A facilitator at a meeting a couple years ago asked our group a question meant to be an ice-breaker. The gathering consisted of mostly white-collar professionals — lawyers, people working in finance, managers of nonprofit organizations, a couple of philanthropists, a journalist. The question: have you ever been arrested?
Almost every hand went up. All said they were arrested while participating in protest marches.
It has been a coming-of-age ritual for generations taking to the streets during the movements for civil rights, women’s rights, disability rights, workers’ rights and against apartheid in South Africa and the war in Vietnam.
Protesters were routinely arrested, though seldom prosecuted. The college newspaper where I worked at the University of Wisconsin maintained a bail fund for reporters and photographers who were swept up in the arrests while trying to cover protest marches. I can’t remember a single time any of them were prosecuted — or even charged — with a crime.
An estimated 14,000 people were arrested during the Black Lives Matter protests across the country in 2020, even though 93% of the hundreds of demonstrations were scrupulously non-violent.
As the summer heats up and outrage with the Trump administration boils over, new generations of protesters are filling the streets and the jails. Usually, the arrests are for failing to disperse, straying onto private property or mouthing off to police officers. For most it is a point of pride, something to tell their grandchildren.
But every protest draws a handful of troublemakers, both among the demonstrators and law enforcement officers.
There were the dopes who started Waymo car fires during protests in LA last week. And, of course, Trump sent the National Guard and the Marines into the city over the objections of the governor and local officials.
He was spoiling for a fight.
During the BLM protests in Denver, local businesses and government offices were damaged by vandals on the one hand. And on the other, the city ended up paying more than $18 million in settlements to victims of police brutality during the marches.
In the years of protests against the Vietnam War, the excesses became the stuff of legend.
Tens of thousands of protesters marched on Washington, D.C., year after year to call for an end to the war. In one of the mass demonstrations in 1971, more than 12,000 protesters were arrested. The federal government eventually lost a lawsuit brought by the ACLU and had to pay settlements to the protesters for violating their First Amendment rights.
Similar debacles occurred all across the country, usually on college campuses.
The windows of downtown businesses in Madison, Wisc., were broken so often by protesters in the 1970s, some were replaced permanently with brick walls. The police response got so out of hand one night a cop threw a tear gas canister into a dormitory building, effectively gassing the people who chose not to participate in the protests.
One demonstrator who was badly beaten by police, Paul Soglin, went on to become mayor of Madison.
Meanwhile at Kent State University, National Guard troops opened fire on protesters and killed four students. The whole country was aghast.
History does not look kindly on the government’s deadly response that day or the notoriously vicious law enforcement reactions to demonstrators demanding equal rights for African Americans during the 1960s.
The Alabama state police who attacked and brutally beat the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis during a peaceful march on the Edmund Pettis Bridge on Bloody Sunday have long been considered the criminals while Lewis is revered for his courage and his message that getting arrested for demonstrating against injustice is “good trouble.”
So, the tradition lives on.
On Tuesday, more than 1,000 marchers took to the streets in Denver to protest mass arrests of immigrants. The mostly young crowd clearly was prepared for whatever might come. Many wore masks in case of tear gas and cellphones were held high to record the entire event, including any questionable actions by police.
One protester carried a sign that seemed to speak for the whole crowd. “I’m here for those who have to hide,” it said. Standing up to government goons was the message of the day.
Seventeen arrests were made Tuesday night, mostly for protesters blocking streets or failing to obey police officers.
It would be just the beginning.
The No Kings movement mobilized protesters in 1,500 cities in all 50 states — including Colorado — on Saturday.
Thousands marched through downtown Denver in 92-degree heat, chanting and carrying signs. Among my favorites was “Egg prices are so high because the chickens are all in Congress.”
A giant festival of activism filled the space between the state Capitol and the City-County Building. My husband said it was “a farmers market for freedom.”
Marches and demonstrations took place all across Colorado and the nation. A vast network of resistance was mobilized.
The wave is building into a tsunami.
While some universities and corporations, billionaires, law firms and gutless politicians capitulate to the administration’s threats, the streets are filled with ordinary people who refuse to back down.
They may not have the millions to buy dinner with the president or to fatten his personal coffers to avoid his wrath, but they can command his attention as they do their best to ruin his vulgar birthday celebration with 6,600 soldiers, a couple of Sherman tanks, armored vehicles and enough fighter jets to shut down airports far and wide.
The protesters still believe in democracy and are not afraid to spend a night in jail if that’s what it takes to preserve it. They still believe, against all odds, they have a voice.
We have to hope they’re right.
As Margaret Mead so famously said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. In fact, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
Diane Carman is a Denver communications consultant.
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