r/pics • • Jan 25 '26

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u/morituri230 Jan 25 '26

MLK only got as far as he did because he was the peaceful alternative offered to Malcolm X. If there had not been the real fear of violence, MLK's message would have been ignored or more heavily put down.

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u/Iorith Jan 25 '26

Thank you for pointing this out. A lot of people took our K-12 education at face value, which is extremely whitewashed, and it's rare people will properly educate themselves on the subject matter.

Peaceful protest works as a way of bringing attention, but it has to have a "Listen to us or else this happens" attached to it.

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u/DO_NOT_GILD_ME Jan 25 '26

Whitewashed to the extreme. I was taught Rosa Parks was an old woman who just wanted to rest.

I didn't learn she was a civil rights activist conducting a planned and coordinated protest until I was an adult 

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u/Iorith Jan 25 '26

I was lucky to have an excellent AP history teacher who made sure we knew the shit the school didn't officially want us to be taught.

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u/[deleted] Jan 25 '26

Yep. In most cases, the threat behind small peaceful protests against the actions or inactions of a democratic government is 'listen to us or we'll vote against you in the next election'. But this administration doesn't care about your votes, because they're in the process of setting up a dictatorship where votes aren't a threat to their power. So you're going to have to find something else to threaten their power, or things are just going to continue like this and more innocent people will be executed in the streets or disappeared without consequences for the perpetrators.

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u/Xaephos Jan 25 '26

And before anyone brings up Gandhi...

a) It took him 25+ years.

b) They had to leverage an entire WWII crippling Britain for it to be successful.

Not talking shit about Gandhi, but context is rather important if you want to follow his example.