Liberation is a Riot, Part 2: The True and Bloody History of Revolt

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This is the second and final part of our series Liberation is a Riot, on the actual history of revolt, including the realities of violence, and what trans communities can learn from it. You can read the first part, on the damage done by a sanitized version of nonviolence, here.

TNN editor David Forbes contributed to this piece.

In the ‘90s, veteran trans liberation organizer Leslie Feinberg made a point of recounting an incident that happened three decades before, well out of the spotlight.

“I remember the Thaw Out Picnic held each spring during the ‘60s by the lesbian and gay community in Erie, Pennsylvania,” ze wrote in 1996’s Transgender Warriors. “Hundreds and hundreds of women and men would fill a huge park to enjoy food, dancing, softball and making out in the woods. During the first picnic I attended, a group of men screeched up in a car near the edge of the woods. Suddenly the din of festivity hushed as we saw the gang, armed with baseball bats and tire irons, marching down the hill towards us.”

But things didn’t go as the bigots planned. To their surprise, the queers fought back.

“‘C’mon,’ one of the silver-haired butches shouted, beckoning us to follow. She picked up her softball bat and headed right for those men,” Feinberg remembered. “We all grabbed bats and beer bottles and followed her, moving slowly up the hill toward the men. First they jeered us. Then they glanced fearfully at each other, leaped back into their car and peeled rubber. One of them was still trying to get his legs inside and shut the car door as they roared off. We all stood quietly for a moment, feeling our collective power. Then the old butch who led our army waved her hand and the celebration resumed.”

The act of defiance Feinberg participated in didn’t make the official histories. There’s no monument to it. But for the queer and trans people there, the willingness to take up weapons and the readiness to use violence turned a would-be brutal queer bashing into a victory.

The showdown in Erie is something not often found in academia, but for working class queer people, confrontations like this were and are a matter of life and death. Like so many other groups on the front lines, questions of force are not abstract for us, not part of some distant past or theoretical puzzle. When we use it for defense or liberation, or even just the threat of it, we do so because it works.

In the first part of this series we looked at how liberal attempts — like Erika Chenoweth’s Why Civil Resistance Works — to sanitize or erase entirely, the history of resistance to fit into a narrative of tame “nonviolence” are corrupt and based on a combination of shoddy research and outright falsehoods. Now it’s time to turn to the other side of the question. What does work? And what can we learn about how past struggles have grappled with these issues?

This part will detail historical examples of resistance throughout time and geography, revealing the stark truth that violence is much more common than you may have been told. While hardly taught in schools, this is nevertheless key to understanding how to achieve liberatory ends in the most effective way possible.

A prime case in point — the Haymarket Affair.

The Haymarket tragedy began as an 1886 labor rights protest advocating for an eight-hour workday in Chicago’s Haymarket Square. During this time, there were little restrictions on how much someone could be forced to work, with many workers dying on the job from exhaustion as they toiled 12 hour days, six days a week. Many dead and sickened workers were children. This was just a few years before Mark Twain demanded more recognition of the “cold terror” imposed by the powers that be, the oppression that made “the hot terror” of an enraged populace inevitable.

However, things took a turn when hundreds of police suddenly arrived, in spite of the protest fizzling out as people left for the night. After the cops shouted for people to disperse, an unknown individual threw a homemade bomb into their ranks, following which they started frantically shooting at each other and the crowd. Dozens were injured, with seven cops and four workers dying from the explosion.

While some modern accounts may still blame this on the anarchists, it’s notable that contemporary sources reveal that no one knows who threw the bomb, and that an officer anonymously admitted that “a very large number of the police were wounded by each other’s revolvers… it was every man for himself, and while some got two or three squares away, the rest emptied their revolvers, mainly into each other.”

Historian Paul Avrich — in discovering and quoting this passage’s origins in a contemporary newspaper — concluded in his 1984 work The Haymarket Tragedy that “there can be little doubt, therefore, that most if not all of the officers had been wounded by their own comrades.”

This chaos lasted less than five minutes in total. While media and officials at the time often dubbed labour unionists rioters, this was disputed by the organizers of the Haymarket protest themselves. August Spies, a German immigrant, had some notable words on the subject.

“There seems to prevail the opinion in some quarters that this meeting has been called for the purpose of inaugurating a riot, hence these warlike preparations on the part of so-called ‘law and order,” Spies said. “However, let me tell you at the beginning that this meeting has not been called for any such purpose. The object of this meeting is to explain the general situation of the eight-hour movement and to throw light upon various incidents in connection with it.“

Yet, in spite of all this evidence, numerous outlets still refer to the affair as a riot. The Encyclopaedia Britannica repeatedly refers to it as such and nudges that “leftist radicals” should have gone towards moderate solutions to the horrors they faced. The Library of Congress, in a relatively neutral article, still repeatedly calls this demonstration a riot, and suggests that there was an “exchange of gunfire” while utilizing police-enabling passive language. History.com most egregiously suggests that “possibly some members of the crowd” returned fire with police, alleging that this incident set back labor rights by decades.

This is false. Seven anarchist organizers of the event, including Spies and former Confederate soldier turned anti-racist and anarchist activist Albert Parsons, were incarcerated and executed the following year. While one anarchist was let go after 15 years in prison, the rest were infamously subject to a sham trial that scapegoated them for the bombing, in spite of a lack of evidence against any of them.

The Haymarket trial was tumultuous even at the time. Many of the men were not even present that night. Even the aforementioned modern outlets all admit that the seven executed were completely innocent. Hundreds, most of which were strangers, turned out for their funeral. To add more salt to the wound, the vast majority of those executed were immigrants, like Spies, reflecting the rampant American xenophobia present in just as much force then as it is today.

While Haymarket was used to excuse a harsh, nationwide crackdown from those in power, this only prompted more resistance from anarchists and labor organizers, who continued to band together and find inspiration from each other in spite of the intense repression. Workers kept organizing and pushing back, a few years later declaring May 1 —- the same day the Haymarket protests started, although the infamous tragedy occurred on May 3 and May 4 —- as International Worker’s Day.

Dozens of countries around the world see workers taking the day to rest and build solidarity; America is an exception, scheduling Labor Day in September owing to the ensuing Red Scare pushing people away from anarchism in the years after, the popular image of such being angry, chaotic, violent immigrants. This is still seen today in the popular usage of the word “anarchy” to mean “chaos.”

But this international solidarity is also still seen in modern times. A Chicago monument honors the seven, now recognized across movements for liberation as the “Haymarket Martyrs.” Ultimately, this did aid in building multiple movements. The following decades saw successes in winning the 8-hour day and workplace protections as well, including a ban on child labor.

Spies words on the scaffold, that “there will be a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you are throttling today,” proved prophetic.

One figure who played a crucial role in these movements was Lucy Parsons, the wife of Albert Parsons and a noted anarchist activist and theorist. Lucy, a former slave, led a campaign for a retrial on her husband and the other six martyrs. Infamously dubbed “more dangerous than a thousand rioters” by a Chicago official, she was the one who initially popularized “Haymarket Martyrs” as a term. She was a staunch advocate for workers’ and women’s rights, helping found the influential radical labour union Industrial Workers of the World.

While her legacy is complicated, especially with her relationship with her race — as detailed by professor and journalist Arionne Nettles — she nevertheless changed the course of history, and played a key role in numerous influential movements and organizations. In spite of her important role in history, she is often forgotten and swept over.

By and large, this is because many of her writings have been confiscated and destroyed by law enforcement as a means to suppress influence from her views. Notably, she was a fierce advocate for armed revolt, telling the Chicago Tribune in 1885 that we ought to let every “dirty, lousy tramp arm himself with a revolver or a knife, and lay in wait on the steps of the palaces of the rich and stab or shoot the owners as they come out.” She also argued that Black individuals should take up arms to fight against systemic racism. It was due to these views, in combination with her success as an organizer, that state actors used to justify their censorship.

Much of her views were espoused in her paper Freedom, of which a substantial portion of its writings is lost to history. Yet, that few which remains show her as a committed revolutionary that influenced every movement she partook in. One of her most notably surviving texts, “I am An Anarchist,” describes her rationale for her views, and how Haymarket further radicalized her. She gave her last speech — a May 1 address to striking workers — in 1941.

Haymarket, and its legacy, shows the trouble with trying to easily tag movements as violent or nonviolent. Certainly, there were riots of the time that paved the way for labor rights, just as there were nonviolent actions that were brutally suppressed by law enforcement. But given the immense dispute and ambiguity present in viewing the legacy of just one of these events, how can we extend this broadly to revolutions, coups, strikes, and protests across over a hundred years, numerous borders, and in countless languages?

Infamously, during the latter half of the 20th century, the FBI worked to sabotage the Black Panther Party, a leftist, predominantly women-led organization. This organization, which notably brought free breakfast to schools across the United States, maintained a staunch commitment to Black liberation from systemic racism. They provided real material support for their communities on multiple fronts, showing how radical movements ought to act in light of state persecution. This included providing medical resources, legal aid, clothing distribution, and physical protection from racist attacks through community defense initiatives with firearms and training. All of these were widely successful and beneficial.

Their radical approach intimidated the FBI, who immediately moved to suppress them through their COINTELPRO [Counterintelligence Program] operation. This operation would have stayed hidden if not for the work of the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI, an activist group that broke into the bureau’s offices and leaked numerous documents to the press. What they revealed was shocking, and yet is no surprise to those familiar with U.S. history — the agency sought to infiltrate and destabilize revolutionary movements, in particular those seeking racial justice like the Black Panther Party, from the inside.

We can learn a great deal from how to formulate radical groups from learning what the FBI is afraid of. Among these documents was a primer on how to sabotage these movements, revealed now in a public archive. One paragraph from this primer, taken from a five-point list of goals they listed for their operatives, reads as follows:

“Prevent VIOLENCE on the part of black nationalist groups. This is of primary importance, and is, of course, a goal of our investigative activity; it should also be a goal of the Counterintelligence Program to pinpoint potential troublemakers and neutralize them before they exercise their potential for violence.”

Indeed, preventing violent revolt has been a core element of federal operatives since the inception of such organizations. But violence is not something the FBI holds from their own – rather, they seek to have their opponents be nonviolent, while they undertake violent assaults. Across their COINTELPRO documents, the FBI will regularly glorify the “neutralizations” of those deemed a threat. The ramifications of this term include murders, incarceration, harassment, and defamation, all resulting in the cessation of political activities.

This is further seen in the FBI’s aims to use violence to discredit movements. Their fourth goal is printed in full below:

“Prevent militant black nationalist groups and leaders from gaining RESPECTABILITY, by discrediting them to three separate segments of the community. The goal of discrediting black nationalists must be handled tactically in three ways. You must discredit those groups and individuals to, first, the responsible Negro community. Second, they must be discredited to the white community, both the responsible community and to liberals who have vestiges of sympathy for militant black nationalist[sic] simply because they are Negroes. Third, these groups must be discredited in the eyes of Negro radicals, the followers of the movement. This last area requires entirely different tactics from the first two. Publicity about violent tendencies and radical statements merely enhances black nationalists to the last group; it adds respectability in a different way.”

The FBI utilized condemning any use of violence, even in self-defense, as a means to discredit Black liberation groups in the public eye, while at the same time working to destabilize these groups from the inside by adding infighting. Thus, by having countless bouts of infighting over whether the left should be more violent and radical in our actions is revealed to be fruitless — this sort of debate and discrediting of our neighbors is doing the work of the enemy for them.

Their second goal, preventing the rise of a “Messiah” in the Black liberation movement, illuminates how they do this – with Malcom X out of the picture, they list three alternatives for such a figure:

“Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael and Elijah Muhammed all aspire to this position. Elijah Muhammed is less of a threat because of his age. King could be a very real contender for this position should he abandon his supposed obedience to white, liberal doctrines (nonviolence) and embrace black nationalism. Carmichael has the necessary charisma to be a real threat in this way.”

Note how they were already identifying individuals who represented a variety of different perspectives in the movement, but nevertheless had large followings. Additionally, note how the FBI is fully aware that nonviolence is an institution that is predominantly pushed by white liberals and is utilized to discredit movements led by Black revolutionaries. This, of course, reveals how deliberate the ideology of nonviolence in American culture is.

There is yet even more we can learn from this, particularly through the means of building mass solidarity across marginalizations.

“Prevent the COALITION of militant black nationalist groups. In unity there is strength; a truism that is no less valid for all its triteness. An effective coalition of black nationalist groups might be the first step toward a real Mau Mau [Black revolutionary army] in America, the beginning of a true black revolution,” the FBI declared in their COINTELPRO documents. “A final goal should be to prevent the long-range GROWTH of militant black organizations, especially among youth. Specific tactics to prevent these groups from converting young people must be developed.”

Along with COINTELPRO went a full court press to depict riots against horrific de facto segregation and racist violence in major cities as random outpourings of destruction, working class Black communities burning down their own neighborhoods.

This was a lie. The 1965 Los Angeles Rebellion, for example, were marked by locals carefully picking their targets and using complex tactics.

“But the destruction was hardly wanton or senseless,” Vicky Osterweil wrote in her work In Defense of Looting. “Almost no homes, schools, libraries, churches or public buildings were even partially damaged.”

Nor were almost any Black-owned businesses or those which had a reputation for dealing fairly with local communities. The targets were instead those known for being notoriously exploitative, and rioters made a point to destroy their debt and credit records first. The arson, Osterweil concluded, “was strategic and controlled.”

Historian Gerald Horne also found that the rioters were extensively organized to both pick their targets and communicate effectively in the face of state repression. Instead of aimless destruction, they drew from a wide array of radical movements and thinkers.

The even larger Detroit Rebellion in 1967 saw locals resort to armed defense after police and National Guard began using indiscriminate violence — including randomly machine-gunning buildings and shooting Black locals on sight as “looters.” That uprising was such a threat that, at the height of the Vietnam War, the federal government deployed elite airborne divisions to crush it. But Detroit locals recalled it was only after that violent revolt that there was any move to address the city’s horrific segregation.

As the anti-apartheid declaration went, “the people’s patience is not endless.”

That was the kind of militant revolt the powers that be were so terrified of, and what COINTELPRO was meant to stop. Those in power do not want marginalized people to be unified, nor do they want us to grow in the number of people we have working together, as the more numbers we have, the greater a threat we are to those who aim to subjugate us.

The influence of COINTELPRO has not just been limited to direct FBI involvement. The cultural view around Black liberation they pushed and helped create, in part via individuals like Ronald Reagan openly erasing and rewriting history to be favorable to the state, is one that has been carefully curated to stifle any radicalism.

Often termed ‘colorblind racism,’ this perspective on Black history is one that seeks to erase acknowledgment of race and racism in favor of getting away with bigotry while proclaiming a commitment against racism. This is the tactic favored by the American government since the late 20th-century legal victories in the civil rights movement, one that seeks to portray racism as a solved issue. A key way this ideology functions is via rewriting civil rights history.

As discussed in the first part of this series, civil rights activist and author Charles Cobb wrote extensively on the subject in his historical memoir This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed. A popular narrative on the civil rights movement is that Martin Luther King Jr is the primary ‘leader’ of such, and that legal victories were only achieved through calculated nonviolent action, with a zero tolerance policy for violent revolt. Cobb details the problem with this view – namely, that King himself owned firearms, his house once called an “arsenal,” and that a great deal of these nonviolent actions were only possible thanks to armed Black radicals defending them.

For instance, in the 1960’s the small community of McComb, Miss. had numerous activists for Black equality and liberation finding themselves victim to bombings brought on by white rioters and terrorists. Two such activists, Willie and Matti Dillon, found white authorities deploying explosives and dynamite outside their home due to their political activism. While they fortunately survived such attacks, local white authorities continued to target them.

“The police chief, the sheriff, and the head of the FBI task force in McComb conspired to jail Dillon on charges of operating a garage without a license even though the garage where he occasionally fixed cars was not his,” Cobb wrote. “He was finally jailed for stealing electricity. He had attached a wire not registered by the meter to install a floodlight, which he felt he needed to protect his home from sudden attacks by night riders. Dillon was held incommunicado, tried, and convicted without a lawyer.”

The local NAACP president, Curtis Conway “C.C.” Bryant, found himself in a similar situation. When white terrorists attacked his house with dynamite, he had to run for his gun, firing warning shots at them, causing them to scatter. The attackers came back, and this time Bryant allied with some neighbors to fire at them, pushing them away.

But the attacks didn’t stop there. It was only when the community organized and resisted, armed to the teeth, did they find safety.

“By September 1964, McComb’s black community had begun to take on some of the characteristics of a military camp, with armed patrols protecting homes, businesses, and churches—although even these patrols could not always stop the violence. The home of Alyene Quin, proprietor of a small café that fed movement workers, was bombed on September 20. Although she and her children survived, the pent-up anger and frustration of McComb’s black community erupted in the kind of violence that is born of rage rather than self-defense,” wrote Cobb.

“In scenes that mirrored the rioting that had occurred in Harlem and Philadelphia that summer, blacks poured into the streets of McComb, some armed with rifles, others with bottles and gasoline—the makings of Molotov cocktails. Teenagers picked up bricks and threw them at police, backing them down and forcing the town to call in state troopers. And C. C. Bryant soon replaced his .22-caliber rifle with a new, high-powered model.”

Indeed, as Cobb later noted, the usage of violence and nonviolence reflected not a strict philosophical commitment to either, but a recognition that different tactics had crucial, interconnected roles. He cites examples where Black community members had used firearms in the 50’s and 60’s to protect others from violent Klan lynch mobs, at the same time the Montgomery bus boycotts were occurring.

These were decisions, he noted, made in a desire to resist and seek freedom, rather than a strict commitment to only use certain tactics. “From the beginning, the line between armed self-defense and the nonviolent assertion of civil rights was blurred.”

He also adds an important caveat: self and community defense didn’t spur the massive retaliation some feared.

“One oft-repeated assertion about weapons in the 1960s was that their organized use increased the chances of massive retaliation by local, state, and even federal authority. That just did not happen, not even in Louisiana where the Deacons for Defense and Justice came closest to armed confrontation with police,” Cobb wrote.

“There was no meaningful difference between white responses to armed resistance by blacks and white responses to nonviolent resistance by blacks. Where massive police force or state power was exercised, as in Birmingham and Selma, Alabama, or in Jackson, Mississippi, police violence was not a response to either the use of guns or the practice of nonviolence; rather, it was exercised for the sole purpose of crushing black protest and demands in any shape.”

He cites a key, and notably not uncommon, example of where armed self-defense and nonviolence intersected: the 1966 James Meredith March Against Fear in Mississippi. This event saw an armed group of Black liberation activists march side by side with unarmed nonviolent protesters, ready to defend them in the event that police or white rioters attacked them.

“Although there were multiple confrontations between them, the marchers they were protecting, and Mississippi police, all the confrontations stopped far short of shoot-outs. The Deacons had always been pragmatic in deciding when to use their weapons,” Cobb noted, emphasizing that their decision to be armed and ready to defend but to also avoid using them, unless there was no other option, both protected marchers and prevented further bloodshed. It undercuts the stereotype of armed radicals as trigger-happy; the Deacons knew the realities of violence and did not take them lightly.

It is important to emphasize again that the civil rights movement was not strictly violent, nor was it strictly nonviolent. It was a blend of the two, with any violence done in defense or as a reaction to much greater systemic oppression and killings by the white-dominated state, and many nonviolent actions done largely as a strategic choice rather than out of strict pacifism.

With the important history above often pointedly erased, an immediate parallel can be drawn to the Iraq War. Readers of the first part of this series may remember how Bill Ackerman, friend, colleague, and advisor of Why Civil Resistance Works author Erica Chenoweth infamously advised the Bush administration during their instigation of the Iraq War. Chenoweth echoed these sentiments, portraying the Iraq War as containing key instances of pacifistic revolt in favor of a stable “Western democracy.” These instances, however, have strong ties to foreign interference from the United States federal government.

In 2005, the Los Angeles Times revealed that the American military was paying defense contractor Lincoln Group to present biased articles written by American soldiers posing as Iraqis in an attempt to push American interests and nonviolent civil revolt in the country. This operation, as the Times reported, is “designed to mask any connection with the US military.” The stories promoted “the work of U.S. and Iraqi troops, denounce insurgents and tout U.S.-led efforts to rebuild the country,” presenting only the perspective that the American military wanted.

This was done through employees. The Lincoln Group translated these stories to Arabic and then posed as freelance reporters, pitching them to news outlets across Baghdad.

“The military’s effort to disseminate propaganda in the Iraqi media is taking place even as U.S. officials are pledging to promote democratic principles, political transparency and freedom of speech in a country emerging from decades of dictatorship and corruption,” Times staff writers Mark Mazzetti and Borzou Daraghi reported. “It comes as the State Department is training Iraqi reporters in basic journalism skills and Western media ethics, including one workshop titled ‘The Role of Press in a Democratic Society.’ Standards vary widely at Iraqi newspapers, many of which are shoestring operations.”

All of this was done in spite of federal law, at the time, forbidding soldiers from engaging in disinformation or psychological propaganda campaigns. Much of these stories were only published through bribery, with the Times revealing that editors at Baghdadi newspapers were paid hefty sums to publish this material without proper listing of the conflicts of interest.

While no clear instances of factual inaccuracy were identified, officials testified to the Times that these stories did not prioritize the facts.

“Absolute truth was not an essential element of these stories,” an anonymous official told the Times in their 2005 interview. NBC News added to this reporting, revealing that Republicans affiliated with the Bush campaign ran p.r. for the Lincoln Group, and that the firm even paid hundreds of dollars to Iraqi journalists, without clear attribution as to why. Upwards of $2,000 were paid for each article, with the Lincoln Group receiving $80,000 per week for these articles’ publication.

While the Times claimed reports in this to be factual, other reporting suggests otherwise. The Independent compared several stories in these papers to factual coverage, often neglecting to cover numerous crucial deaths of military and government officials, instead presenting an image that the US military and its affiliated Iraqi Security Forces are benevolent and widely powerful. A contemporary Washington Post report quoted information warfare specialist Dan Kuehl, a professor at the Department of Defense-affiliated National Defense University, reveals the mentality behind this well:

"What's changing is the realization that in this so-called war on terrorism, this is not a force multiplier; this might be the thing that wins the whole thing for you. This gets to the importance of the war of ideas. There are a billion-plus Muslims that are undecided. How do we move them over to being more supportive of us? If we can do that, we can make progress and improve security."

Then-White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan denied that the Bush administration had any knowledge of this in a December briefing shortly after the Times’ report. After repeated calls to ‘wait for the facts,’ the Pentagon later cleared itself of any wrongdoing, with McClellan himself suggesting that state activities in Iraq were “acceptable.” This is in spite of reports revealing that these US-affiliated outlets were pushed to manipulate the media to push for nonviolent revolt. Salah Ad Din TV described one segment of its goals as, “to provide a forum to discuss the peaceful resolution of the conflict in Iraq and to denounce all violence against Iraqi citizens, Iraqi security forces and coalition forces.”

Other reports revealed that US interference involved paying Sunni religious scholars to reject insurrectionary revolts in favor of pure electoralism to advance American interests.

A leaked 2003 military document, entitled the Information Operations Roadmap, reveals these efforts point blank. It describes utilizing the internet and media to push American interests abroad, relying on “military deception” and “psychological operations (PSYOP).” In describing the goals and recommendations of how they should push their ends, the document mentions focus on “degrading an adversary’s decision-making process while preserving our own.”

For specific goals, a wide range of communication-oriented dissent is prioritized. A need to “deter, discourage, and dissuade an adversary by disrupting his unity of command while preserving ours” is emphasized. A substantial goal listed is to “control their communications and networks while protecting ours.”

One further line spells out everything that activists ought to know about American, and all state superpower, interests. They quote themselves as having the simple goal “to influence, disrupt, corrupt or usurp adversarial human and automated decision-making while protecting our own.”

A big portion of the status quo argument for nonviolence — that it is more likely to convince moderates — can actively be refuted through an analysis of how misinformation can turn even the most nonviolent protests into violent protests in the eyes of centrists and the right-wing. Take, for instance, the George Floyd uprising in 2020.

These protests, done in response to Minneapolis police killing an innocent Black man during their racial profiling of him and his neighborhood, were commonly characterized by those in power as nothing more than aimless, violent riots.

A late 2020 article in Fox News described these protests as having “devolved into riots that often included looting, violence and destruction,” featuring sensationalized images of property damage across several major cities. Most of the photographs on their site position people of color, particularly Black people, as violent rioters, shamelessly repeating horrific, racist caricatures of the past. This is in spite of publications like Business Insider pointing out that Fox put old, unrelated protest videos on their broadcasts, resorting to misinformation as they have time and time again.

This is no accident. Similar outlets, such as The Post Millennial, infamously gave lip service to right-wing counterprotesters, portraying them as nonviolent and innocent, in spite of them often having been found to be the instigators of violence where it did occur. For instance, a 2020 investigation from The Intercept found that police were targeting “antifa” from the get-go, and that they often ignored or collaborated with members of the far-right, even when they openly broke laws and attacked anti-racist protesters. These fascist paramilitary groups planted false evidence of crimes on social media, and even spread local rumors of a violent uprising, that would then be pinned on leftists by governments and compliant media.

It is no surprise, then, that even more liberal outlets like NPR claimed during the time that “demonstrations in Minnesota have evolved from peaceful cries for justice into violence and destruction,” showing more photographs centering Black people. The New York Times pinned several deaths, falsely, on Black Lives Matter protesters.

Far-right outlets like the Daily Wire are still using the uprising to attack BLM protesters, particularly Black folk, by discrediting the movement through pushing the debunked claim that Floyd died of a drug overdose. One 2025 Daily Wire story leads by calling Floyd a “career felon” that “overdosed on the streets of Minneapolis,” only to lead into an unrelated story about a man with a lifetime of mental health troubles and subsequent medical neglect killing Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee. This story called the man a “savage,” and highlighted him because he’s Black, spitting on and erasing Zarutska’s memory as a means to spread vitriolic bigotry.

There are still conservatives that, to this day, will swear that “cities burned to the ground” in the summer of 2020.

All of this, of course, is in spite of objective evidence that 89-96% of protests were non-violent and that both that far-right counterprotesters and police killed and assaulted numerous protesters. One study revealed that over 30% of confrontations the fascist Proud Boys got involved in ended in violence.

This was even known at the time, as a 2020 Slate interview with abolitionist historian Kellie Carter Jackson, who drew parallels of the violent revolts against slavery to now, particularly the sanitized image the Civil Rights movement has developed in white popular history. Most succinctly, the final exchange between the interviewer and Johnson reveals how this disparity of public perception revealed the problems of pushing for nonviolence as the be-all-end-all.

“You’ve said riots have a way of magnifying not merely the flaws in the system but also the strength of those in power. I feel like we’re seeing that now with the police reaction and this tremendous power in the streets. New York City has a curfew of 8 o’clock, and the power structure has helicopters and SUVs and a lot of guns,” interviewer Mary Harris said.

“And tanks and tear gas and rubber bullets. It’s military force against civilians. What was most disturbing about George Floyd’s death was not just the knee and his neck, but the smug look on the cop’s face of ‘You won’t tell me what to do. You won’t tell me how to stop. I’m doing what I want.’ He just seemed completely unrepentant,” Jackson responded. “I get annoyed when people talk about looters. Look at the people in power. Look at what they have access to. Look at the tools they have. Then ask yourself: Is this a fair fight?”

It’s easy to criticize violence as unappealing to moderates. But when even largely peaceful movements get relentlessly characterized as violent, it becomes a moot point – how exactly can purely nonviolent movements be expected to succeed when they’ll never get portrayed as such? When, as of 2023, only 42% of white adults and only 51% of the country as a whole view the 2020 anti-racist uprisings as a good thing – and not “dangerous” or “divisive” as white survey respondents characterized it as – how can the sanitized version of non-violence be said to work?

The reality is that the status quo is going to depict any challenge to its authority, no matter its actual character, as violent and unacceptable.

“This specter of slaves freeing themselves is American history’s first image of Black looters… To get free, the enslaved had to steal themselves and, in so doing, abolish themselves as property. They had to loot themselves, entering a lawless relation to property and the state. The relationship between liberation and the stealing and destruction of property was never so obvious nor so clear cut as it was during the period.” - Vicky Osterweil, In Defense of Looting

It isn’t easy to reduce the outcome of a movement to a single, arbitrary variable – for instance, how exactly can you distinguish the 19th and 20th century American labour movement into clear violent and non-violent categories? Certainly, there were acts of nonviolence through workers holding strikes outside of exploitative businesses, but at the same time there were violent revolts involving the destruction of factory machinery and retaliation against armed brutality brought on by the police and the Pinkerton private militia.

We can see this reductionism in modern, white America’s discussion of the Black civil rights movement in the 20th century. As discussed earlier, many avowed nonviolence advocates carried firearms. Many more who practiced nonviolence openly collaborated with those using force, even armed resistance. Nonviolence, for most, is not a principle taken out of abstract morality, but a disruptive tactic chosen for specific reasons.

The true nature of how arbitrary this distinction goes back much further. In Osterweil’s In Defense of Looting, she describes how, as far back as the 1500s and 1600s, slaves trying to seek freedom through revolt or escape were assaulted, robbed, and even raped. Anything deemed valuable and that could aid in a revolt were stolen. Attempts by slaves to liberate themselves were seen as stealing from the slave owners, and much of their liberation became phrased as stealing their own lives. The slavers’ fear of liberation, in turn, contributed to the formation of modern police forces.

“The self-looting fugitive was the spark for the genesis of the earliest policing forces — the slave patrols — and enforcing federal fugitive slave law was one of the earliest tasks of American police forces. Beyond the loss of property she represents, the fugitive anticipates and precipitates rebellion with her flight,” Osterweil wrote. “The police have from the beginning existed to protect racialized property relations from the threat posed by the looter, the rebel, and the crowd. The looter is one of the historical nemeses of the police: it is no wonder that, during antipolice uprisings, she reappears again and again.”

This developed over the next couple hundred years until the 1800s, where rebellion was criminalized, those fighting the unjust law were seen as “vagrants” to be punished. Convicts were leased out, seen as less than human, and Black individuals resisting slavery and oppression were conveniently portrayed as criminals, used to persuade the white moderate into supporting discriminatory policies.

This, in turn, contributed to some of the worst hate crimes against Black individuals in history. Osterweil writes how the formation of the KKK can be directly traced to hate crimes in the wake of the civil war, a retaliation from white people in anger that Black people dared to be free. Ultimately, this led to growing institutional support, particularly in the South.

“The plantation owners may have been defeated in war and in law, but they marshalled what power and wealth they had left to try to maintain the system that had deemed them masters. In most of the South, civil war continued at a lower level of violence for another decade, often taking on the form of open combat, and even expanding into statewide civil war in Mississippi and Arkansas.”

One of the most blatant examples comes from the Tulsa, Oklahoma racist atrocities of 1921. While it’s most famous now for the destruction of one of the wealthiest Black communities in America — the Greenwood District, also known as Little Africa or Black Wall Street — the actual history of it goes much deeper, and teaches some very different lessons.

At the time, a white lynch mob targeted a shoeshiner, Dick Rowland, who was falsely accused of rape. Immediately, armed residents of Tulsa came to his defense, intercepting the rioters and stopping the attempted lynching. After Rowland was arrested and the sheriff refused to turn him over, the group stormed the jail, exchanging gunfire with the white lynch mob before falling back to Greenwood.

Black snipers held off white rioters from entering Greenwood, before the racists began deploying World War 1 biplanes, firebombs and military machine guns, setting the city ablaze. The police worked with the white rioters, arresting any Black people that they saw. Thousands were incarcerated for days, and the true death count is unknown, as many suspect it was covered up to ease white people’s embarrassment that “a third to a half” of the casualties were white rioters.

Black locals also conducted a heroic fighting retreat, saving hundreds of lives and stopping white supremacist forces long enough for most of the local Black population to escape the violence. The African Blood Brotherhood (ABB), a Black Marxist militant group that fielded fighters who protected Greenwood, used “the brave record” of that defiance as a point of recruitment.

While it is important that the atrocities committed against Black communities in Tulsa are no longer completely erased, it’s notable that the armed community defiance which saved so many is still pointedly left out of popular histories. It teaches lessons that do not sit well with the status quo telling of history.

Two-thirds of the businesses that white rioters destroyed were rented property to white people. Rowland also survived, living a full life before passing away in either the 60s or 70s. A source of pride developed for Black Tulsans of successfully resisting and defending their own — there were no more lynchings in Tulsa until the modern day, when gentrification and modern white supremacists took over.

Especially notable for long-term sustainability, the ABB chapter continuously operated in Tulsa. This group dedicated their work to protecting Black folk from race riots long after 1921. They struck fear into the white supremacists of the time, spawning rumors of a Black insurrection. Further, throughout the 50’s and 60’s, civil rights leaders would use the threat of another riot like in Greenwood to gain leverage in negotiations.

What truly, lastingly devastated Tulsa’s Black communities was not the horrific attacks of 1921 that they fought so heroically against, but rather modern-day liberal capitalism.

This complexity of topics is not one that is easy to reconcile with the narrative that resistance is a cut-and-dry narrative of nonviolence. The weakness of Why Civil Resistance Works continue to be reflected in the ahistorical inanity of reducing the complicated realities of resistance and defense to just violence or non-violence. For instance, a topic often neglected by Westerners is genocide beyond Europe or America. This is seen in an ongoing genocide in Sudan of the Darfuri people.

Perpetrated by the ruling Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a former paramilitary force of the government who since split off owing to racial supremacy, their schism ultimately led to a civil war against the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). This reflects the complex yet grim post-colonial history following British interference, with the Sudanese government targeting the Darfuri people following the British control of Sudan as a state, brutally oppressing and slaughtering thousands upon thousands of innocent, regular people.

The legacy of this is seen today; the United States Embassy in Sudan proudly boasts of their historical role in the country through the funding of tens of millions to the existing government for the past two decades, which they sugarcoat by adding that this was in tandem to humanitarian aid. Following the second election of Donald Trump, things only complicated as the sudden abrupt cessation in this humanitarian aid has only intensified the problem Sudanese workers face in providing resources to Darfuri neighbors. Indeed, the international community has since become silent on the crisis facing the Darfuri people.

To make matters worse, a proxy war started as the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia joined in on the side of the RSF and SAF, respectively. Notably, the United States has continued and detailed commercial and political relations with both nations, especially as the Trump presidency continues.

But the Darfuri are not silent nor complacent. Grassroots organizing in the country is growing substantially, with people seeking to provide for the needs of their neighbors. Non-violent demonstrations have been seen throughout the past decade. In recent years, direct resistance actions has also consisted of armed groups like the Popular Resistance aiding the SAF as allies of convenience. The Popular Resistance by and large consists of regular people aided by the SAF, resisting the genocide as the slaughter of Darfuri peoples continue to grow. Many other individuals are building community and solidarity, seeking help from their families abroad as they provide for each other amidst a military assault far more brutal than anyone should have to face.

Readers interested in aiding those amidst genocide are advised to donate to people and groups doing the work directly, and engaging with activist groups in their country. These include links to fundraisers, resources, boycotts, and general information on raising awareness.

This movement reflects a mixture of grassroots, state, violent, and non-violent attempts to resist the growing threat of the RSF to the Darfuri people and the residents of Sudan as a whole. With the conflict reflecting a history of colonialism, racism, and external financial interests, how can resistance effort be neatly classified into one category or another, let alone reduced to just one variable?

Perhaps one of the most prominent gay voices of the mid to late 20th century, Harvey Milk has reached the status of nearly a household name among queer communities. The first openly gay elected politician in the country, Milk was known for his progressive policies on queer rights and challenging a highly homophobic status quo

In 1978, he was murdered alongside progressive Mayor George Moscone by Dan White, ex-cop, and former fellow member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. White had a reputation as a conservative Democrat known for supporting police and violently hostile towards gay rights, particularly those he deemed “radicals.”

White murdered the two largely because Moscone refused to reappoint him to his supervisor position after he resigned over his refusal to have a drug rehabilitation center in his district. Moscone did so at the urging of Milk, as they both feared that White would stonewall efforts to achieve progressive policies.

This led to a now-infamous trial that convicted White not of murder, but of the lesser charge of manslaughter. This judgment was made in part because of the infamous “Twinkie Defense,” where White’s lawyers alleged that White had such bad depression that he both took to abandoning his health conscious habits, instead eating junk food, and subsequently killed Milk and Moscone. The jury was convinced by this argument, lessening his sentence.

That very night, thousands took to the streets, as both the local queer community and straight allies smashed windows and set police cars ablaze. Many tried to break open the courthouse’s front doors, and many more fought directly against police.

The death of the mayor led to an imbalance of power in the city government, with the Moscone-appointed police chief losing control over his officers. They effectively went rogue, even by cop standards, and targeted queer residents of the city en masse. The police force as a whole were notably sympathetic to White, and after many decades of queerphobic attacks, people had enough. Even the police notably described the rioting outside city hall as a battle they lost.

Yet, this didn’t stop them from retaliating. They raided the Elephant Walk bar after people ran inside to flee from police standoffs. Dozens were injured as the cops ruthlessly beat and clubbed anyone they saw.

Contrary to expectations, or fears that riots automatically alienate the wider populace, public support remained entirely with the rioters, and still does to this day. Numerous state politicians have expressed support and even admitted to participating in the riot, including former State Senator Mark Leno and former State Assemblyman Tom Ammiano.

Then-City Supervisor Harry Britt even openly supported the rioters, threatening that more rioting would happen if more Dan Whites emerged.

“Harvey Milk’s people do not have anything to apologize for. Now the society is going to have to deal with us not as nice little fairies who have hairdressing salons, but as people capable of violence. We’re not going to put up with Dan Whites anymore,” Britt said to The Bay Area Reporter the day after the riot.

This reflects a significant aspect of the White Night riots. Rather than doing the cishet gentry’s bidding and tamping down resistance, most gay establishment figures (and even some genuine straight allies) refused demands to curb the riots, even if they weren’t participating themselves.

The time since then has seen gay rights become a focus of San Francisco’s culture. The city’s gay community is the biggest in the country, and has laid the groundwork for many aspects of both queer culture and the rights we have today. Politicians still are fearful of the community fighting back, and work to avoid pissing queers off.

One misconception surrounding common myths about non-violence is the perception that it will be widely supported by the media in comparison to more militant revolt. A quick glimpse at the AIDS-era queer advocacy org, ACT UP, disproves this.

Formed initially in New York City in 1987, ACT UP emerged at a time shortly after AIDS was first recognized as an illness. During this period, infection rates were terrifyingly high in the queer community, with minimal resources in place for those suffering, and even fewer resources on public education.

On-the-ground organizing focused on HIV & AIDS research filled a much needed gap, as next to no organizations were putting pressure on government agencies and drug companies to act. As Trans News Network has previously reported, many infected with HIV were effectively given a death sentence, and public misinformation spread like wildfire. The group quickly became a national movement, with ACT UP Los Angeles becoming one of the most famous, and long lasting, chapters.

ACT UP primarily took action via aggressive non-violent demonstrations, including running into the middle of news broadcasts to protest the mainstream press’ failure to talk about the millions dying of AIDS, instead focusing on wars outside America. Their demonstrations numbered in the thousands, with many arrested for trespassing and disrupting events, such as those at churches.

This is a prime example of how resistance does not always require violence. One such action took place in the late 1990s, when over a thousand protesters stormed the FDA’s headquarters in Maryland. Furious over the FDA’s sluggishness and bureaucratic methods that contributed to countless deaths, protesters held noisemakers, fake tombstones, and signs as they smashed windows, displayed their case for the cameras, and blocked police vehicles.

This militant, disruptive action worked almost immediately. Within a week, the FDA created a new, immediate rule that promised quicker drug approval processing for AIDS and life-threatening illnesses. As more actions took place, more in the mainstream press – even some conservatives and libertarians – found themselves sympathetic to their cause, and many medical experts were even inviting activists into their decision making processes about experimental treatment distribution.

But make no mistake – the mainstream was, as a whole, widely against ACT UP. In a Trans News Network interview with two veterans of the group, they remember that politicians and the public maintained a strong, oppositional view to both their organizing and AIDS advocacy in general. Most conservative politicians especially were saying that they deserved to die of AIDS, and liberals ignored their plight. Some conservatives even advocated for what were effectively concentration camps for those infected with HIV/AIDS.

Many were isolated from their friends and families, and even when the media became slightly more sympathetic, it was still mostly antagonistic. The media of the time portrayed this as a gay, white, middle-class male movement, in spite of a substantial number of key activists being women, people of color, trans people and impoverished individuals. According to the ACT UP Oral History Project, it is undeniable that marginalized people beyond white cis gay men were instrumental in the movement’s success.

The group remained committed to militant non-violence as a tactic but was, in that familiar pattern, widely condemned and depicted as violent anyway. People were beaten by police, some suffering permanent injuries, and yet still remained committed to effective action, because this was a matter of literal life and death for many. People didn’t want to be “helpless victims,” as activist Vito Russo said in a contemporary speech. They wanted to take action by any means necessary.

The group had no formal commitment to non-violence. Violent revolt was always seen as an option to be done if necessary – after all, when people have to fight to stay alive, they’ll do anything to ensure they’re still kicking for as long as possible.

Yet, the entire movement also took non-violent revolt as necessary and to be, for their situation, often the most effective means. They did this not for the sake of appealing to straight norms, but because they saw it as the best tactic in that particular place and time to get researchers to develop life-saving medications.

Ultimately, the movement was widely successful. Peter Staley, an activist from that period, recounted that the FDA “caved to almost all of our demands within nine months [of the headquarters protest].” In total, it’s estimated that over 23 million lives were saved by ACT UP, thanks to their unapologetic action. Even today, their history informs and inspires organizers across the globe.

So, we return to a key point made in the first part of this series: many experienced organizers regard the question of “violence vs. nonviolence” as a false one. No movement succeeds by violence alone, and all of them have to seriously grapple with the realities of force.

One of those realities that many liberals — including the smattering of trans gentry who so love lecturing the rest of us — tend to miss is the necessity violent defense holds for the survival of many marginalized individuals. When someone is threatening or even attacking you, the best response is often not to cower in fear and let yourself potentially be killed, but to fight back. As discussed earlier in the article with the history supplied by Cobb’s in This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed, much of violent resistance is really just self defense in response to hate mobs, effectively the only way people could protect themselves from death. The same is true of queer and trans liberation.

One of the most famous examples is that of CeCe McDonald. A Black trans woman in Minneapolis, she was harassed by a drunken group who shouted racial and transphobic slurs before they threw a beer bottle at her, which shattered in her face. She tried to leave as quickly as possible, but one of the bigots began to follow her, inciting his friends to “mess up that tranny.” He lunged at her, and in the process got stabbed by a pair of scissors she held, and later died.

For the crime of defending herself, even under every legal definition of self-defense out there, she was sentenced to 41 months in a men’s prison.

The trial was biased from the start. McDonald’s lawyers were prevented from providing any evidence that would’ve supported her account, with her sentence length the result of a plea deal. Initially, she was threatened with 40 years in prison – when she was only 23. None of the assailants were arrested or charged. The attacker who lunged at her even had a swastika tattooed on his chest, which the court refused to take into evidence.

Yet, if she didn’t fight back, there is a very real likelihood that she wouldn’t have survived that encounter. It’s well documented that trans women overwhelmingly and disproportionately account for nearly half of those murdered in the broader queer community, with most of these victims being trans women of color. A majority report experiencing institutional discrimination, and many even report being victimized by physical assault.

This is all without factoring in the high rates of police violence faced by both Black and trans people, and the torture and immense harm that placing trans women in men’s prisons is known to cause.

McDonald was fortunately able to get out after 19 months, and has since made international impacts through her organizing work and academic research, including co-founding the Black Excellence Collective and the Black Excellence Tour, and developing university curriculum covering prison abolition.

Her story is not unique, and is emblematic of the kind of systemic abuses Black and trans people face within the carceral system, particularly in retaliation for surviving hate crimes. The long-standing queer anarchist movement Bash Back! emerged to try and counteract this, working on empowering the queer community by combating the idea that violence and self-defense is intrinsically evil, and recognizing the immense amount of disproportionate systemic injustice levied against marginalized populations.

The impact Bash Back has had is hard to overstate, and yet is also hard to discuss. Much of their work deliberately shunned media attention, and yet at the same time has laid the groundwork for the modern political landscape. Their actions have defended queer people murdered by bigots, encouraging people to fight back when attacked so they can stay alive. They’ve disrupted right-wing politicians’ speeches, disrupted and angered the 2008 Republican National Convention, prevented anti-queer hate crimes before they even happened, and spearheaded the development of some rigorous academic theory that informs leftist movements to this day.

Notably, they formed in 2008 in the Twin Cities, and helped lay the groundwork for many movements still serving that area to this day. The impact of the group has been seen across the country and internationally, all the while remaining in the shadows and making slow but steady progress towards liberation. This, plainly, is done by recognizing violence as one tool of many, as they’ve also been known to engage in non-violent actions too, such as vandalism, graffiti, and protests at intensely queerphobic churches.

This sort of reaction emerges not out of a desire for aimless chaos, but to retaliate against those harming people who just want to live their lives. I can personally attest to the amount of violence queer and trans people receive on the regular. I’ve had an ex-Marine hold me at gunpoint, saying he’d shoot if I was “a fag.” I’ve been threatened by groups of transphobes, stalked by jeering right-wingers in trucks, forced into homelessness on multiple occasions, denied jobs, left to choke in a pool of my own vomit, and even been physically attacked back in high school.

This is the hard reality countless queer and trans working class people face. From this, it’s easy to understand how bloodless liberal declarations that “violence is never the answer” come off as suicidally naive.

If I didn’t defend myself, if I didn’t fight like hell to stay alive, if I didn’t learn how to navigate some of the hardest and most terrifying situations of my life, I’d be dead. The same is true of virtually every other queer person I’ve ever met. This is doubly true for queer people of color I know. Fighting back, self-defense, retaliation – these aren’t done for fun or some vague ideological fantasy. They’re done to survive.

Naturally, these critiques of reverence for a sanitized nonviolence bring about a question of what resistance movements ought to do. Fortunately, anarchist organizers and theorists have provided us with a variety of answers informed by both historical and contemporary movements across the globe.

One such work is the famous book, How Nonviolence Protects the State. While this book may seem intimidating to some less familiar with such theory, it is not a strict repudiation of all nonviolent tactics. Rather, it is a repudiation of movements that seek to use nonviolence only. The core thesis is that the most effective movements, the ones that are based on historical examples of success, are those that utilize a diversity of tactics, doing whatever it takes to see the world they want while maintaining a commitment to their mission.

Make no mistake — violence is not a tool to put on a pedestal. Violence is traumatic, heartbreaking, tragic, and if wielded improperly can create more suffering than existed before. Every radical and insurgent knows this, and everyone who truly takes up arms for liberation — or even just uses their fists to defend themselves — does so out of a reluctant acknowledgement that this is the only way forward. Vanishingly few find pleasure in seeing their fellow humans suffer and even die.

And yet, many choose force anyway, because the alternative is so much worse. Choosing to take no radical action is in of itself a choice, one that sees the status quo as something to maintain at any cost. This is why people fight for the future they want to see — currently, untold millions of people are starving, suffering, and bleeding a slow death because of capital, hierarchy, and forms of bigotry like transphobia and racism. This is why people try to find the best ways to achieve a just world, because the alternative is to continue suffering beyond comprehension.

The key ingredients, then, start with ridding ourselves of the idea that violence is inherently bad or evil. This does not mean we need aimless violence that promotes attacks on random, innocent people – rather, we need a calculated grappling with the realities of force that recognizes the necessity of protecting the innocent while still making an impact.

There are a million ways this can manifest, with some of the most common ones being simple property destruction or rock throwing, as discussed with other revolutionary movements. Other tactics can include coordinated revolt using both non-violent and violent tactics, sabotaging infrastructure the state relies on, or plain mass refusal. An exact discussion of methods, their ethics, and what should be done and when is beyond the purview of this piece, but nevertheless it ought to be kept in mind that that which is necessary goes well beyond the sanitized myths we were taught.

But what about tangible actions to take right now? Those still on edge about the idea of harming anyone might do well to consider, at minimum, self-defense training. Fascist groups and fascist operatives rely on people being defenseless when they attack — knowing what to do if you are faced with such attacks is crucial, as many know that bullies do not cease their attacks when you curl up in a ball and cry.

All people who safely can do so should know how to properly handle a firearm. You do not need to own one, but knowing how to use one correctly and safely is key if you ever find yourself in a situation where handling one can save your life. Training for this can be found at some local firing ranges, and a search for a queer or leftist friendly group is essential. Likewise, all people should know basic unarmed self defense skills, for much the same reason. Most localities have some type of gym near them that teaches the basics, often derived from various martial arts. This can also just be a great way to meet more people in your community, as most who get started are in the exact same boat as you of wanting to just be safe.

Perhaps the most essential skill for anyone is medical training. There will always be a need for street medics and people who know how to handle and diffuse emergency situations calmly, and being able to help out your fellow protesters in situations where they get shot can be literally life or death. Among the trainings to seek out are CPR / AED, Stop The Bleed, emergency first aid, Narcan and harm reduction training, and emergency mental health training. These can most often be found via organizations like the Red Cross, and many times are offered for free certain times of the year.

Further, organizers need to prioritize building coalitions, and recognizing the essential nature of radical ideas for the growth of any liberatory movement. The fact is, the average person is tired of the same empty platitudes expressed by politicians and those organizing for them. At best, a good politician buys us a few more years before inevitably corruption and money elect someone much more malicious, undoing a great deal of the progress made. If actual change is desired, then mass unity and mass growth is essential, and the only way to reliably do this is to recognize that radical ideas are effective because they are necessary.

A common tactic utilized by those in power is to terrify pacifists and those who prefer nonviolence into disowning their other comrades as nothing more than crazed and incoherent radicals. This demonization is crucial to how movements fall, as if those trying to propagandize to a more moderate audience dismiss those who are doing much of the on-the-ground fighting, then we are simply doing their work for them. All of our work is necessary, and the sooner we work together, the sooner we can achieve our common ends. Successful liberation of all marginalized people requires a diversity of tactics. Remember that a key part of the victories for queer rights in San Francisco was when even gays within the political system refused to condemn the White Night rioters.

We do not need everyone to do the same thing or be part of the same groups, but we do need to recognize that people choosing force do not do this out of a bloodlust, but rather because they view it as the only means necessary to prevent more bloodshed.

Very few humans actively like and seek out violence; the vast majority of all uprisings that utilize violence do so out of frustration, having no other means of resisting. Many of these organizers have formerly tried nonviolent methods, often religiously. A pacifistic repudiation of violent protesters will only hurt all of us in the long-run, even if it may seem scary in the short-term.

Readers interested in learning more are heavily advised to read This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed, as it helps provide a detailed analysis of more contemporary American violent revolt that stands contrary to how most view the civil rights movements. Additionally, readers more inclined the nonviolent approached are advised to recognize that those in the streets, those who are without and who are struggling, have much more in common with you than do you with the people in power. And, any who were born into power but nevertheless find themselves siding with revolutionaries – there is a space for you in these movements, if you are willing to learn and see revolutionaries as your peers, rather than ones to lecture.

The status quo’s sanitized non-violence fundamentally protects the state. It does not protect us. Only we can protect each other, and through one another we can achieve a world that works for all of us.

— Edited by David Forbes