Opinion: Who’s allowed to be angry in the U.S.?

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes a mix of guest commentaries online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

•••

There’s a deep hypocrisy in how political protest is perceived and judged in America. The same people outraged by immigrant-led protests or urban unrest often cheered or excused a violent insurrection when it aligned with their political views. This isn’t about law and order — it’s about whose anger is considered valid.

It is odd in general that protest is viewed with such contempt. This is a country built on protests and rioting. The Coercive Acts of 1774 sparked enough anger and rebellious feelings that we went all the way with it. It fueled a rebellion that birthed our country.

In that time, fear, anger and outrage poured over the settlers of the once British colony. They were fed up with what they viewed as unreasonable taxation, a lack of representation and a disconnect from a monarch who lorded over them from more than 3,000 miles away. The powers that controlled their fledgling society were so disconnected from the reality on the ground that it came to a breaking point.

Yes, America is a nation built on protest, yet we are deeply inconsistent about whose protest we view as legitimate. What we are currently seeing in Los Angeles, a spark that was ignited in the parking lot of a Home Depot, has drawn swift condemnation from the political right. Anger over immigration enforcement is no excuse for chaos — at least that’s what MAGA would have you believe. But rewind just four years ago, and many of these same critics were justifying the Jan. 6 insurrection — an event sparked not by lived oppression, the type of rioting that inspired our forefathers, but by a lie.

This blatant and prevalent contradiction reveals a protest paradox at the heart of our nation’s moment: Who is allowed to be angry, and what kind of anger is seen as patriotic? Does it need to be patriotic?

Contrast that with Jan. 6, 2021. That was not grassroots. That was top-down. That was a microphone in the hands of a failed presidential bidder, speaking with urgency toward the fears of his followers. It was not about structural injustice, but about power and the refusal to let it go. Fearful families and disenfranchised individuals did not start Jan. 6. Donald Trump and perhaps a select few others did. He told his supporters the election was stolen, despite every court and audit proving otherwise. They rioted not in response to oppression, but because their leader told them to.

And yet, it’s the protesters in LA who are being labeled “thugs,” while the Jan. 6 rioters have been called “patriots,” even by members of Congress. One group faces federal repression and condemnation; the other gets fundraisers and Fox News interviews. Those who were criminally convicted for their activities on Jan. 6 have since been pardoned by the man who led them to their sentences.

The deeper question beneath it all is: Do protests need to be patriotic? Protest is often labeled un-American when it makes us feel uncomfortable. How many times have we already heard that the people of LA “hate America?” But the discomfort is the point. In my mind, patriotism isn’t blind loyalty to the man in the White House and his views on the world. It’s the willingness to confront a country’s systematic issues, not for your own self-gain but because you believe it can be better for everyone.

Patriotism is altruism. The most powerful protests in our history — from the Civil Rights movement to women’s suffrage to labor strikes of the 1800s — were all accused of being unpatriotic in their time. They all “hated America.” Yet they shaped the nation we claim to love.

This is all to say: One’s protest of injustice is not to reject America, but to demand that it lives up to its promises. If that’s not patriotic, what is?