Between Protest and Struggle

A protest seeks reform; a struggle seeks rebuilding.  

A protest asks permission from the system.

A struggle takes responsibility – even without legitimacy.  

A protest tends to compromise for what is possible.  

A struggle insists on the uncompromising, and refuses to give up even when it's hard, even when it's dangerous.

When protest turns into a ritual – repeating the same marches and slogans that have lost their edge, recycling safe, predictable demands – it stops being a force for change and starts being a part of the status quo, becoming a quiet funeral for hope, not a disruption of the current order, but part of the routine.

A struggle, unlike protest, does not try to restore lost trust. It asks how that trust in broken systems existed to begin with; It doesn’t work to get us back on track – it exposes what should have been seen the whole time: that the whole system was built for exclusion, control and Institutional violence. So there's no point in repairing it, only in creating a new moral order, new political principles, and a matching social structure.

One should distinguish between Politics and a Political act.

Politics plays within existing boundaries, which might be too crowded, sometimes suffocating.

A Political act breaks those limits – to create Anarchy, but to set fairer ones.

Protest often just looks like action. It makes a lot of noise, but creates no change.  It stays within the boundaries of that which is “ok”’ “legal”, “authorized”, and sometimes, not intentionally, it reinforces what is, it settles down, it finds excuses, it becomes hooked on that feeling of “doing” – without real results.

On the other hand, a true political act creates real transformation.

It doesn’t seek comfort – it challenges it. It is dangerous, disruptive, it creates unrest.

Once it happens, reality can no longer stay as it was.

It is not another protest, but a new language and a proposal for a different way of life.

It is a new space of consciousness, of hope, of direction.

Rosa Parks

The failure of our time isn’t a single mistake, a temporary glitch, a one-time distortion.  

It’s a total collapse of a rotten structure:

• Where the law serves power instead of protecting justice.

• Where state institutions aren’t a bridge between citizens, but a fortress of hierarchies.

• Where violence is not only forgiven, but morally justified.

• Where silence is no longer modesty, but moral numbness.

• Where the principle of equality is an empty statement, shattered by “complexity” that regularly excuses oppression.

• Where the law protects criminals and ignores their victims.

• Where military policy is wrapped in moral terminology, while its goals are destructive.

• Where the value of blood is reduced to calculations of nationality and class.

• Where academia talks about “balances” and the media about “tone,” while ethics are trampled and forgotten.

Therefore, a political act is not limited to a “legal action.”  

Sometimes, the law itself is the barrier that prevents justice.  

Rosa Parks, Gandhi, Martin Luther King - they didn’t ask for permission to act. They broke the law to expose its moral distortion.  

As King wrote from jail: “One must break unjust laws”

A radical political struggle isn’t satisfied with investigative committees, patchwork fixes, or symbols of reconciliation.  

It demands dismantling the system that enabled the injustice, and building a completely different one in its place – not polishing the machine, but replacing it.  

This distinction isn’t a tactical one - it’s a fundamental distinction.

Protest can be contained within the system’s boundaries; Struggle understands that the system itself blocks the possibility of justice.  

That’s why it crosses boundaries – not to cause chaos, but to set new boundaries.

It breaks the rules of the game to create a completely different game.

There’s nothing left to save from the old order.  

The past, which seemed stable to us, turned out to be crumbling.  

It’s not just the leadership that failed – the entire system did.  

And it’s not worth renovating – it should be undone.

It doesn’t need fixing – it needs to end.  

The past isn’t a goal to restore – it’s the source of failure: moral failure, social failure, political failure.  

So any attempt to restore it is just preserving the rot.  

The choice now isn’t between right and left, or between different versions of the same old order.  

It’s a choice between continuation and beginning.  

Not repairing – but creating: a new language, a new order, a new life.  

Not to rebuild a state that has collapsed – but to create something that’s never been built before.

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Sawsan Masarwa – designer, activist, teacher, and educational entrepreneur, works at the intersection of design, education, and politics, using design tools to ask tough questions, challenge conventions, and shape an equal and shared future.