There is a HUGE DIFFERENCE between protests using streets and are NONVIOLENT versus gatherings of people who carry weapons and are intentionally trying to intimidate people by threatening violence.
Over the decades I have organized and led a good number of NONVIOLENT gatherings, sometimes using streets. These have been well organized, orderly, and safe for all participants. We have always respected other people who are present but not participating. On the rare occasion when some outsider has tried to interfere, we have de-escalated the conflicts by using nonviolent skills for resolving conflicts.
Nowadays some people who are the OPPOSITE of this gather with weapons with the INTENTION of threatening and intimidating people. Those people really are a threat to public safety.
One hundred years ago (in 1920) women won the right to vote when enough states ratified the Constitutional amendment. During the decades before, women agitated, marched in the streets, and often were arrested. Gradually they won public opinion, and Washington State was one of the states that officially recognized women's right to vote a number of years before the Constitutional amendment passed.
Many more of us who are alive now remember the Civil Rights Movement that practiced very profound nonviolence and refused to retaliate even when they were physically attacked and assaulted by white people who rejected the concept of racial equality. I know some of the African Americans who had conducted the trainings in the 1950s and early 1960s that helped the entire movement remain nonviolent. Nonviolent self-discipline helped to win American public opinion to support the Civil Rights Movement and pass federal laws.
The work is not complete. We can see how the system is rigged to de-value African Americans' rights and their lives. The Black Lives Matter movement affirms that their lives do matter. They are not claiming that other lives matter less. Rather, they are insisting that our governmental systems and our social-political culture recognize that Black lives do matter.
LGBTQ people organized nonviolent activities that also affirmed their dignity.
All of these movements have practiced nonviolence virtually 100%. They have stood up for human rights WITHOUT USING ANY GUNS. The used the power of our nation's conscience and our best American values to affirm human rights for ALL people EQUALLY.
Crowds of people carrying guns are NOT lifting up the power of conscience and equal human rights. They are threatening violence against people they do not like. They are deliberately divisive and threatening, whereas the various movements for human rights (for women, Blacks, LGBTQ people, etc.) are affirming that ALL PEOPLE ARE ONE HUMAN FAMILY and WE REALLY CAN ALL LIVE TOGETHER PEACEFULLY in one nation.
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