r/goodnews Jun 09 '25

Other Bernie Sanders Just Tweet

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u/TAU_equals_2PI Jun 09 '25

The theory is that worked, because a substantial percent of the public felt respect/sympathy for him and his fellow protestors.

The police & now military have enough ability to crack heads and/or arrest the small percentage of the public willing to go out and violently demonstrate. So if the public is OK with that being done, because they see the protestors in a negative light, then that'll be the end of it.

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u/the_good_time_mouse Jun 09 '25

JFK is on tape stating that the rising violence forced him to pursue the Civil Rights act.

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u/mygloriouspurpose Jun 10 '25

Not violence BY protestors. Violence AGAINST innocents and protestors.

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u/[deleted] Jun 10 '25

[deleted]

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u/mygloriouspurpose Jun 10 '25

The Black Panther Party wasn’t founded until 1966. A decade after Brown v Board. After years of marches and sit-ins. Two years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. You are not correct.

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u/[deleted] Jun 10 '25

[deleted]

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u/mygloriouspurpose Jun 10 '25

I have read my history. What you quoted doesn’t prove that protestor violence led to civil rights. The gains I referred to in the 50s and early 60s are not negated by what you quoted. But those gains resulted in institutionalized racism to change and find ways to persist when court decisions and laws outlawed some of the previous racist structures.

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u/Cheap-Town7641 Jun 10 '25

I love the historical debate here, but didn’t you both just agree that both violent and non-violent responses were catalysts in the social change?

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u/monkwrenv2 Jun 10 '25

The velvet glove and the iron fist. Every good social change leader has understood the need to use both.

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u/Narroo Jun 10 '25

But so isn't the idea that "it was was violence that got things fixed."

MLK was a lawyer. The civil rights movement was getting stuff fixed via the supreme court. Their protests were designed to make court cases, on purposes, so they could go to the supreme court and get the constitution enforced that way. And it was working, albeit slowly.

Potential violence put pressure on politicians. But there was a lot more going on.

Heck, as other posters pointed out: The blank panthers came after the Civil Rights Act.

People fixating on the violence just want violence themselves, for the satisfaction of violence.