Civil resistance vs. vigilantism: Has nonviolent protest lost its relevance?

“To do an extreme act of violence, a person must not have seen any hope. There are groups creating a pathway to positive change.”

By DEBBIE KELLEY/THE GAZETTE/TNS JANUARY 12, 2025 12:07

PROTESTERS DEMONSTRATE in support of Palestinians at Oxford University earlier this year. Jewish students should demand safety and respect or have the pride to go elsewhere, says the writer. (photo credit: REUTERS/Isabel Infantes)

From “Free Luigi” memes on social media to a national poll indicating that most Americans think insurance profits and coverage denials are partly to blame for Luigi Mangione allegedly gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in midtown Manhattan on Dec. 4, a chunk of public sentiment has favored the 26-year-old suspected killer.Not startling given the “miserable state of medical insurance in this country,” says Loring Wirbel, acting chair of the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission, a Colorado Springs nonprofit that for nearly 50 years, has promoted social justice through nonviolent action.But also not acceptable, say he and others who weigh in on the topic of whether renegade outlaws are usurping the long-standing tradition of deploying civil resistance to effect change.

“In surveys in the aftermath, people were saying violence is justified because health care is so bad,” Wirbel said. “He (Mangione) wasn’t even a UnitedHealthcare customer, and for people to think we should shoot executives, that is bizarre beyond measure to me.”

Luigi Mangione, 26, a suspect in the New York City killing of UnitedHealth executive Brian Thompson, is escorted after an extradition hearing at Blair County Court House in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, U.S. December 10, 2024. (credit: REUTERS/EDUARDO MUNOZ)

Has passive protest become so unpopular that destructive behavior is becoming the norm for addressing cultural grievances?Wirbel thinks so. “We find a lot of people — particularly younger generations but also older as well — who aren’t familiar with nonviolent communication,” he said. “The notion of active listening and collaboration is just not taught, and I’m starting to see widespread acceptance that people are fed up and feeling that violence is justified.”Others disagree that the practice of nonviolence is crumbling like other social constructs.“My moral code and the moral code of practically everyone on the planet does not support murder — most people don’t,” said Evan Weissman, who for decades has taught a course on nonviolence at Colorado College.

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In the case of Mangione, Weissman said, “The reality is that insurance companies commit violence every day; their actions do kill people, but we only call that violence when an individual does that back to them.”People can feel like they're being bullied and are powerless against large government or private systems that seem to perpetuate systemic violence, he said. “There’s a natural reaction to a bully being hit back, and I think that’s what we’re seeing.”But Weissman doesn’t think people are turning their backs on nonviolent resistance to oppose oppressive societal ills.As examples, he points to ongoing demonstrations locally and nationally calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza-Israel war, public pushback on shortages and high costs of diabetes medications, workers in health care, trucking and education going on strike, student-led actions including classroom-walkouts spotlighting climate change and gun violence, local tenant rallies for affordable, safe housing and the Colorado Springs Homeless Union clamoring for rights for homeless people as proving to be successful. Also, “In prisons you do not have the luxury to use violence — it is quashed immediately,” Weissman noted. “Over the past decade there have been so many coordinated strikes in prisons, and they’ve been quite effective, but you don’t really hear about that.“Most people choose nonviolence a lot,” he said. “It’s the only tool you have for people most affected by something.”In their book, “Why Civil Resistance Works: the Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict,” authors Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenowith conclude that from 1900 to 2017, large nonviolent resistance campaigns, such as succession movements to overthrow dictators, have grown across the world and demonstrated increasing success, largely due to number of people participating in essentially what is a form of warfare.'Fed up with civility'But if personal harms aren’t addressed, an apparent problem for Thompson’s suspected murderer, people can turn to the extreme — vigilantism — which also has played out with school shootings by perpetrators who had been bullied by classmates.The car bombing and suicide death in Las Vegas on Jan. 1 by Colorado Springs resident Matthew Livelsberger evidently was orchestrated to send “a wake-up call” to the masses about his political and military concerns, according to messages he left behind.Another unfathomable incident that added to the nation’s destructive end to 2024 and shaky beginning of 2025 happened in New Orleans, when Texan Shamsud-Din Jabbar allegedly killed 14 people and injured dozens more by ramming a truck into revelers on Bourbon Street before New Year’s Day dawned. He then was killed during a shootout with police. Evidence suggests he was inspired by the Nation of Islam.

Police officers stand at the scene where a truck drove into a large crowd on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S. January 1, 2025 in this screengrab taken from a video. (credit: ABC Affiliate WGNO/Handout via REUTERS)

The events seemed random and confusing, Wirbel said, asking, “What does this accomplish?”“I think the polarization in society has lasted so long that people are totally fed up with discussions and civility,” he said. “There are people they have decided are enemies — folks that don’t agree with them — and they don’t have any interest in finding common ground. There is no good that comes out of either lone wolf or mass violence.”While most people usually do not agree with murder, many can relate to the Thompson suspect’s objections, said Jay Coakley, sociology professor emeritus at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs.“They have social support for what they’re saying; one of the issues with health care is it’s a part of our daily conversations, and when things don’t go right — an unexpected bill or denial of coverage — that gets integrated into their everyday conversations, and they receive support for their dissatisfaction and agreement that health care needs to change.”For Mangione, whom police apprehended in a McDonald’s restaurant in Pennsylvania five days after the fatal shooting and is facing charges of murder as an act of terrorism, the top executive emerged as the problem.“People agree with the message attached to the murder,” Coakley said. “It’s not that they’re saying they would support that kind of violence in the future; what they’re saying is that something needs to be done. And hopefully this particular incident will lead to changes in the health care system.”Weissman said he thinks “it’s fair to ask why these insurance companies are not responsible for the harms they cause people every day, while not cheering on the violence.”Violence has become such a part of American society that people can become desensitized, experts say, as children grow up playing video and virtual-reality games where killing a character is the goal, and they must enter school through metal detectors and practice drills for active shooters almost as regular as fire alarm tests.Among the details that emerged in Mangione’s high-profile case is that a spinal condition caused chronic pain, which led to problems with his medical insurance company. That affected his mental state, Coakley said.“It influenced the way he thought — the perspectives he used to view the world — and that was a key part to his motivation to shooting that gun and killing that person,” he said. “Initially we thought this was a normal person wanting to make a political statement because he was upset about health care. It was a more complex situation.”That’s why Coakley doesn’t see “social contagion” or copycat actions to follow.Social contagion primarily occurs in crowds, when people panic at large events. When there is no crowd involved, social contagion can break out “if there are existing organizations that pick up a particular message and communicate it simultaneously, and members provide social support for certain kinds of action,” Coakley said.It's possible that activists will demonstrate in front of corporate health care offices, Coakley believes. But the privatization of health care in the United States makes it “very difficult to impact change across multiple corporations, when our health care system is so spread out, fragmented and disjointed.”

Moral code in mind

Nonviolent response take cues from the reform movements of Baptist pastor and American civil rights champion the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Indian lawyer and political ethicist the Mahatma Gandhi and South African Anglican bishop and anti-apartheid leader Desmond Tutu.Over the centuries, activists have used civil resistance to call attention to numerous perceived injustices: suffrage, apartheid, civil rights, labor disputes, wars, nuclear proliferation, school shootings, religious freedoms, women’s rights, climate change, energy development, pay equality, affordable housing, capitalism and LGBTQ+ issues.Peaceful methods include speaking at public meetings, contacting elected leaders, protesting with signs and chants, boycotting businesses, tree-sitting, striking and picketing, and civil disobedience.

The latter is a tactic to break laws in a nonviolent way — for example seen locally as trespassing on a military base to deliver a message. Instead of fighting with police, activists passively resist arrest by making their bodies limp or remaining in a sitting, standing or prone position.Around the nation, some demonstrations have turned violent in recent years, with rioting, pillaging, looting, incapacitating traffic and full-court police immobilization tactics.Violence erupted during protests opposing the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq following the terrorist strikes on US soil on Sept. 11, 2001, Black Lives Matter opposition to police brutality, President-elect Donald Trump’s first White House victory in 2016 and the US Capitol breach four years ago over objections to the 2020 election results.Civil disobedience differs from criminal disobedience, Weissman, the Colorado College professor, notes.“There’s a long history of people breaking laws or destroying property or trespassing because they say this is for a reason or this shouldn’t be a law or this is a system that is unjust,” he said. “Martin Luther King talked about why would people riot in their own communities, with the idea that if people feel so unheard and so disconnected from what’s in their community, this is an extension from these power structures that are keeping people down.”Weissman said the question becomes: “Do we teach people how they can fight systems, how they can get real change, but know where your moral code is while keeping the light on the systems of injustice and daily power?”One issue is that nonviolent methods can take years to produce results, said Coakley, the sociology professor from UCCS who now works as a consultant. And younger people don’t necessarily want to wait decades to see their work produce results.“The sense of powerlessness in the face of massive social institutions and corporations lead young people to feel they don’t have the power to make a difference, and they haven’t experienced it,” he said.Historically, younger generations have fought injustice nonviolently because activism was promoted throughout society, and people became immersed because they believed their involvement would matter, Coakley said.“The civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the LGBTQ movement all have been effective, eventually creating the change people wanted, but it’s taken 20-40 years,” he said. “If I’m an 18-year-old, am I going to be attracted to protests that might lead to changes being made when I’m 50 years old?”

That’s one of the questions leaders of the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission have, as the organization surveys its membership of 300 active participants and a mailing list of 1,000.

The governing board decided in the fall that the organization “only would initiate programs that members clearly had an interest in,” Wirbel said.Survey results to date show that “nonviolent communication and peacemaking” is the second-highest category of what people would like to learn more about or would support, said Matt Jones, director of member engagement and co-director of Youth Activist Training, which the organization offers as a teen day camp in the summer.“People think there’s a lot of divisions in the country and people who think differently than they do. A lot want to build a bridge and work with people; others think we’ve gone as far as we possibly can, and we need new ideas.”Nonviolent communication involves all-in listening when someone is speaking, asking questions to validate understanding of what that person is saying and finding some common ground through sharing one’s own perspective in a way that is not confrontational, Jones said.“I feel a lot of these issues in the violence are rooted in alienation, inequalities, despair and hopelessness,” said Jones, a 33-year-old and part of the millennial generation. “To do an extreme act of violence, a person must not have seen any hope. There are groups creating a pathway to positive change.”The Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission plans to offer speakers, events such as film nights and workshops on nonviolence throughout the year, Jones said, to inspire people. More information is available at the Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/PPJPC/.In recent years, the organization has shrunk to having no paid staff and no office space. Wirbel said 2025 will be telling in determining its fate.

Because, Wirbel said, it’s one thing for people to express on a survey that they would support training and informative events focusing on nonviolence, but it’s another matter to see how many people embrace the approach and choose to become involved.