Why School Test Resistance May Be About to Sweep the Nation
By
Morna McDermott of United Opt Out, an Associate Professor at Towson University, Maryland
When people decide to resist unjust policies that have overwhelming support and for which there are few antecedents in their lifetime, mast movements do not erupt overnight. They are often inspired by the accumulation of individual acts of protest, taken at great risk. One of the best examples of this is the lunch counter sit-ins during the Civil Rights movement, which began when four black college students in Greensboro, North Carolina, decided to challenge segregation in their downtown business district, sparking a movement in scores of cities that eventually encompassed more than 35,000 protesters and led to the creation of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee(SNCC).
We can also see this occurring during the Vietnam War, where one of the most powerful dimensions of a movement which began with teach-ins, rallies, and marches, was draft resistance, individuals refusing induction into the military, and risking imprisonment for their actions. This form of protest, which began in 1966 when there was a dramatic escalation of the use of US ground forces in the fighting, became one of the most powerful weapons the anti-war movement had to awaken the conscience of the nation, as tens of