Not All Insurrections Are Equal

(Photo Credit: Tyler Merbler, Wikimedia Commons) By Deion Scott Hawkins, Emerson College For most Americans, Jan. 6 was once an ordinary, ho-hum day. That changed in 2021 when millions of television viewers watched thousands of Trump supporters assault the U.S. Capitol in their violent attempt to stop Joe Biden’s presidential victory. Legislators fled for their lives as the mob shattered windows and vandalized congressional offices. While those images and subsequent congressional investigation and report are part of the collective memory, a debate still rages over what exactly to call what happened that day. Was it a rally comprising American patriots, or, as many Republicans refer to the day’s events, “legitimate political discourse”? Or was it an insurrection, as most observers have called the Jan. 6 attack? Words Matter As a professor who teaches rhetoric of social movements, I am well versed in concepts of protests, rebellions and insurrections. In fact, my research on police brutality is heavily influenced by Black Lives Matter and other movements focused on Black liberation and safety. In an article published in the academic journal American Behavioral Scientist, my colleague Sharifa-Simon Roberts and I argue that any discussion about American insurrections must include the experiences of...