Every time these “nationwide protest days” roll around, we’re told the same thing with a straight face: peaceful, organized, principled. Just people gathering to make their voices heard. Nothing to see here.
And every time, like clockwork, the fine print shows up later, burned storefronts, blocked roads, businesses boarded up, police in riot gear, and entire city blocks turned into political theater.
But sure. Totally spontaneous. Totally peaceful.
We are apparently expected to forget what happened in Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington during the so-called “Summer of Love.” That phrase alone deserves its own museum exhibit in revisionist history.
Months of unrest, millions in damage, federal buildings targeted, neighborhoods overtaken, and we’re told it was mostly peaceful. Mostly.
We’re also supposed to pretend that movements like Antifa and Black Lives Matter haven’t repeatedly been used as umbrellas—wide, convenient umbrellas—for people who have no interest in peaceful protest and every interest in chaos, confrontation, and control. Not everyone who shows up is a bad actor. That’s obvious. But every single time, bad actors show up. And they don’t come to hold signs.
They come prepared.
And somehow, we’re still shocked.
Here’s the part no one wants to say out loud: when you organize thousands of events across the country, you are not just organizing for your message, you are creating opportunity.
Opportunity for people who want to push boundaries, provoke confrontation, and test how far they can go before someone stops them.
And when officials downplay that risk ahead of time, it doesn’t make things safer. It makes people less prepared.
Let’s talk about something foundational for a second, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. It protects the right of the people to assemble and to petition the government. Peacefully. Not “until it gets inconvenient.” Not “until someone decides to light something on fire.” Peacefully.
That word isn’t decorative. It’s the whole point.
Peaceful protest is a constitutional right. It matters. It’s necessary. But pretending that every large-scale coordinated protest stays peaceful just because the flyer says so is not principled. It’s naïve at best, dishonest at worst. And when violence shows up, when property is destroyed, when streets are shut down by force, when intimidation replaces speech,!that’s not protected protest anymore. Call it what you want, dress it up in whatever slogan you like, but it isn’t what the Constitution is talking about.
And people are tired of being told not to notice patterns.
Because there is a pattern.
Big national “days of action.”
Large crowds.
Loosely organized coalitions.
Minimal accountability.
And then, somewhere along the line, things go sideways.
Not everywhere. Not every time. But enough times that pretending otherwise has become its own kind of performance art.
So no, people aren’t overreacting when they hear “possible clashes with police.” They’re remembering.
They’re remembering what happens when the line between protest and pressure turns into something else entirely, when “economic disruption” starts looking a lot like coercion, and when “direct action” quietly becomes destruction.
You don’t have to oppose protest to demand honesty about risk.
You just have to be paying attention.
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