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“That woman was very, very disrespectful to law enforcement,” Donald Trump told reporters following the killing of Renee Nicole Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, adding that “people can’t be treating law enforcement that way.”
One imagines this supposed “disrespectful” behavior may have played a role in Ross’s decision to pull out his gun and aim it at an unarmed woman’s head in the first place. After he shot her, his own video caught him uttering a misogynistic slur I won’t repeat here—said in obvious anger.
Trump also accused Good and her wife of being “radicals”—“agitators” who were “harassing” and “following” law enforcement agents. “What that woman and what her friend and what their other friends were doing to law enforcement…is outrageous.”
Evidently, the president is more perturbed by protesters monitoring and mocking law enforcement than he is about law enforcement shooting unarmed protesters in the face.
Yet asking protesters to be respectful is really a way of asking them to keep quiet. Trump wouldn’t mind a “respectful” protest, because it would be much easier to ignore—just as the British wouldn’t have minded “respectful” protests prior to the American Revolution—it was those pesky Sons of Liberty who incurred their anger. They were definitely not respectful, throwing tea in the harbor and openly lambasting British tax collectors (and worse).
In fact, if history demonstrates anything, it is that civil unrest is rarely effective if it isn’t bold and confrontational. Everyone who has ever done anything to usher in change has at one time or another been accused of being “disrespectful,” a “troublemaker,” or an “agitator.” Henry David Thoreau was one when he refused to pay his taxes to protest the Mexican War.
Alice Paul, fighting for women’s suffrage, often took to the streets, where her and her fellow protesters were mocked and beaten—a fate they were said to deserve for their supposed agitation. She responded with a campaign outside the White House, forcing Woodrow Wilson to look at them every day—certainly a confrontational strategy. And one that worked: Wilson came around to supporting suffrage, and it made an enormous difference.
When he was arrested in 1922, the New York Herald referred to Mohandas Gandhi as “the Indian agitator” and “the notorious apostle of ‘civil disobedience.’ ” His famed Salt March and many of his other activities were considered disrespectful and confrontational. But no one today would argue that they weren’t necessary.
Similarly, when Martin Luther King Jr. was thrown into a Birmingham jail for his supposed “agitation,” he took the time to address some of his critics, who had published a letter questioning his tactics. It’s one of the most beautiful and erudite pieces of writing in American history, in which King brilliantly details why peaceful, yet confrontational tactics were necessary to bring civil rights forward. The purpose of direct action, he explained, is to bring about a “creative tension,” a “constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth.”
The famed gay rights activist, Larry Kramer, also a believer in this type of creative tension, employed loud tactics like die-ins to bring attention to the AIDS epidemic, which the government for a long time ignored, considering it the “gay disease.” He was not polite. In fact, he once summed up his philosophy as “shove it in their faces.”
We currently have a president who has referred to himself as “acting president” of Venezuela, and who is openly talking about annexing Greenland “one way or another,” even though it is under the domain of a NATO ally, Denmark, and there is no legitimate military necessity for doing so. We’ve seen the president cut away people’s health care while approving massive giveaways to the wealthy and corporations through his “Big Beautiful Bill.” We’ve witnessed him go to great lengths to cancel people’s free speech while trying to rewrite history to his liking. We’ve also seen his family enriched to the tune of around $1.8 billion. And he’s been sending armies of armed thugs into our neighborhoods, acting with such impunity that one of his agents can shoot a woman in the face and be confident he’ll get away with it.
If ever there was a time to “shove it in their faces,” it’s now. Call it Operation ICE Pick, if you will, but the biggest mistake would be to allow these bands of brigands robbing communities to continue to operate without consequence. We need to monitor; we need to make them feel uncomfortable. Being nonviolent does not mean being polite; nor should it. If we want to preserve democracy, we should use its most basic and effective tool: large-scale civil unrest that cannot be ignored.
“That woman was very, very disrespectful to law enforcement,” Donald Trump told reporters following the killing of Renee Nicole Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, adding that “people can’t be treating law enforcement that way.”
One imagines this supposed “disrespectful” behavior may have played a role in Ross’s decision to pull out his gun and aim it at an unarmed woman’s head in the first place. After he shot her, his own video caught him uttering a misogynistic slur I won’t repeat here—said in obvious anger.
Trump also accused Good and her wife of being “radicals”—“agitators” who were “harassing” and “following” law enforcement agents. “What that woman and what her friend and what their other friends were doing to law enforcement…is outrageous.”
Evidently, the president is more perturbed by protesters monitoring and mocking law enforcement than he is about law enforcement shooting unarmed protesters in the face.
Yet asking protesters to be respectful is really a way of asking them to keep quiet. Trump wouldn’t mind a “respectful” protest, because it would be much easier to ignore—just as the British wouldn’t have minded “respectful” protests prior to the American Revolution—it was those pesky Sons of Liberty who incurred their anger. They were definitely not respectful, throwing tea in the harbor and openly lambasting British tax collectors (and worse).
In fact, if history demonstrates anything, it is that civil unrest is rarely effective if it isn’t bold and confrontational. Everyone who has ever done anything to usher in change has at one time or another been accused of being “disrespectful,” a “troublemaker,” or an “agitator.” Henry David Thoreau was one when he refused to pay his taxes to protest the Mexican War.
Alice Paul, fighting for women’s suffrage, often took to the streets, where her and her fellow protesters were mocked and beaten—a fate they were said to deserve for their supposed agitation. She responded with a campaign outside the White House, forcing Woodrow Wilson to look at them every day—certainly a confrontational strategy. And one that worked: Wilson came around to supporting suffrage, and it made an enormous difference.
When he was arrested in 1922, the New York Herald referred to Mohandas Gandhi as “the Indian agitator” and “the notorious apostle of ‘civil disobedience.’ ” His famed Salt March and many of his other activities were considered disrespectful and confrontational. But no one today would argue that they weren’t necessary.
Similarly, when Martin Luther King Jr. was thrown into a Birmingham jail for his supposed “agitation,” he took the time to address some of his critics, who had published a letter questioning his tactics. It’s one of the most beautiful and erudite pieces of writing in American history, in which King brilliantly details why peaceful, yet confrontational tactics were necessary to bring civil rights forward. The purpose of direct action, he explained, is to bring about a “creative tension,” a “constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth.”
The famed gay rights activist, Larry Kramer, also a believer in this type of creative tension, employed loud tactics like die-ins to bring attention to the AIDS epidemic, which the government for a long time ignored, considering it the “gay disease.” He was not polite. In fact, he once summed up his philosophy as “shove it in their faces.”
We currently have a president who has referred to himself as “acting president” of Venezuela, and who is openly talking about annexing Greenland “one way or another,” even though it is under the domain of a NATO ally, Denmark, and there is no legitimate military necessity for doing so. We’ve seen the president cut away people’s health care while approving massive giveaways to the wealthy and corporations through his “Big Beautiful Bill.” We’ve witnessed him go to great lengths to cancel people’s free speech while trying to rewrite history to his liking. We’ve also seen his family enriched to the tune of around $1.8 billion. And he’s been sending armies of armed thugs into our neighborhoods, acting with such impunity that one of his agents can shoot a woman in the face and be confident he’ll get away with it.
If ever there was a time to “shove it in their faces,” it’s now. Call it Operation ICE Pick, if you will, but the biggest mistake would be to allow these bands of brigands robbing communities to continue to operate without consequence. We need to monitor; we need to make them feel uncomfortable. Being nonviolent does not mean being polite; nor should it. If we want to preserve democracy, we should use its most basic and effective tool: large-scale civil unrest that cannot be ignored.
