Protests are meant to be inconvenient

To the editor:

There has been much made of the protests by Coe College students and their blocking of traffic during one of their demonstrations concerning the recent killing of unarmed black men and women by police.

One of the recurring themes seems to be that others were inconvenienced by this demonstration. The fact is, during every social movement people have been inconvenienced by the action of movement activists.

There's a theme that runs through these complaints: having an opinion is fine, just don't bother me with it. Social movements by their very nature disrupt the old order to try to create a new one. And someone is always inconvenienced during this disruption.

These same old tropes were used against Civil Rights activists in the 50s and 60s, the women's rights movements dating back to the 1860s, the gay rights movement, and many others. These same tropes were employed against those we now we revere like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr, and many others in their quest for social change.

I would say that if you are more concerned with being inconvenienced by not being able to make a left onto College Avenue for 15 minutes than you are with the killing of young black men and women by our own police forces, you live in a very different moral universe than those students you decry.

Wes Shirley

Cedar Rapids