A Quote by Masha Gessen
What has happened to protesters in the past was that, basically, the government in 2012 put an end to a series of mass protests by changing laws, by making it possible to arrest anybody for protests, and by making basically a show of imprisoning not just protest leaders, and not specifically protest leaders, but activists, rank-and-file protest participants. That gets across the idea that anybody who joins a protest without being an organizer, without being a visible leader, risks arrest, and not risks just arrest, but years in a Russian jail.
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Take the people facing charges in connection with the protests that occurred on the eve of Vladimir Putin's third-term inauguration, May 6, 2012. Hundreds were arrested but what's important is that most of those charged are not leaders in the movement. In fact, only one is an identifiable leader. The rest are rank-and-file activists, or people who just came to the protest. This indicates a very particular kind of crackdown - it communicates the message that there's no safe zone.
Iran has a young population, and the desire to get out from under conservative religious social restrictions and to be able to speak their mind without fear of arrest is palpable. But nearly seven years after authorities crushed massive street protests, reformers are still threatened with arrest and expectations for change are extremely low.
No one wants police brutality. No one wants inequality. But what I worry about it is when a protest becomes so large and the noise takes over that the original motivation for the protest and the conversation that should go with that protest gets lost.
It is the first time since 1993 that Russians have come out into the streets without an explicit permission from the government to do so. The main difference between the protests of 2011-2012 and these protests today is that they didn't have permits. These were - the people who were coming out into the streets were very young people, for the most part, who knew that they were all risking arrest. It's an extraordinary event.
But everyone cannot be there, and that is why photographers go there - to show them, to reach out and grab them and make them stop what they are doing and pay attention to what is going on - to create pictures powerful enough to overcome the diluting effects of the mass media and shake people out of their indifference - to protest and by the strength of that protest to make others protest.
Through protest - especially in the 1950s and '60s - we, as a people, touched greatness. Protest, not immigration, was our way into the American Dream. Freedom in this country had always been relative to race, and it was black protest that made freedom an absolute.
I spent a lot of time with some native Hawaiians who protest being part of the United States and literally carry protest signs saying "We are not Americans." And they have no real warmth for being the 50th state.
People are absolutely free to criticize the government and protest, but their protests should be in such a way as to improve the situation in the country and their life.
I am mindful that the goal of protest is not more protest, but the goal of protest is change.
In Japan, it becomes a huge issue in terms of not just the government and its protest against the United States, but all different groups and all different peoples in Japan start to protest.
Protests are the very essence of America! It is a country founded in protest.
Well, protest is central to the evolution of black American culture. It was protest that really finally won our freedom for us. Beyond that, it's always interesting to note that it expanded the idea of democracy.
We now have powerful technology, which allows us a voice across boundaries, which was unimaginable at the time of the Greenham Protest, a protest that pre-dates the Internet and the mobile phone.
Protest is OK. But protests, according to my King family legacy, should be peaceful.
You don't need any indictment in order to arrest someone; probable cause is sufficient to arrest civilians, so it must be enough to arrest police.
There is a right to protest in our country, but at times the manner in which the protest is done breaks all permissible levels. I don't agree with it at all.
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