Is this the Age of Protest when being neutral is siding with the oppressor?

Opinion and Analysis

Police clear the Narok-Nairobi Road of burning tyres after a protest. Photo/FILE 

By MARVIN SISSEY

In Summary

• The age of protest is not just here to stay; it’s barely beginning. In the words of Elie Wiesel, we must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

Pre-historically, there were three main ages. The Stone Age, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. Post-historically (my definition of the most recent two millennia), there have also been roughly three main ages: the age of the Prophet (Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Bahaullah...), the age of the Printing Press and the age of the Computer.

Taking advantage of my artistic or literary licence, I seek to add a fourth — the Age of Protest.

Have you ever actively participated in a protest? Are you a member of any ‘protest movement’? As I will soon establish, you may discover that you either have been party to one or are probably still actively involved in a protest of sorts.

Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a protest as what is said or done to show disagreement or disapproval.

I prefer to define protest as a form of self-expression to object by word or action to a particular event, policy or situation. This is synonymous to the words remonstrance or remonstration.

Before I finish this quick English lesson though, let me attempt to differentiate between a remonstration and a demonstration. To remonstrate means to plead in protest while to demonstrate means to explain.

Hence, while a remonstration typically simply opposes the fact, a demonstration is supposed to offer an alternative to that fact which is being protested against.

Today’s column is to attempt a shallow historical insight into the emergence of protest as a cardinal expression format in the contemporary culture.

While there must have been prior occurrences of protest, the earliest recorded and most famous occurred as late as the 16th century. This protest is extremely well known because the rallying call that started that far back continues to date. I am referring to the schism within Western Christianity which was initiated by Martin Luther King and John Calvin in Germany. This protest was aptly christened the Protestant Revolution or Protestant Reformation.

It started in 1517 when Martin Luther King published what was known as The Ninety-Five Theses. This was basically a treatise that rejected the validity of certain practices in the original Catholic Church. This led to the birth of Protestant churches — a movement that has come to rob the original Catholic Church close to half of its adherents and now boasting close to a billion followers globally.

If you are a member of any protestant church, then you are part of the longest protest ever recorded in history.

While I wouldn’t go as far as saying that the Protestant reformation had a causative effect on other protests that were soon recorded elsewhere on the globe, it is not out of tune to see some level of correlation between the Lutheran movement and the other revolutions that followed thereafter.

The protest spirit crossed the Atlantic and by the time it arrived in the Americas in the 1770s, the storms of the sea had reinvigorated it into a full flung revolution.

The unthinkable happened as 13 former British colonies in the northern American continent rose to fight for their liberty, risking death as farmers and townsmen took on the mightiest professional military in the land then, leading to the birth of the United States of America.

This revolution sparked the freeing of the human spirit to want to be sovereign and created the desire for participatory democratic principles.