“Democracy didn’t fall out of the sky. It was earned. It was created, and it was made manifest through protest.” — Gloria Browne-Marshall

Yesterday, Casey Michel described a United States of Oligarchy where the wealthy cosy up to dictators and destroy democracy. Today, Gloria Browne-Marshall describes a parallel America. In A Protest History of the United States, she explores 500 years of profound protest to what Michel coins the banality of the deal. If Casey Michel described the few who own the country, then Gloria Browne-Marshall chronicles the many who made it.

Her thesis is that a nation born of protest has been protesting with itself ever since. So Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence while owning the teenaged Sally Hemings. Democracy is protest’s child, not its parent. Rather than just falling out of the sky, she argues, American democracy was earned by protesters like her great hero, Daisy Bates, the Little Rock organizer whose mother was murdered by a white mob.

So where’s the protest now? “Too many people have outsourced their sense of outrage,” Gloria Browne-Marshall argues. Thus our Covid silos and the capitulating law firms. Her prescription for this malaise is, of course, to get out on the streets. She reminds us that the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington, with its quarter of a million protesters, is coming up at the end of the month. So it’s been done before. And will be done again. The United States of protest rather than of oligarchy. That’s who we are. Sometimes, at least.

Five Takeaways

• A Nation in Protest with Itself. Born of protest, arguing with itself ever since: empire builders vs. liberty and justice — Jefferson writing the Declaration while owning Sally Hemings.

• Democracy Didn’t Fall Out of the Sky. Vernon Dahmer, burned alive in 1966 for trying to vote; Seneca Falls to the Nineteenth: 72 years. The Voting Rights Act gave nobody the vote — it protected one.

• January 6 and the Meaning of Nonviolence. Yes, a protest — with criminal consequences. Nonviolence is a philosophy (Gandhi, Rustin, King), not a standard applied only to Black protesters.

• No Pension Fund: Daisy Bates. Her mother murdered by a mob; the Little Rock Nine; jail over the NAACP membership list — and a nearly penniless death. Protest has no pension fund.

• Outsourced Outrage. COVID silos, shock and awe, masked ICE — and “too many people have outsourced their sense of outrage.” Protest for something: democracy, diversity, health, literacy. August 28 awaits.

About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.

Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow

Buy A Protest History of the United States: beacon.org

Chapters:

00:00:31 Introduction: from White’s manifesto to the full monty of resistance
00:01:49 Artists bring the protest to life
00:02:56 Is protest the core of American history?
00:06:08 The d-word: protest vs democracy
00:06:56 Vernon Dahmer, Seneca Falls, and the earned vote
00:08:54 Jefferson and Sally Hemings: a nation in conflict
00:12:16 A third-grade protest that lost miserably
00:13:38 Fifth-generation Midwesterner, dedicated to an enslaved ancestor
00:15:56 Is January 6 a protest?
00:18:20 The right to violence?
00:18:42 What nonviolence actually means
00:21:22 The March on Washington: 100 organizers, 250,000 marchers
00:25:29 Why aren’t Americans protesting now?
00:26:46 Shock and awe, silos, and outsourced outrage
00:31:10 Ending the book in Minneapolis
00:34:39 Mother Jones, Daisy Bates, and the forgotten
00:35:23 Daisy Bates: the pond, the Nine, the membership list
00:42:12 “You’re cheating”: Mother Jones slips in
00:42:35 Playwright, poet, professor: which hat?
00:43:34 “Ask yourself: what should I be doing in this moment?”
00:45:16 Thanks and goodbye