6. To what extent are protests justifiable?
Analysis of Key Terms
‘Protests’ – generally referred to an organised public demonstration expressing strong
objection to an official policy, course of action, state institutions or even the
government itself. They can also be accompanied by a call to action or change.
Protests can vary in intensity (e.g. peaceful or destructive) and scale (mass
organisation of people, or a lone dissenter).
‘Justifiable’ – assess whether the reasons for undertaking a protest are warranted,
defensible, or reasonable. This will include an analysis of the protest’s impact, the
shape or form that the protests can take, as well as the means used in a protest to
achieve its end goal.
Stand:
While protests can be undertaken for legitimate reasons, it often tends to blow out of
proportion, resulting in problems that may not necessarily justify the act of protesting.
Approach:
A. Protests are undertaken for valid reasons
B. [Limitations] Protests are not always necessarily able to achieve their goals, or
the means of engaging in a protest are socially undesirable and extract too
large a cost from society that invalidates the reason for the protest, however
noble it may be.
C. Protests can actually result in negative consequences for society, and are
therefore unjustifiable.
Arguments:
A1. Protests are undertaken so as to flag up/address societal injustices or
systemic inequalities that marginalise certain demographics, and are therefore
justifiable.
The George Floyd protests began as part of international responses to the
murder of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American man who was killed
during an arrest after Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis Police Department officer,
knelt on Floyd's neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds as three other officers
looked on and prevented passers-by from intervening. The incident, which was
fully recorded on camera and offered incontrovertible proof of police brutality,
led to such a sustained and vigorous protest by members of the Black Lives
Matter movement that it resulted in several laws, proposals, and public
directives at all levels of government. These reforms addressed police
misconduct and systemic racial bias, as well as police brutality, and involved
bans on chokeholds, no-knock warrants, and improvements to police data
collection procedures. Chauvin himself was also convicted on 20th April of
murder and manslaughter, signifying at the very least a symbolic victory for the
BLM protestors who demonstrated because of the Floyd case.
A2. Where successful at achieving systemic or legislative change, protests can
actually set the stage for a more progressive society in future, paving the way to
more rights and validation of disenfranchised groups.
A number of women’s suffrage parades occurred in the early 1900s in the U.S
as the first mass demonstrations of the suffrage movement, with an especially
massive demonstration in New York in 1915. Women were finally granted the
right to vote with the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,
which allowed them to fight for greater equality in other areas of society, such
as employment and in political representation. For one, the female presence in
Congress gradually increased since 1920, from Shirley Chisholm (who was the
first woman to run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 1972)
to Kamala Harris, who in 2021 became the highest-ranking female elected
official in U.S. history after assuming office alongside President Joe Biden.
B1. However, there are those who argue that times when the means of protests are
questionable or unethical e.g. unjustifiable crimes or violence will arguably end
up sullying the cause of the protest, however noble it was at the start.
For all of the righteousness of the BLM protests, there were a number of
demonstrators who took advantage of the chaos wrought by the movement to
commit petty offences, such as looting, larceny, and arson. In Portland, U.S.,
the authorities declared the protest a ‘riot’ after protestors actually breached a
fence surrounding the city’s federal courthouse building, with the Portland
police reporting that the ‘violent conduct of people downtown (created) a grave
risk of public alarm’.
B2. There is no guarantee that protests are able to achieve their intended aim. Plenty
of protests have failed to garner the traction/support necessary to engender
systemic change. In such cases, protests may not be justifiable because the change
that comes about may not actually be worth the consequences of the protest for
society in general. In the worst scenarios, protests simply aggravate the existing
situation without changing anything at all.
While the Arab Spring protests in Tunisia and Egypt toppled their regimes in
quick succession and led to some degree of reform in those countries, similar
attempts in other Arab countries were less successful. Demonstrators
expressing their political and economic grievances were often met with violent
crackdowns by their countries’ security forces and this eventually led to
bloody—and often protracted—struggles between opposition groups and ruling
regimes, resulting in severe disruptions to society (e.g. Yemen, Libya and Syria).
C1. There is an assumption that protests are generally made for legitimate reasons;
however, the truth is that there are many protests that are undertaken for
questionable reasons to begin with i.e. they could socially divisive, irresponsible,
and generally extremist in nature.
There were a number of protests, demonstrations, and strikes conducted to
signal opposition to government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Of
these, many were aimed at getting governments to rescind mandatory mask-
wearing laws, vaccinations, and lockdown protocols. Protests in the United
States were especially significant, with participants ranging from a few hundred
to several thousand, and even made international news. This, despite the
overwhelming evidence that masks/lockdowns were an effective way to curb
the spread of the virus. Such protestors were largely condemned for behaving
irresponsibly, and their cause seen as highly irrational.
Strengths
Weaknesses
1. Better scripts set clear conditions for
justifiability - cause, methods
employed, impact on society.
2. Better scripts provided a good range
of examples to support their
arguments.
3. Good scripts offer a range of
reasons for protests being staged
and use these reasons together with
the means and target group to
assess justifiability.
1. Weaker scripts tend to be repetitive and exampledriven, focusing on describing the cause and impact
of protests such as Black Lives Matter movement,
without coming back to the question’s focus on what
makes protests justifiable/not justifiable.
2.
Some scripts saw the question as a simple pros
and cons one. Negative outcomes were stated with no
focus on ‘justifiable’.
3.
No attempt is made to distinguish between aims/
purposes of protests and the justification for them.
Students merely assume that the very purpose of
protests, regardless of the means to attain it, makes
protests justifiable.
Weak scripts merely describe examples of protest
without assessing whether protests are justified
Insufficient understanding of what constitutes a protest.
There is little distinction between an objection and a
protest.
Inadequate attention given to the inherent nature of
protests and the reasons behind the controversy in the
question.