Another great protest from the year of my birth. On October 27, 1967, about fifty thousand people (mostly young, mostly white, mostly hippies) marched to the Pentagon to protest the war in Vietnam. Their aim was to make the Pentagon float by bombarding it with love and peace. It didn’t work. But photographer Bernie Boston took a famous photo he titled “Flower Power” as a young man stuck the stem of a flower into the barrel of a rifle pointed at him.
The land of the free and the home of the brave, my ass. This man was brave and got castigated. This man exercised his freedom and got fired. And y’all wonder why people rise up? It’s because you won’t listen when they speak with dignity and respect. O! Thus be it ever when free men shall stand, at least in this dystopian America we’ve carved out for ourselves.
This guy. Rahul Dubey. In early June he heard police using flashbangs and tear gas on BLM protesters outside his Washington DC rowhouse. What does he do? He opens his door and yells at them—to GET INSIDE HIS HOUSE. He let more than 70 people hide in his home all night while cops rounded up and arrested almost 200 of their fellows. Cops even came up to the house and sprayed pepper spray into it, but he told them that every person in there was his guest. You don’t have to go to the protests to resist, but you do have to resist.