In the United States, street protests helped bring the Vietnam war to an end, and the mass protests of the civil rights movement showed that, as Martin Luther King, Jr. put it, “business as usual” could no longer continue. According to King, disruptive mass protest exposes the tension that has been hidden or ignored, so that it can be addressed.
在美国，街头抗议终结了越南战争，而大规模的民权运动，正如马丁·路德·金所说的那样，使“正常的商业活动”都难以进行。在他看来，分裂性的大规模示威暴露了在一般情况下被掩盖或者忽视了的紧张关系，并使这种矛盾得以被辨认和解决