It infuriates me to see “criticism” of conscientious protest against injustice that amounts to: “You’re hurting your own cause by being so disruptive.” Whether it’s demands for action on climate change or the pro-Palestinian, anti-genocide demonstrations happening right now on university campuses in New York City and Los Angeles, there’s always someone who’s perfectly happy with a horrific status quo tut-tutting about the “lawlessness” and the “inconvenience.”
Except the fact is, disruptive protest that inconveniences the complacent does work. It has a proven history of effecting dramatic change for the better. One such example is the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, which developed outside a Royal Air Force base near London in the early 1980s by women objecting to a plan to install American nuclear weapons there.
Director Briar March’s gripping 2021 documentary Mothers of the Revolution combines amazing vintage footage with sharply executed sequences dramatized with actors to tell the tale of these brilliant women and their audacious activism. No less a figure than Mikhail Gorbachev, the last president of the USSR, has said that these women helped end the Cold War. These women may have literally saved the world.
So, yeah, disruption works.
US: rent/buy at Prime and Apple TV
See Mothers of the Revolution at Letterboxd for more viewing options, including in all other global regions.
