The Power of Pain: The Role of Violence and Suffering in Sparking Protest
What is the legacy of a tragedy? How does seeing pain in others spark change for good?
In March 1992, Americans watched in horror as Rodney King, a black motorist, was beaten up by four Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers. Seeing physical pain being inflicted upon this man sparked anger against the perpetrators, and anger against the oppression which was represented in this video. Following the acquittal of three of the officers, rioting, looting, arson and violence was triggered throughout South Central Los Angeles, spreading to Koreatown and downtown. On the first of May 1992, a state of emergency was declared in Los Angeles County, by the California Governor Pete Wilson, and the National Guard was deployed to help restore order. The next day, Rodney King himself pleaded ‘Can we all get along?’ on television and radio, in an attempt to halt the violence. Despite the prevalence of racism in the US since its founding, this instance of violence, of inflicting physical pain on another human being, brought people to action. This aligns well with a study carried out by Galang et al., published in January 2021, which found that observing pain led to faster response than observing a painless response being initiated; and one carried out by Soyman et al. in 2022, revealed how the insular (a brain region in the cerebral cortex) could deduce the level of pain felt by others. Thus, we are physiologically adapted to perceive and respond to pain in other people, and in the case of Rodney King, where the pain represented the oppression suffered by so many individuals, for such a long time, it is unsurprising that riots ensued. These riots were marked with violence and destruction, with shootings and physical assaults, as well as looting and arson. They brought to the forefront an immense issue, but they also led to injuries and deaths, raising the question of their utility in achieving greater equality, weighed up against the destruction they caused.
The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement also stemmed from a violent act, or rather multiple violent acts, which sparked anger and outrage, and a unification of oppressed individuals to campaign for equality. Initially, the movement came about as a response to the killing of Trayvon Martin on the 26th of February 2012, a 17-year-old African American who was fatally shot by George Zimmerman, a neighbourhood watch volunteer in Florida. On the ninth of August, 2014, Michael Brown, an 18-year-old African American, was shot and killed by Darren Wilson, a police officer in Missouri. On the 19th of April, 2015, Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old African American, died from a spinal cord injury which he acquired while in police custody in Maryland. Incidents like these have sadly continued until the present day, each sparking outrage and protest, and all involving violence and pain in a human being. Clearly, inducing suffering in another person is the ultimate injustice which the general population will not stand to watch, where they may have been less vocal in instances of verbal abuse or behavioural micro aggressions. Following the protests in response to George Floyd’s death on the 25th of May, 2020, the BLM movement was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Petter Eide, for being the ‘strongest global force or global movement to fight racial injustice’. This highlights a key difference between the BLM movement and the 1992 Los Angeles riots: BLM is a peaceful organisation, and whilst instances of violence did occur, over 90% of the demonstrations were peaceful, with violent behaviour being a response to counterdemonstrations or aggressive police action. In the case of BLM, the strength lies in the numbers - as the BLM Global Network wrote in a Twitter post following the nomination, ‘we hold the largest social movement in global history’, a movement which has gained power through the millions of participants who have taken part, and continue to do so. And the ability to amass such as large group of supporters? The power of video; of people viewing and thus empathising with the suffering of these individuals; and of people relating these extreme cases of discrimination to instances of discrimination they have experienced or seen themselves. On the 20th of April, 2021, when the police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty on all three counts relating to his killing of George Floyd, Darnella Frazier, one of the passers-by who recorded the event posted on Facebook: ‘George Floyd we did it!! Justice has been served.’ Videos thus provide value from a legal perspective, as well as from the perspective of one wishing to raise awareness about the prevalence of racism. This idea is supported by a study conducted by Feinstein et al., published in August 2014, which found that exposure to violent images was correlated with higher levels of PTSD, depression, anxiety and alcohol consumption, revealing the significant physiological impact of videos.
The Sackler family knew the distressing effects that pain, in particular acute chronic pain, could have on people, and the devastating effects of chronic pain on a person’s life. They knew that seeing a loved one in pain could convince that person to do anything to make it stop, just as learning of Rodney King’s suffering sparked Americans to protest. They built up their riches in the selling of oxycodone, an highly addictive opioid which they aggressively marketed, using bribery and misinformation, among other methods, to increase sales. Oxycodone is an extremely potent narcotic, and overdose can induce respiratory failure. The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention states that in the 25 years after the introduction of OxyContin, a prolonged-release form of oxycodone, approximately 450,000 Americans had died of opioid overdose related deaths. Many lives and families were destroyed, and a multitude of lawyers set to work to hold the Sacklers responsible for the opioid epidemic which was unfolding. Among the indignant was a photographer called Nan Goldin, who had escaped death from opioid overdose, and who was looking to incite change. She started a group called PAIN (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now), and led protests against the Sacklers, throwing hundreds of orange pill bottles into the pool at the Met (which had a wing dedicated to the family), and exhibiting photographs that she took of herself and her friends in the depths of their addiction. Just like Darnella Frazier, Nan Goldin knew the power of seeing pain, and she used the photographs she had to spark outrage in the US population, in the harm caused by a pharmaceutical product marketed as the cure for pain. However, a peaceful protest inevitably causes destruction - through property damage, through creating chaos which masks other crimes, and through responses triggered in opposing groups and counter protests. This may be perfectly justified by the cause that is being fought, especially when it involves condemning inflictors of pain, violence or oppression, however, protestors must never allow their anger to blind them, or they will be further from reaching their aims - as Obama said, during the protests surrounding the killing of Trayvon Martin, ‘hopefully, the legacy of this tragedy is not just outrage, but something constructive’.
Bibliography
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Keefe, P. R. (2022). Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sacker Dynasty. Pan Macmillan.