Name: Tyler Crown
Year: Junior
Major: Political Science and Editing, Writing and Media
Hometown: West Palm Beach, Florida
Age: 20
Courtesy: Facebook
Her Campus (HC): What clubs or organizations are you currently involved in?
Tyler Crown (TC): I am currently involved in Students for Justice in Palestine, an organization that I am one of two presidents of. I’m also involved in the Florida State chapter of NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and Students for Sensible Drug Policy.
HC: What made you want to become an activist and start protesting?
TC: The first march I went to was a Black Lives Matter march in Tallahassee this past summer in response to the shootings of Philando Castile and Walter Scott. Up to that point I had been very sympathetic with the Black Lives Matter movement, and I think it gets to a point where you recognize a responsibility I think, that lies–not just with you, I think all of us have this responsibility to stand up against human rights abuses, to show out, especially now. I think this is why you see so many first-time demonstrators going out to Women’s Marches and going out to protest at airports because I think people recognize that we’re at an inflection point in history where in the future they’re going to have to answer for what they were doing right now. Because we’re in crisis. Make no mistake. And again, I trust that people recognize that, and I trust that people will be moved to do the right thing and to come out and support everyone who belongs to the groups being targeted.
HC: Why do you think it’s important for people to be more involved in protesting?
TC: Something like just over 1% of all Americans protested in women’s marches around the country, and that doesn’t sound like a lot, but cities were shut down. Washington D.C. and Los Angeles were shut down for the day. Hundreds of thousands of people in all of these cities, millions in total, around the country showed out. A little over 1% of the country, and yet, that’s all you need to make a change. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s so significant. The consequences of having just that many people in the streets is calcifying. Business as usual cannot go on. That should be the goal. Because we have to tell our representatives, we have to tell each other, that business as usual cannot go on as long as we don’t have justice.
Courtesy: Facebook
HC: What is the goal? What makes a successful protest?
TC: : So, what makes a successful protest is clear demands and a coherent and uncompromising vision. That’s not to say that protests shouldn’t be plural in their attendees and the people that they welcome into their protest, however, the intentions of the protest cannot be compromised in order to appeal to some people who aren’t quite cool with groups who they don’t include in their vision of justice, like trans folk, Palestinians, etc. Obviously, you want people to show out to protests, but the consequences of compromising on those values is compromising the legitimacy and coherence of your vision, which will inevitably fracture your movement
You also have to be including the community. You should have teachers, workers, parents, students, etc. Having speakers at rallies is cool, but if those speakers are politicians – and again, that’s attractive to people too–if you say, I’ve got Bernie Sanders at a rally, you’ll get a turn out, but there’s a barrier. Those people cannot speak directly to these communities in ways that their own can. And I think that speaks to the actual forces of change, which is that–when you’re protesting you can see this is true– that change comes from the bottom, not from the top. You didn’t have LBJ who was like, “Hmm, I think Civil Rights would be good,” and then we got civil rights. That’s not how it works. That movement was preceded by the hard work of hundreds of thousands of people who demanded justice and whose demands had to be met by people in power. So, a successful protest also recognizes where the true power lies: with people and in communities. Not necessarily with elected officials.
HC: What misconceptions do you think people have when it comes to protests? What do you think people might not understand?
TC: A lot. So, it’s a grand tradition in the media to delegitimize protests and say that they’re riots, they’re rowdy and they ask, “Why would they do this to their own community? Most protests are peaceful. The thing is, even when you have a peaceful protest, you’re going to have, as there was with the Women’s March in D.C. where no one got arrested, people saying “Oh, well, there was trash.” There were half a million people on the National Mall and on the surrounding blocks–we spanned four to six blocks. Yes, there was trash. Yes, in fact, there was. It was enlightening to hear that.
One of the most frustrating thing’s I’ve heard is “I wasn’t at the march because I marched myself to work.” That’s very frustrating because the premise is that workers don’t protest. That is the furthest thing from the truth. Taxi drivers were one of the more significant groups who turned out to JFK, maybe other airports, but definitely to JFK airport, to protest the Muslim ban. Those are workers. They work all day and all night. And worker’s unions are also a big part of protest movements too. So, again, that’s just a very incoherent criticism.
Then the idea that students, who, yes, students do have time and not all of them work, but that’s their advantage. They have the resources, they’re in environments where they’re being educated and they’re having discussions with each other and discussing ideas, and yes, they have time to organize. I don’t think that’s some sort of sickness, I think that’s an advantage we have. Some of the most active student organizers I know work jobs as well. Many students don’t have the luxury of not working at least a part-time job.
HC: What is the best way for people to get involved?
TC: Join an organization. You have to commit to being a member and a participant in movement. The work of the Civil Rights movement is on the backs of all of the women who didn’t get to be at the front with John Lewis, Martin Luther King Jr., and Kwame Ture. There were so many people who were involved who don’t get the air time or the visibility that others do, and those people are way more important than any one figure head because without them there would be nothing. All the significance of anybody you see with a megaphone or on a podium is that they’re talking to people. Those people that they’re talking to are really the agents of change. Those are the people they answer to, and so, I think there is a glory in being one of those people who show out and populate a movement.