When the leaders of Right to Rebel SATX were deciding how to respond to the atrocities happening around them, they had a few options: They could provide information to students or unify their peers to push for change by voting and protesting. Instead, to correct an oppressive system, their disastrously dull idea was to encourage others to give away their power and burn bridges with the people trying to help them. Even armchair activists likely dismiss such self-destructive strategies, but Right to Rebel is struggling with the concept.
Right to Rebel is a self-described “[revolutionary] youth organization” that frequently organizes protests on UT San Antonio’s Main Campus to push back against injustices in its community. Their last protest, taking place on Feb. 3, was nearly a success. Hundreds of students joined together — holding signs, chanting and burning flags — to protest alleged cooperation between the UT San Antonio Police Department and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as the brutal executions in Minneapolis.
What most protesters did not know was that the day prior, Beto O’Rourke’s organization, Powered By People, had reached out to Right to Rebel, informing them that O’Rourke would be on campus that day. Powered By People initially offered to either show support for the protest or delay their arrival, but ultimately opted to arrive later at Right to Rebel’s request.
Once O’Rourke arrived, Right to Rebel marched the protest back to the Sombrilla and deliberately picked a fight with him — a man simply trying to register voters. The protest organizers chastised him through megaphones, attempted to dissuade onlookers from voting and heavily insinuated the need for a more violent approach to protesting. Eventually, the crowd rightfully turned on their organizers and allowed O’Rourke to speak.
At that point, not only had Right to Rebel lost its grip on the crowd, but it had lost its grip on reality.
Violence is a last resort — a final effort for self-preservation. It is for those who have been beaten down to the point that the only thing between them and their extinction is their own strength. In any other scenario, violence perpetuates the oppression it seeks to unroot; it is a lazy alternative for the person who is unable to convince anyone else that they have a good idea.
Looking back through history, violence and division were not what enabled civil rights and liberties — it was unity. It was not the U.S. Civil War’s death toll that changed a belligerently racist South but the slow drum of civil disobedience. Groups such as the Black Panther Party did not advocate violence but rather self-defense and community, while leaders like Elaine Brown and Martin Luther King Jr. inched legislation towards equality.
Willingly giving up the right to vote and the dream those leaders and countless others never lived is nothing short of moronic. While there are too many problems in this world to even list, the number of solutions is equally grand.
Rather than fight in the streets, gather; rather than shout down allies, unify; and rather than point a pitchfork, vote.
Charlie • Feb 12, 2026 at 11:47 am
Imagine claiming to be independent while running cover for Beto and denouncing the protesters but not the ICE collaboration of admin and UTSAPD. This is just embarrassing all while whitewashing history and being embarrassingly ahistorical. Lmao
Asia • Feb 11, 2026 at 11:56 am
Beto turned a moment of unified civil unrest into a speech about how we can vote out ice. Our city council ignores our pleas at hearings, our politicians make deals with ICE right before the hearings, they work with them to the fullest extent of the law, UTSA students are posting ICE go fund me’s for their friends and family in these camps, and the violence you zoom in on is a burning of the flag. Y’all use black liberation like it’s a fairy tale of us turning the other cheek to justify a blatant passivity in the face of human on human, cold blooded violence. It’s black history month! Be ashamed. Everyone who worked on this should be proud enough to put their name on it so we can see who thinks systemic white supremacy is solved with voter registration and hugs. You don’t have to like RTR’s protest at all to see that this article is yet another “stop getting so angry” propaganda piece centered around ICE and the failings of our democracy. No racial target of our government has ever been able to just vote our safety into society. We are murdered, kidnapped, imprisoned, sterilized, and destroyed whether we are “violent” or voters. I’m so for real, your names should be publicly attached to a piece like this.