Partners in Protest: A History of People Showing up Together

If there is one smidgen of hope to be found in the current state of the world, it is this: How quickly and spontaneously resistance springs from even the darkest moments. From global anti-war demonstrations to people blowing home-made whistles to warn of ICE raids, ordinary folks, often with no activism background or formal organizations behind them, are standing up and taking action. 

You see it in the profusion of homemade pink “pussy hats” at anti-Trump rallies, in the people who spontaneously gathered for Black Lives Matter vigils, in the young queer people working to end homelessness among their peers. In the U.K., you see it in the disabled people who battle inaccessible transport to get to Parliament and lobby against welfare cuts. Around the world, you see it in all the people who quietly improve their communities – picking up litter, taking food to elderly neighbours, petitioning for better schools for their kids.

It’s often small-scale and unglamorous work, but as an activist by nature, I know that this is the way resistance works. People have to look after each other, and they have to show up and be counted. Whatever the opposition has, we have the numbers, the doggedness, the anger and the visibility.

There’s just one thing: Too often we are fighting for causes in silos.

If people worked together, across the very demographics and beliefs that so often divide us, the outcomes would be magnified. After all, many issues share underlying causes.

It’s these deeper issues we need to challenge. I’ve spent a lot of time researching disability history as well as the wider history of liberation movements, and time and again, I am struck by how often real change only happens when disparate groups reach out to each other and build coalitions. Not convinced? Here I offer some of my favourite examples of protest partnerships that have crossed divides, forged unlikely allies, and made history.

I’ll just say it: This is my all-time favorite story of groups coming together. Section 504 was a paragraph in the 1973 Rehabilitation Act that was supposed to protect disabled people from discrimination in any interaction with the U.S. federal government. However, after the Act passed, successive administrations delayed and watered down the regulations needed to put it into action, and by 1977, despite pressure from disability groups, Section 504 still hadn’t been implemented.

But on April 5, 1977, the ultimate collaboration happened — a 24-day sit-in that took place in San Francisco, spearheaded by Judy Heumann, considered the mother of the disability rights movement, Brad Lomax, a disability rights activist and Black Panther, and Kitty Cone. These three led more than 100 disabled people and their allies in an occupation of the city’s Health Education and Welfare building. While other sit-ins at regional HEW offices were quickly quashed, this one persisted until news came that the full 504 regulations had been signed into law.

This was an incredible story of disabled protestors — without their usual medication and caregivers — helping each other. Blind occupiers helped quadriplegic ones wash, while wheelchair users signed important information to their deaf friends. Meanwhile, the Black Panthers brought in hot food every day. A local homelessness group brought in mattresses. The city government installed payphones when federal officials cut the phone lines in the building. And supporters from organizations as varied as the Glide Memorial Church and the Gay Men’s Butterfly Brigade kept a vigil outside, maintaining media interest by relaying messages from protesters inside. 

Every time I think about the Panthers turning up with hot food, I get a lump in my throat, and reflect on how, in these challenging times, activists — both professional and accidental — would do well to reach out to each other, find common ground, and build coalitions that demand better for all of us.

The decades-long struggle against segregation and oppression in South Africa brought together disparate groups within the country and beyond, eventually leading to sweeping change for millions of people. Within South Africa, the Black resistance mixed with other racial groups including the South African Indian Congress, which was crucial to the founding of the anti-apartheid coalition back in the 1950s. Several white political parties — most notably, the Progressive Party and the Communist Party — also officially opposed apartheid, providing the only parliamentary opposition to the racist policy (although it must be noted that most white politicians supported the regime). 

One advantage of different groups joining forces means that a mix of different tactics can come to the fore.That was the case here, where the African National Congress led with armed struggle and the Pan-Africanist Congress with strikes and boycotts. Black student groups also played a pivotal part (think: the infamous 1976 Soweto uprising of students), which brought worldwide attention to the cause. These groups all worked together to build resistance across South Africa.

Globally, the anti-apartheid movement, which tended to focus on economic boycotts of the racist regime, was headquartered in London (though many towns and cities across the U.K. had local branches). The British movement, like its South African counterpart, also brought together vastly different groups –  South African exiles, British students, church leaders and trade unionists among them. Although the Thatcher government refused to impose sanctions, the movement successfully lobbied major businesses to cancel contracts with South Africa and convinced many ordinary people to boycott South African products, creating economic pressure on the regime that ultimately contributed to its downfall.

The lesson from South Africa: everyone has a role to play — even from thousands of miles away. Even if we’re not out at the protest, many of us can make choices about how we spend our money or who we work with. We can care about people we will only ever know in the abstract, and we can help them in real, tangible ways. 

The AIDS crisis of the late 1980s and 1990s saw LGBTQ activists working closely with disability campaigners to call for better treatment and less stigma for people with HIV. Most of this collaboration happened at the grassroots level, for example, at South London’s METRO charity, where the principles of disability rights were applied to help those with HIV navigate healthcare systems and, as time went on and treatments improved, push for workplace accommodations. Later, activists  made sure that HIV was explicitly included in the definition of disability that underpinned the Disability Discrimination Act of 1995, the U.K.’s first law protecting disabled people. The sharing of expertise between these groups, and the permission to frame HIV as a disability issue, created concrete change for severely marginalized people. 

Another coming together: Although the early crisis overwhelmingly affected gay men, lesbians were responsible for much of the organizing around it. In the U.S., lesbian groups responded to a shortage of blood for transfusions by organizing donation drives, garnering the nickname the Blood Sisters. In the U.K., lesbian groups were instrumental in pressuring Margaret Thatcher into finally acknowledging the crisis. Across countries, it was lesbians and queer women who provided much of the hands-on care to gay men sick with HIV/AIDS, when medical staff and families refused to do so. Some activists from the time have since credited lesbians’ response to the AIDS crisis with bringing together disparate queer groups to fight for the rights of all LGBTQ people. You never know what legacies working together might create.

Poland’s anti-communist movement is known by the name of the large trade union that led it: Solidarity. But it brought together many other workers’ organizations besides. In 1988, there were a series of strikes that forced the government to eventually hold more liberal elections. The movement also drew in the powerful Catholic Church; the anti-Soviet left and U,S.-led liberals, groups that had little in common except their opposition to authoritarianism. A Warsaw-based group of academics stepped in to help the trade unionists formulate their demands, and Pope John Paul II (who happened to be the first Polish pope) met with Solidarity’s leaders to publicize their aims around the world. These alliances transformed Solidarity from a workers’ movement into an unstoppable, global demand for democracy that not only changed Polish history but the trajectory of the whole Soviet block.

We at the Persistent would love to hear your own favorite examples, past and present, large or small, where disparate groups worked together to create positive change. Write to us and tell us what you’ve got.