"I need some muscle over here!"
Melissa Click, a protester and an assistant professor of mass media at the University of Missouri, who yelled the comment to other protesters after video journalist Mark Schierbecker refused to leave a public space.
Daisy Bates never hollered for "muscle."
Ever seen documentary footage of angry protesters at the 1957 integration of Central High School in Little Rock? If so, Mark Schierbecker's video of angry protesters Monday pushing around photographer Tim Tai on the University of Missouri campus will look familiar.
Here's the link to a fine commentary by James Fallows in the Atlantic magazine. It includes the video: http://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2015/11/a-young-journalist-setting-an-example-for-the-rest-of-us/415074/.
I don't know the name of the protester who implored his peers to stop. "Don't change the story," he pleaded. They should have listened. The story changed. Before, the story was all about institutional racism at Mizzou. Now there's also a story about liberal sanctimony. Protesters showed as little concern about the rights of others as they accused the university president of showing toward their concerns. There's a big difference now. Now there's a video of the protesters strong-arming away someone's rights.
Agree with the philosophy I'm about to spout or don't. There's one thing beyond argument. The student mob's shoving and bullying was a public perception debacle of the first order.
Some insist the incident with students wasn't so bad because racism by an institution is worse. Bull. Institutionalized racism is just mob intimidation with a history. You get a history by getting away with it. Give them success against Tai by excusing their behavior and those students will start building their own history. Today's youthful exuberance is tomorrow's accepted injustice.
The root evil here, on both sides, is mob assertion of class status over individual rights. The only difference is that the student mob's actions contradict their greater goal. There will never be equality without individual rights.
The protesters' "safe space" -- a 21st century euphemism for a sit-in spot -- that Tai was "violating" exists solely because the Bill of Rights protects it. Tai had as much right to be there and take pictures as they did to assemble and protest. That same Bill of Rights -- or basic human rights, if that's preferred -- extends to Tai. Other journalists got the same treatment, protesters acknowledged.
These protesters remind me forcefully of a Mississippi segregationist filmed in 1960. She said the Greensboro sit-ins violated her civil right to choose whom she had lunch with. A crowd protecting their "rights" by pushing somebody else out was fine with her.
The MU student newspaper publishes an excellent timeline of the whole protest. It's at http://www.themaneater.com/special-sections/mu-fall-2015/. The protests got started after a report by Missouri Students Association President Payton Head that he was yelled at from the back of a pickup truck on campus on Sept. 11. The hecklers repeatedly used what many politely call the N-word.
As often happens, others spoke out about racism after one person did. University administration was blamed for an historical tolerance of racial intolerance. The first "Racism Lives Here" rally took place Sept. 24. Then on Oct. 5, according to police, a drunk wandered into homecoming rehearsal and yelled racist insults when removed. That incident, at least, was reported and the guy arrested.
Protests continued and escalated. Fine so far. Some of the protests got extreme. I have no problem with that. On Nov. 2, graduate student Jonathan Butler started a hunger strike calling for the college president's resignation. Good for him. Boycotts began. A student walkout took place Nov. 5. Nothing really changed until the football team started a boycott on Nov. 7. The athletics department issued a statement in support of the players. The president remained defiant, but the university's board told him to go two days later.
Removing a college president isn't enough. I get that. Protesters are right to demand more. I get that, too. Progress demands leverage and struggle. "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will," as Frederick Douglass put it in one of my favorite quotes.
When fighting an institution or tradition, though, never forget that an institution lingers a long time even after it loses credibility. That gives an institution time to restore, or at least patch up and smooth over, its reputation. If agents for change lose credibility, however, they lose everything -- immediately.
The Mizzou protesters lost everything. They threw it away.
Commentary on 11/14/2015