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Were They Worth It?: Key Protest Movements Over the Decades

Associated Press

   LONDON - The protests that left much of the world in a haze of tear gas
   last year were slowed by a pandemic -- until the death of George Floyd
   sparked a global uprising against police brutality and racial
   inequality.

   From Hong Kong to Khartoum, Baghdad to Beirut, Gaza to Paris and
   Caracas to Santiago, people took to the streets in 2019 for the
   pursuits of freedom, sovereignty or simply a life less shackled by
   hardship while few prospered. It seemed as if the streets were agitated
   everywhere but the United States.

   Now, after the death of Floyd, a black man in Minneapolis who died in
   police custody when a white officer pressed his knee into Floyd's neck
   for several minutes, protests rage around the globe.

   Police or military brutality and racism are universal dynamics that are
   experienced in many societies.

   The very nature of a protest suggests a fervent desire for change, the
   need to right a perceived historic injustice. It's a means to an end.
   But to what end? Depending on the government the activists are
   demanding change from, the results can be varied.

   Demonstrations were held last week in solidarity with American
   protesters, butFloyd's death also had resonance and reverberations far
   beyond U.S. shores because of those lives lost closer to homein similar
   circumstances.

   As the coronavirus crisis eased in China, protesters in Hong Kong, the
   semi-autonomous territory, began to emerge again. And Beijing moved
   swiftly to quash the movement that caused unrest for months last year,
   enacting a national security law that would effectively end the
   existence of one country, two systems.

   A democratic government that is amenable to the changes may enact
   legislation, or a change of leadership can be forced at the ballot box.

   An authoritarian regime, however, does not often
   bend.Protestingagainstdictatorship can be a life-or-death struggle
   which may even require activists to make a deal with the country's
   military. Confronting tyranny can also backfire, the result a more
   dictatorial leader or a ruinous civil war.

   Here's a look at some of the key protests of recent decades and what
   they achieved or failed.

   American Civil Rights

   The protests that erupted across a scarred U.S. landscape last week had
   the unusual characteristic of being largely leaderless and are still
   evolving, though the Black Lives Matter movement was focal. During the
   critical era of the 1950s and '60s, Martin Luther King Jr., who led the
   250,000 strong March on Washington in 1963, and Malcolm X were colossal
   20th century figures, representing two different tracks: mass
   non-violent protest and getting favorable outcomes "by any means
   necessary." The Civil Rights Acts, initiated by the Kennedy
   administration, and Voting Rights Act were passed by the Johnson
   administration, which was sympathetic to tackling endemic racism in the
   nation. These were key inflection points. But social injustice and the
   Vietnam War continued to dominate the American decade and beyond,
   reachinga crescendo of civil unrest in 1968 which has been echoed in
   2020.

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