Protest can change everything. Which is why governments around the world want to suppress it. In a week when thousands in the US expressed their fury over Roe v Wade, we look back at some of the images that helped rewrite laws and change the way we think
has been used to prosecute dissenters engaging in actions as mild as writing “no to war” in the snow. Similar draconian laws are being imposed by governments in many other nations.
Almost everything of importance is disintegrating fast: ecosystems, the health system, standards in public life, equality, human rights, terms of employment. It’s happening while elections come and go, representatives speak solemnly in parliament or Congress, earnest letters are written and polite petitions presented. None of this is enough to save us from planetary and democratic collapse. Business as usual is a threat to life on Earth. Disrupting it is the greatest civic duty of all.
Immediately after the performance, the women were detained. “We spent eight hours at the police station and were let go. Exhausted. But happy.” This was taken on 21 December 1956, the day of the desegregation of the public transportation system in Montgomery, Alabama. More than 12 months earlier, Rosa Parks had been arrested for refusing to give up her seat for a white man, sparking the 382-day Montgomery bus boycott – the first large-scale demonstration against segregation in the US.
The picture has had a powerful afterlife. In 2020, as the city of Louisville banned street protests in the wake of the deaths ofand Breonna Taylor, Black Lives Matter artist-activists led by Darius Dennis painted a vast, 45ft-high mural of the photograph on the wall of a government building in downtown Louisville.
Previously Baladi had been documenting the movement down below, but on 18 February, she wanted to see the view from above. It was the week after Mubarak had been toppled, “so that day was named the Friday of Victory. It was a beautiful sunny day,” she remembers. As she watched people in the square celebrate, two young men emerged next to her; they had just bought a massive bale of fabric at the textile market, “basically 100 metres of the Egyptian flag”.
On 25 March 1965, Martin Luther King Jr led thousands of civil rights protesters to the capitol in Montgomery, Alabama, after a five-day march that started in Selma; 25,000 people joined in across the 80km march, demanding the right to vote. Moneta Sleet Jr covered the landmark event as a photojournalist for Ebony magazine.The Handmaid’s Tale
The Met Gala in New York is known for attracting outlandish outfits and wealthy guests, with tickets reportedly costing around $35,000. In 2021, the Democratic congresswoman caused controversy with her gown bearing the message “Tax the Rich” emblazoned across the back, created by the designer and activist Aurora James. Critics charged her with hypocrisy; she maintained it was worthwhile because it created “a conversation about taxing the rich in front of the very people who lobby against it”.
“Every day I was there, capturing photos,” Haroun recalls. “It felt like history itself.” One day, she noticed people rushing towards a figure addressing the crowd, a 22-year-old called Alaa Salah. Haroun took four photos, and shared the best one online. It went viral, first on social media, then in newspapers around the world. “A lot of things happened after that.
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