Protesting During a Pandemic: Narratives on Risk Taking and Motivation to Participating in the 2020 March on Washington

Abstract

The study elucidates the interplay of COVID-19 and the wave of Black Lives Matter protests to assess motivation and risk taking for protest participation. We draw on protesters’ accounts to examine how police violence influenced the participants decision making to participate in the 2020 March on Washington during a pandemic that exacerbated the risks already in place from protesting the police. We found that protesters’ social position and commitment to the cause provided motivations, along with a zeal to do more especially among White protesters. For Black participants, the images in the media resonated with their own experiences of structural racism from police.

The American racial divide in fear of the police

“…One is that it is at the heart of the United States' current police legitimacy crisis, and is the focal point of contemporary discussions about race and policing. Altruistic fear of the police, for example, appears to explain why many people risked their own lives to attend Black Lives Matter protests during the COVID-19 pandemic-as one protester put it, "if we don't put our bodies on the line, then our children will still be vulnerable to this kind of abuse" (Cobbina et al, 2021(Cobbina et al, , p. 1213. Similarly, as Table 1 shows, it is the language of fear that has dominated public discourse about police-civilian relations in recent years, with prominent figures such as Michelle Obama, LeBron James, Senator Tim Scott, and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Eugene Harold 1 Theoretically, the racial gradient reflects Black Americans' longer, more severe history with racial discrimination in the U.S. and the effects of having darker skin color in contemporary American society (Hagan et al, 2005).…”

Is it Worth the Risk? Grievances and Street Protest Participation During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Chile

“…Only household income decrease (H3c) failed to affect participation. The accumulation of grievances resulting from the various protest waves that preceded the 2019 social uprising might have led to a situation similar to that described by Cobbina et al (2021) in which protesting is considered a risk worth taking. Protesting in times of a pandemic can be conceptualized as a new type of high-risk activism, but very different from the one usually theorized in the literature.…”

Theoretical and methodological approaches to activism during the COVID-19 pandemic— between continuity and change

“…In most studies, qualitative methods were applied with an inductive approach which allows research findings to emerge from the frequent, dominant, or significant themes inherent in data, without the restraints imposed by structured methodologies (Thomas, 2006). To identify motivations for Black Lives Matters protest participation amid a global pandemic, Cobbina et al (2021) used an inductive approach to analyze interviews with protesters. They found that activists emphasized the need for justice, pronounced the desire to honor the historic March, and viewed standing up against systemic racism as worth the risk as motivation to mobilize.…”

“…The remaining nine studies addressed the influence of the pandemic on various specific activism expressions. Four studies investigated activism in favor of the rights of social groups: ethnic minorities (Abidin and Zeng, 2020;Cobbina et al, 2021), immigrants (Zajak et al, 2021), and LGBTQA+ refugees (Holle et al, 2021). Overall, these studies showed how-while the pandemic did not negatively affect the interest and engagement of activists in these social causes, the health concerns and regulatory restrictions associated with traditional, face-to-face forms of protest led to the proliferation of alternative (mainly online) forms of engagement.…”

“…Other papers-while starting with little or no reference to theory-do try to use the data to come up with a theoretical contribution or explanation. For example, Cobbina et al (2021) analyzed interviews with 30 protesters to further our knowledge and understanding of motivational factors underpinning participation in protests. The authors argue that the increased personal risks connected to the pandemic make this case study a compelling example of the importance and power of motivation to protest.…”