A few bad apples are ruining the bunch — that is one way to describe how the many fights for social equality are being undermined from within.

Black Lives Matter, for example, is self-described as an intervention in a world where black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted, according to its website. The word, intervention, is extremely powerful and unyieldingly broad. To what extent do the members of Black Lives Matter intervene?

In Atlanta, Georgia, the group is boycotting major retailers after local police shot and killed three people, according to a local FOX affiliate. The news outlet reported they passively protested at a shopping mall, but later blocked off traffic at one of the mall’s entrances.

A protest in Portland, Oregon, on Friday shut down traffic, and took a stand in the city hall until they spoke to the mayor, reported KOIN 6 news outlet. Mayor Charlie Hales spoke to the group and agreed to meet with their leaders, but he also said that rooms in the building were vandalized.

The difference between protesting and vandalism can make or break public perception of an activist movement. People might be able to swallow shutting down traffic, but if too many cases of vandalism, violence or disorderly conduct are reported the entire organization gets a bad reputation.

Will the struggle of Black Lives Matter be undermined because of a few extremists? It could be, or it could prove quite the opposite.

One of the protesters in Portland said he knows blocking traffic is disruptive and inconvenient, but no one would listen if everyone just stood on the sidewalk, reported KOIN 6.

Intervention is an open-ended phrase, because to some people blocking traffic is necessary to get the attention needed to make a change. To others, vandalism, or in the case of Baltimore, Maryland, widespread riots are necessary.

From a legal standpoint, it is more or less easy to say what is right and wrong. But everything changes if you ignore the legality of certain people’s actions. For instance, if you feel you need to be heard, and no one is listening, and the only way to be heard is to break the law, then is that person wrong for breaking the law?

That is another question that some people may find very easy to answer, while others ponder deeply. Should civility and the law always trump disruption and aggression?

Americans such as Henry David Thoreau and Martin Luther King Jr. may think civil disobedience is the only righteous path. Activists such as Malcom X might have thought differently.

When a person or group of people become ostracized by their own government, which is charged with protecting the same rights it is taking away, then what is an appropriate response to get justice?

The people of Ferguson, Missouri, probably asked themselves that when the U.S. Department of Justice said in a report that city officials violated constitutional amendments.

Thomas Paine probably considered the question when he wrote “Common Sense,” and many other American revolutionaries might have thought along similar lines when they picked up a rifle against their government.

Ultimately, a bad apple is judged by the person in charge of the bunch — not the bunch itself, and certainly not by the rest of the bad apples. 

Share