist cause and even a naked hunger strike chained to fence posts wouldn’t garner a bit of support from the media.