America’s campuses began to buzz with activism ... One hundred thousand people rallied in Washington. Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States VII: Johnson, Nixon and Vietnam: Reversal of Fortune, Showtime 2012
Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it. Howard Zinn
Thousands took to the streets in protests against the apparent insanity of the arms race. The End of the World: A Horizon Guide, BBC 2011
Then she lay down in the street
Right before the horse’s feet
Expecting with a patient eye
Murder Fraud and Anarchy ...
Tis to work and have such pay
As just keeps life from day to day ...
From the workhouse and the prison
Where pale as corpses newly risen
Women, children, young and old
Groan for pain and weep for cold ...
And that slaughter to the nation
Shall steam up like inspiration,
Eloquent, oracular;
A volcano heard afar.
And these words shall then become
Like oppression’s thundered doom,
Ringing through each heart and brain
Heard again, again, again –
Rise like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you.
Ye are many. They are few. Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Mask of Anarchy
They stalked through a crowd of peaceful protesters along the parade route beating and pepper-spraying people. You can see the man in the red jacket shaking a can of pepper spray in his hand which is government-issued pepper spray. You can see him use the pepper spray – spraying it in close range in people’s faces and eyes. You can also see him spraying it in wide berths. And this is into a crowd of peaceful protesters. People standing along the parade route. People engaged in a classic first-amendment-protected activity. And being attacked by the police department. Unconstitutional: The War on our Civil Liberties, 2004
1947: shortly after the close of World War II 23 nations signed a general agreement on tariffs and trade: GATT. Battle in Seattle 2007 starring Woody Harrelson & Andre Benjamin & Jennifer Carpenter & Martin Henderson & Ray Liotta & Connie Nielsen & Michelle Rodriguez & Channing Tatum & Charlize Theron et al, director Stuart Townsend
It has very little to do with trade and it is certainly not free. ibid. protester
Of course we’re going to get hurt. What do you think this is? Protests get me excited and depressed at the same time. ibid. her to him
I am watching a completely unprovoked attack by police here in downtown Seattle. ibid. Jean
The Battle in Seattle turns into a war. ibid.
How do they keep putting themselves on the line like that, for a cause they can’t win? ibid. Jean
Isn’t it time that people mattered more than profit? ibid. Medicine sans Frontiers dude
People are protesting with us in thirty cities across the world. ibid. protester
Thanks WTO It’s Been A Riot. ibid. cinema sign
2003: As the WTO floods local markets with imports, 40,000 Indian farmers commit suicide to escape their debt. ibid. caption
In the 1370s with a series of national poll taxes which hit everyone ... The Peasants’ Revolt was an English phenomenon ... 63 women rebels were indicted in Sussex alone ... Once the rebels had dispersed, the government reneged on the deal. Michael Wood, The Great British Story: A People’s History 4/8: The Great Rising, BBC 2012
The Tolpuddle Martyrs – still a landmark in British labour history. Michael Wood, The Great British Story 7/8: A People’s History: Industry & Empire
The rights of the British people were not handed down from on high but won by the people themselves – at a cost. ibid.
The Peterloo Massacre inspired new forms of social action. ibid.
The peasantry had had enough: they rose up in the largest mass rebellion in English history and marched on London. This was a class war. Dr Janina Ramirez, Chivalry and Betrayal: The Hundred Years War II: Breaking the Bonds 1360-1415, BBC 2013
The ringleaders of the uprising were hunted down and hanged. ibid.
From London revolt spreads to towns and villages across the country. The British II: People Power, Sky Atlantic 2012
The Peasants’ Revolt – the greatest uprising in the history of medieval England. Professor Robert Bartlett, The Plantagenets III, BBC 2014
We can’t forget what happened on May 4th, 1970, when four students gave up their lives because they had the American constitutional right of peaceful protest. They gave up their lives. And to sing that song in that spot on that anniversary was very emotional for us. Graham Nash
The London Docks may have been the gateway to the wealth of empire but the men who worked here were some of the poorest in Britain ... They were paid little and only by the hour. On average a docker worked three hours a day. Resentment ran high. But all this was about to change. On August 12th 1889 the London dockers fought back ... Within a week 30,000 men were on strike ... For the strikers the suffering was intense; but not only for the dockers, for their families too ... In London the dock strike took to the streets. Thousands of dockers and their families marched carrying huge banners, their children holding signs saying please feed us. Jeremy Paxman, The Victorians: Having It All, BBC 2009
In devilish dreams the horror show of deep-frozen Saturday nights fronting the gates of Hades at Murdoch’s Wapping. Snorting leviathan lorries smashing down the hill at the barbed wire and the purple-faced protesters, rage-red front covers of The Sun flapping like pirate flags in the windscreens. Bobby-boys in blue finger tenderly their bully-sticks. esias
What precipitated the big strike in 1912, which is one of the great historical struggles in our country, was a political act on the part of the State. The hours of labor were reduced to 54 hours. You can imagine what they were before. That was only for women and children, but it affected something like 75% of the workers in the mills. On the first pay after the law went into effect, the employers cut the wages proportionately to the cut in hours and the wages were on the average of $7 and $8 a week at that time, and the highest pay to loom fixers and more highly skilled were getting possibly, $15 and $20. It was a margin between mere subsistence and starvation and so there was a spontaneous strike. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, re Bread & Roses Strike, 1962
Workers marched on Whitehall for better wages and lower prices. Around seventeen million working days were lost to strikes in Britain between 1915 and 1918. There were strikes by miners in south Wales, engineers in Coventry, Sheffield and Manchester, and shipbuilders on Teeside, Tyneside and the Clyde. The First World War: Revolution, Channel 4 2003
On 4th May 1926 more than two million ... downed tools ... in solidarity with Britain’s one million miners. Ian Hislop’s Stiff Upper Lip: An Emotional History of Britain III: Last Hurrah? BBC 2012
The Day of Action was extended into weeks of action – dustmen, ambulance drivers, caretakers, bus drivers, road gritters and many more began a series of rolling strikes that caused total chaos. Dominic Sandbrook, The 70s IV: The Winner Takes It All 77-79, BBC 2012
I got my head bashed in at a demonstration against the Vietnam War. Police were losing control because they were up against a world they really didn’t understand. Terry Gilliam
Each family of the United States military now attends to their loved ones’ funeral with a wrenching worry that it will be met possibly with a protest or a demonstration. Steve Buyer
One of the problems of organizing in the North, in the rich countries, is that people tend to think – even the activists – that instant gratification is required. You constantly hear: ‘Look I went to a demonstration, and we didn’t stop the war so what’s the use of doing it again?’ Noam Chomsky
What is this, the sound and rumour? What is this that all men hear,
Like the wind in hollow valleys when the storm is drawing near,
Like the rolling on of ocean in the eventide of fear?
’Tis the people marching on. William Morris, Chants for Socialism, 1885
There are no demonstrations at all in the streets! No, no-one is against us. They all love me; all my people love me. My people would die to protect me. Muammar al-Gaddafi, 2011