It Was 45 Years Ago Today

On the 45th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, let’s revisit this essay David Boaz penned a few years back placing Stonewall in context as resistance against oppression by the state.

4 Comments for “It Was 45 Years Ago Today”

  1. posted by Jorge on

    “In Foreign Affairs, Jack Goldstone posits the factors that lead to revolution:

    The necessary and sufficient conditions are fourfold: a government that has come to appear so irremediably unjust or inept that it is widely viewed as a threat to the country’s future; elites (especially military) that are alienated from the state and no longer willing to defend it; broad-based popular mobilization that spans different groups and classes; and international powers that are unwilling to step in to defend a threatened regime, or that constrain it from using maximum force to defend itself.

    Fassssscinating.

    This puts NYC’s Stop and Frisk policy, the Occupy Wall Street movement, and the Tea Party movement in an interesting light.

    And the recent history of the gay(LBT) rights movement as well. There’s been considerable breakaway among major Republican party politicians on just about every single issue. As for “international powers that are unwilling to step in to defend a threatened regime, or that constrain it from using maximum force to defend itself”, let us posit the influence of the Supreme Court. The judiciary!

    Revolution doesn’t have to succeed entirely to have an impact. What if we make things just a little better? Or do we need to make things a lot better? Bye-bye revolution, a victim of its own premature success, as I am very fond of saying about just about all the half-century’s civil rights movements.

  2. posted by tom Jefferson 3rd on

    The late 1960s was a time when people – globally – got very upset with the status quo, and wanted to change their government. Their was a high level of, perhaps a times, naive optimism in bringing about more democratic, more humane policies.

  3. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    Boaz is one of the few conservatives who understands the similarities between the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s and our struggle to end government repression and achieve equal treatment under the law.

    Conservatives of late — even stalwarts like Jonathan Rauch — have been writing a lot of foolishness in an attempt to deny the similarities.

    As someone old enough to have been an adult before Stonewall, I can attest to the similarities without claiming equivalence. I can only conclude that those who trying to whitewash the government repression of the time — like Rauch, who was 9 years old when the Stonewall uprising took place — didn’t live though it.

    • posted by Houndentenor on

      If two things have to be exactly alike for there to be valid comparison then virtually no comparisons would ever be valid.

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