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Comment by perfunctory | Hacker News Reader

> But if your goal is to actually make lasting change in the system, you have to work within the system — to essentially get a seat at the table.”

Did civil rights movement work within the system?

Did Suffragettes work within the system?

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As compared to a revolution or doing nothing, yes the civil rights movement worked within the system.

If instead of gathering people and motivating them with eloquent and carefully constructed arguments, Martin Luther King had led violent protests, he’d have likely changed nothing. He (and others) worked within the system of laws and public behavioral mores so as to not forfeit the right to be heard.

Rosa Parks sitting in the front of bus was exactly the type of action that was needed, not burning the bus. I see that as 80+% working within the system.

The civil rights leaders earned a seat at the table. They got publicity during the Apollo moon launches. They had meetings with important leaders who held the original seats at the table. They did it by being peaceful, strategic, unrelenting, and incredibly savvy.

I can’t imagine how frustrating it must have been to live as a disfavored racial minority prior to the civil rights era. To have leaders exercise the strategy and patience they did is almost unthinkably impressive to me.

You're misconstructing what "inside the system" means. What it really means is to infiltrate the institutions of power (government, military), to rise through the ranks and affect change from a position of power. You're constructing a whole other meaning that is supposed to describe protests "within the law and reasonable actions".

MLK was not an insider. Rosa Parks was not an insider not even by your own definition: civil disobedience is literally the refusal to follow a given law. The civil rights movement (kind of) worked because 1) there was an implicit threat of violence (the Soviet Union fomenting unrest, riots, etc) and 2) there was a sizeable share of first-class citizens sympathetic to the movement, or that at least wouldn't approve of the necessary measures to effectively suppress it (again, violence).

> worked within the system of laws and public behavioral mores

Would you say that freedom riders operated within the system of laws or public behavioral mores? If I am not mistaken, breaking the segregation laws was their whole point. And the reaction they received from the white mobs doesn't suggest they operated within social norms either. Or do we have different definition of "working within the system"?

Disclaimer: the sum total knowledge of the freedom riders that I have is from reading the wikipedia page on them just now, so I don't hold myself out as any kind of expert here.

Because you asked for my opinion, yes, I do consider their actions as working with the system of laws (obviously) and public mores.

I believe they had federal law on their side and were seeking to make the changes in real life that the law demanded. In that regard, they were working even more within the system than Rosa Parks.

Much that my naive self wants believe that nonviolence works and violence doesn't. Often its the potential for violence that the powerful even starts a token conversation with the ignored and the powerless. Its then they start preaching that non-violent means needs to be adopted and there needs to be a negotiation.

Non-violence only works with violence waiting in the wings. Talking with MLK is way more palatable when the other option is saying, "we are willing to pay the price of freedom and that price is death (for both of us)."

Yes, I think the peaceful civil rights leaders we think of today were benefited by the threat/spectre of violence combined with overt actions and communication on their part to declare the violence not part of their plan.

I believe (hope) you guys are mistaken. For example, what kind of "potential for violence" from a starving student was King’s College afraid of when they agreed to divest fossil fuels? [0]

[0] https://londonstudent.coop/kings-college-agree-fossil-fuel-d...

When I said "peaceful civil rights leaders we think of today", I meant "ones we readily recall today based on their actions in the 1950s and 60s", not that the threat of violence is a required element in the system.

I can see how that could very easily be read as "peaceful civil rights leaders of today", so the error is on me as the author, but that was not my intended usage.

Oh I did not mean to intend that the threat of violence is present or is necessary for success in every case. I myself know first hand of a limited success where there was nonesuch

The pairing of peaceful protest and "work within the system" is ultimately what made lasting social progress in both examples.

Without the Suffragettes, the XIX Amendment would not have been written and passed. But without the XIX Amendment, women still would not have the right to vote (somewhat tautologically).

Similarly, without the civil rights movement we would not have seen the passage of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act. These acts have been instrumental in maintaining the hard-earned rights demanded by contemporary civil rights activists.

In short, I would say that protestors demand change whereas the "work within the system" codifies progress makes it last.

We need to consult a historian. I think they'd say yes - there's also a few historians who would go further and say that suffragettes actually didn't do much at all - that it was politicians within the system who changed things. This seems uncharitable to me and slightly fishy also because the same (conservative) experts write that it's the left wing who tend to over emphasise the effects of on-the-streets protests and riots.

For me, I think it's a complimentary thing not an exclusive thing. For change to occur there's protests without and change within.

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