Rosa Parks for example sat on the front of a bus and got arrested. She didn’t move. She stopped a bus and all the passengers on the bus until she was arrested, nobody critisises her because some people were late that day!
I think a lot of people tend to look at Rosa Parks’ act through a modern lens and say, “she wasn’t disruptive, she was just sitting there,” not realising that it was incredibly disruptive at the time. What she did seems like nothing by today’s standards because her protest worked.
Women sufferage
Martyrs, too. Emily Davison threw herself in front of a horse race and died for it in the name of women’s suffrage. There’s debate about whether she intended to die, or whether she may have just been trying to attach suffragette colours to the King’s horse, but the fact is that she was consciously willing to die for her cause. Plus she went on hunger strike in prison to the point where she was force-fed on multiple occasions.
Suffragettes going on hunger strike in prison, and the prison authorities violently force-feeding them to the point where they sustained fairly serious injuries, was common in the early 1910s. It’s not particularly pleasant reading, but there’s an article from the Museum Of London that talks about some of the lengths suffragettes went to with their hunger strikes that is worth reading for anyone who isn’t familiar.
I think everyone should learn about the suffrage movement and the lengths they were willing to go to to fight for women’s rights, particularly with civil protest being a somewhat relevant topic over the last few years.
I think a lot of people tend to look at Rosa Parks’ act through a modern lens and say, “she wasn’t disruptive, she was just sitting there,” not realising that it was incredibly disruptive at the time. What she did seems like nothing by today’s standards because her protest worked.
Martyrs, too. Emily Davison threw herself in front of a horse race and died for it in the name of women’s suffrage. There’s debate about whether she intended to die, or whether she may have just been trying to attach suffragette colours to the King’s horse, but the fact is that she was consciously willing to die for her cause. Plus she went on hunger strike in prison to the point where she was force-fed on multiple occasions.
Suffragettes going on hunger strike in prison, and the prison authorities violently force-feeding them to the point where they sustained fairly serious injuries, was common in the early 1910s. It’s not particularly pleasant reading, but there’s an article from the Museum Of London that talks about some of the lengths suffragettes went to with their hunger strikes that is worth reading for anyone who isn’t familiar.
I think everyone should learn about the suffrage movement and the lengths they were willing to go to to fight for women’s rights, particularly with civil protest being a somewhat relevant topic over the last few years.