Reading an essay by historian Tad Stoermer, The Physics of Resistance at Delaney Hall, prompted a thought.
“It is easy to be intellectual about current events until you place them in historical context.”
History has a way of disrupting certainty.
In the heat of political conflict, labels come easily. We decide who is acting responsibly, who is acting recklessly, who is defending the system, and who is threatening it.
Viewed through a historical lens, events can look very different.
During the civil rights movement, sit-ins, freedom rides, boycotts, and marches were often described by public officials as unlawful, disruptive, irresponsible, and dangerous. Participants were arrested, harassed, and denounced as agitators. To some Americans, they were courageous activists. To others, they were dangerous disruptors.
Today, many of those same actions are taught as examples of democratic courage. Their leaders are honored. Their tactics are studied. Their cause is widely regarded as just.
That does not mean every protest is justified. It does suggest something more unsettling. When conflict erupts, societies often focus first on the people resisting. Are they disruptive? Are they extreme? Have they gone too far?
Those questions matter. History often asks a different one.
Was the injustice they were confronting real?
The same question underlies Stoermer’s essay about the protests at Delaney Hall, the New Jersey ICE detention center. Whether one agrees with the protesters or not, much of the debate centers on their tactics, their rhetoric, and the boundaries of acceptable protest. The deeper question concerns the conditions they are protesting and whether those conditions justify resistance.
That is the signal: the label “extremist” often tells us less than we think. Society should judge the conditions being protested before it judges the protesters. The consequences of getting that judgment wrong are borne long before history reaches its verdict.
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