Student radicals turning out in droves to protest for Palestine seem to expect that their organized mass demonstrations will foment revolutionary change. They are inspired by the example of the 1960s, and the civil rights marchers and Vietnam War protesters are their muses. These were the heroes who put their bodies on the line facing fire hoses and club-wielding cops to bend the arc of history toward good.
At least that’s the myth they’ve been taught, sometimes by aged protesters themselves, or by student activists who morphed into professors and never left campus for the real world.
