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Is There Any Point to Protesting?

• ghusbands 9y ago
  The Boston counter-protest clearly had some effect. A large number of nationalist rallies have been cancelled [1], as a result. So there does seem to be a point. Also, it does raise public awareness of matters, in general, as long as the media doesn't just ignore or downplay things. [1] https://twitter.com/joncoopertweets/status/899804486268485632 https://twitter.com/joncoopertweets/status/89980448626848563...
• donatj 9y ago
  If you're hoping the point is instant change, no. If you're hoping for more realistic gradual change, then yes. Peaceful protest in particular gets your message to the masses. That's really the most your can hope for. Real actual change takes generations.
  • orionblastar 9y ago
    Yes, peaceful protests achieve more than violent protests. I feel bad that people die in protests or get arrested, etc. Current protests have people throwing bottles and rocks at the police, even peeing into bottles and splashing the police with their urine. That is not peaceful and provoking people. Better than protesting is getting people out to vote against Trump and the GOP next election. Get some Democrats and third parties in Congress and make Trump compromise. That would do more than protests ever will. I don't get this identity politics, and gender politics, etc. Identity and gender are social constructs I am told and the right does not control society the left does. I've never fit into society and getting an identity. I'm like an outcast because I don't have many social skills to get these social things. If the left controls society by tv shows, music, movies, plays, education, liberal arts, etc they would make better social constructs of identity and gender to help pass legislation to protect people in certain groups. But beware, for if you protect one or more types of genders or identities you have to protect them all, even the ones you don't like or agree with.
    • ebola1717 9y ago
      That went to some weird places - Modern protests have largely been peaceful. There's a protest every week nowadays, and the only violent ones I can recall in the past few years were Baltimore and Charlottesville. Smaller scale violence does occur at these protests, but it's usually a few bad actors. - It's a common and well documented tactic for governments to send provocateurs to delegitimize protests - Protest organizers know better than anyone the importance of getting out the vote, and are often part of that effort. Also, the midterm elections are still a year away. - Uh not even gonna touch your identity politics rant tbh
      • guildwriter 9y ago
        There have been quite a lot of protests over the last few years that have gone violent. G20, The Berkeley Milo Speech, The Free Speech Demonstrations in Berkeley, Ferguson, etc. I don't know what you call "small scale" but these events have had a substantial amount of brawling and property damage being done. Maybe not Rodney King level, but definitely noteworthy. In many of those cases, it's far more than just a few bad actors. If you watched footage from the Milo event for example, the Antifa crowd had a lot of people out in force. Ferguson had a lot of out of towners come in to create trouble despite the locals trying to keep things calm.
    • wpietri 9y ago
      I encourage you to spend more time thinking through your views relating to that last paragraph, as it comes across as pretty muddled to me. Identity and gender are social constructs, sure. But social constructs like "black" and "gay" were created by dominant groups as means of control and exploitation. The left's desire to protect people in certain groups is about undoing that historical oppression. So it's not about "liking" or "agreeing with". It's about solving systemic problems. As an example, I'm a straight, white dude. I'm also opposed to dominance as a way of running things. Historically, people who aren't straight white dudes have gotten the short end of the stick. So I support action to stop the deepening of that and to erase the historical effects. But I oppose similar action in favor of straight white dudes because that would reinforce the historical imbalance. If you really struggle with sentences about, say, white men, then just replace words you don't like with things "group that benefits from structural oppression" and "group that is harmed by structural oppression". That may make it easier to see that it's not about you personally, but mainly about hundreds of years of history. As a side note, I also didn't have many social skills. I was weird and awkward. But they are skills! You can learn them! Find a good therapist and spend a few years catching up.
  • mac01021 9y ago
    We can't afford for it to take generations :(
• eqtn 9y ago
  There was a protest in state of Tamil Nadu, India in regards to jellikettu(bull racing) where the central government banned it. The whole state protested, and the ban was lifted.
  • averagewall 9y ago
    Is that a good thing though? Maybe the government banned it because they found that most of the population is opposed to it. Then it got reinstated because of a loud minority. Why should a loud minority get their way at the expense of everyone else?
    • Larrikin 9y ago
      If most people were opposed to it, then they would have voted out the law makers who reversed the ban.
      • contingencies 9y ago
        For some subjective perspective, Tamil Nadu is basically a hardcore Hindu area. The people are positively fervent. It seems like Tamils sort of see themselves as protectors of ancient tradition (they are one of the oldest communities in India). It's really conservative: in the cities you rarely see women alone on the street. If you go there during election time the election posters are hilarious. Examples: https://goo.gl/photos/nLsD5XFYT3t2XVpu8 https://goo.gl/photos/nLsD5XFYT3t2XVpu8 https://goo.gl/photos/AmZrD94WWBk3ddup8 https://goo.gl/photos/AmZrD94WWBk3ddup8 https://goo.gl/photos/ETSdFDftX8fvcLVU8 https://goo.gl/photos/ETSdFDftX8fvcLVU8
      • averagewall 9y ago
        Indians, like Americans, are notorious for voting against their stated interests. They have high corruption but keep voting for corrupt politicians. Similarly, most of America's problems are caused by the same two parties that almost everybody either votes for or complacently allows to get elected. We should really put more blame on voters instead of governments to remind people that they cause their own problems and can fix them too.
• tmnvix 9y ago
  Remember the Occupy movement? They had no immediate demands. People thought it was pointless and the protestors copped a lot of criticism because of it. Almost ten years later Bernie Sanders rallied millions around a platform that was based on the idea of 'the one percent'. That wouldn't have happened if the idea hadn't already been made popular by the Occupy movement. So yes, there is a point to protesting - even if you don't have any demands.
  • Chinjut 9y ago
    Not even ten years later. Occupy was fall of 2011. Bernie Sanders ran in the primary from spring 2015 through spring/summer 2016 for the election of fall 2016. So, more like four to five years later.
  • whyenot 9y ago
    While Bernie Sanders may have rallied some people, in the end he didn't actually end up accomplishing much of anything.
    • graphememes 9y ago
      "It doesn't matter! he did it! he inspired people!" To do nothing.
    • danharaj 9y ago
      These sorts of things happen on long time scales. Let's see what the future holds.
    • danso 9y ago
      The people who backed him have gone on to participate in and influence state-level races: - https://www.minnpost.com/politics-policy/2017/08/why-bernie-sanders-matters-so-much-minnesota-governors-race https://www.minnpost.com/politics-policy/2017/08/why-bernie-... - https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/bernie-sanders-ben-jealous-maryland-nina-turner/533541/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/bernie-... Sanders' backers are arguably pushing potential 2020 candidates farther to the left than had Sanders not become popular. I think single-payer as a litmus test could be somehing that impacts the race, and Sanders can get credit/blame for that: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/healthcare-congress-bernie-sanders-single-payer-obamacare/533595/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/healthc...
• dfabulich 9y ago
  Yes, there is a point to protesting. This paper used rainfall as a source of exogenous variation to measure the effect of the Tea Party protests. https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/128/4/1633/1849540/Do-Political-Protests-Matter-Evidence-from-the-Tea?redirectedFrom=fulltext https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/128/4/1633/184... Can protests cause political change, or are they merely symptoms of underlying shifts in policy preferences? We address this question by studying the Tea Party movement in the United States, which rose to prominence through coordinated rallies across the country on Tax Day, April 15, 2009. We exploit variation in rainfall on the day of these rallies as an exogenous source of variation in attendance. We show that good weather at this initial, coordinating event had significant consequences for the subsequent local strength of the movement, increased public support for Tea Party positions, and led to more Republican votes in the 2010 midterm elections. Policy making was also affected, as incumbents responded to large protests in their district by voting more conservatively in Congress. Our estimates suggest significant multiplier effects: an additional protester increased the number of Republican votes by a factor well above 1. Together our results show that protests can build political movements that ultimately affect policy making and that they do so by influencing political views rather than solely through the revelation of existing political preferences.
  • mjburgess 9y ago
    The tea party was very astroturfed at the beginning -- how many of these protests were co-funded by investors in republican campaigns? If funding to protests were correlated with funding to candidates (which in this case, it almost certainly is) then the variable with political consequences is "amount of campaign funding".
    • aaron695 9y ago
      It was correlated with rainfall.
      • mjburgess 9y ago
        Yes, but are they looking at protests in the sense meant in OP? A campaign rally funded and organized as a protest is not a protest. If these were astroturfed then all they tell us that attendance at campaign rallies can have political effects.
• gt_ 9y ago
  There are point(s) to protesting the state, but not other groups of fringe citizens who disagree with you. They would be better dealt with by ignoring them. The people showing up at these 'stand-off' style events are not wrong, but they are probably just short-sighted and distracted by boogeymen.
  • kmonsen 9y ago
    There is a point in counter protests, you show others that they have good people on their side.
    • skybrian 9y ago
      Doing a counter-protest the next day or at a different location would also do that.
• vacri 9y ago
  You certainly get a lot more bang for your protestor buck when you're able to show the politicians that their own electorate is against issue X.
  • kelukelugames 9y ago
    Are there modern examples of this? Follow up questions: 1) Especially for issues relevant to the tech community? 2) Can that be done by an average citizen?
    • topspin 9y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_SOPA_and_PIPA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_SOPA_and_PIPA About the only supporters those bills had were IP owners; effectively everyone else in the US was against them and Congress got the message.
• pmoriarty 9y ago
  "Let me flash back to November 15th 1969, Washington DC and the Moratorium for Peace in Vietnam. This was probably the single biggest anti-war demonstration of the era, estimated at half a million by some and twice that by others... "My scepticism about the demonstration’s effect seemed warranted when five months later, at the end of April, 1970, the US extended the war into Cambodia. In the protests that followed six students, four at Kent State in Ohio and two at Jackson State in Mississippi, were shot dead. The upshot was the biggest student strike in US history: more than 4 million students walking out of classes in universities, colleges and high schools across the country. Yet still the war did not end. Two and a half more years would pass before the peace treaty was signed in Paris in January 1973. By this time there were millions upon millions dead, disabled, bereaved, traumatised. Nonetheless, the movement against the Vietnam war is widely considered the most "successful" anti-war movement of modern times, against which more recent movements have measured their "failure". "Many years later, I learned that the Moratorium demonstration was, in fact, anything but ineffectual. In July 1969, Nixon and Kissinger had delivered an ultimatum to the Vietnamese: if they did not accept US terms for a ceasefire by November 1st, "we will be compelled – with great reluctance – to take measures of the greatest consequences." The US government was threatening and indeed actively planning a nuclear strike against North Vietnam. In his Memoirs, Nixon admitted that the key factor in the decision not to proceed with the nuclear option was that "after all the protests and the Moratorium, American public opinion would be seriously divided by any military escalation of the war." What would have been the world’s second nuclear war was averted by our action, though we couldn’t have known it at the time..." http://www.socialsciencecollective.org/success-failure-political-myths/ http://www.socialsciencecollective.org/success-failure-polit...
  • goialoq 9y ago
    So protestors caused USA to lose the war, as Nixon complained?
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    • dguaraglia 9y ago
• firasd 9y ago
  In terms of anti-Trump Resistance, I was skeptical in the beginning, but the Women's March did show that getting together in big numbers gets people's attention. If nothing else it manages to rattle a President who is addicted to watching TV! But I do think one big problem is how to channel the energy the American Left has for marching, protest etc. into voting. Maybe there needs to be a 'March to the polls' on voting days! Everyone from a specific district or area get together, then groups go to their specific local voting locations.
  • CalChris 9y ago
    Well, Hillary did get at least 2.9M more votes than Trump. So voting wouldn't seem to be a problem. Instead we have a gerrymandering problem, we have a voter suppression problem and we have an election that was probably hacked by Trump and the Russians.
    • firasd 9y ago
      True. But the problem is that Democratic voters are overly focused on the Presidency and don't turn out in large enough numbers in off-year elections. The reason the GOP has a stranglehold on government (including being able to gerrymander and suppress votes) is because they won big in the 2010 Congressional elections.
    • mzw_mzw 9y ago
      > we have an election that was probably hacked by Trump and the Russians. I'm sure you can provide evidence that the "election" was "hacked," since you seem so confident on the topic. What voting machines were hacked, when, by whom, and how do you know it happened?
    • daenz 9y ago
      >2.9M more votes than Trump And 90M people eligible voters chose not to vote at all. For as bad as people claimed Trump was, that's a staggering number of people to just say "meh, I don't really care."
    • makomk 9y ago
• jancsika 9y ago
  The author puts this transitional, rhetorical statement in the middle of the piece: > The question, then, is what protest is for. and somehow doesn't even realize that they largely answered it in the quote that seems like it was included to fill out a "rule of threes" set of examples of protests from the 70s: > and the pushy, calculating Earth First! movement, which sought to “make it more costly for those in power to resist than to give in.” If we're talking about protests throughout history as a tactic for change, that quote encapsulates not only the purpose of protests but also the metric by which we retroactively measure their success. (I say retroactively because the most important protests happen under dictatorial regimes that typically aren't keen on accurately communicating to a resistance movement how much they've managed to deplete the dictator's coffers.) There are certainly also such things as symbolic protests, but it's a truism that those are more amorphous and less likely to lead to change than more serious ones. And if the idea was to use the word "protest" as a shorthand for the set of symbolic protests in the U.S. that seem at the moment not to have had any measurable effect, that is unclear and prone to confusion.
• thucydides 9y ago
  Vietnam-era Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara later claimed the catalyst for his change of heart on Vietnam policy was when Norman Morrison burned himself alive outside the Pentagon in protest. I suppose that's one data point in favor of the effectiveness of self-immolation, at least
  • pjc50 9y ago
    A self-immolation of an impoverished street vendor is credited with starting the Arab Spring.
    • tajen 9y ago
      The self-immolation of dozens of Palestinians and Tibetans didn't change much. Immolation might be good when the balance of powers is toi strong, but the conflict isn't muddied yet.
• guardiangod 9y ago
  Do not go gentle into that good night Dylan Thomas, 1914 - 1953 Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
  • JBReefer 9y ago
    That poem means the exact opposite of what you seem to think it means (like most allegories, to be fair).
    • gareim 9y ago
      It seems like it means what he thinks it means.. What do you think he meant and what do you think the poem means?
    • cgmg 9y ago
      What does it mean?
      • 1000units 9y ago
        It's artsy nonsense pandering to people who think unqualified anger arising from helpless dissatisfaction and lack of composure is cool and praiseworthy. It's not, just like the protests.
        • cgmg 9y ago
• losteverything 9y ago
  "If a protest falls outside of the media, does it make an impact?" No. But in my lifetime these protests changed life Womens rights. NOW. riggs vs billy Jean king. Women took a job away from a man. Now you cant afford to own a house without a woman's income. Vietnam war. War is bad. Draft is evil. How america treated returning soldiers means today it is taboo to say anything negative about a veteran. (yet 20 years earlier there was family shame if you didn't enlist for wwii) Civil rights. Who even met a negro back in 1966??. Now who cares. Gay rights. So.. Its not about inability to procreate... Before gays were oddities. Now.. Who cares. Marriage even. Animal rights. Yeah, out of sight... Lets protest. Cleveland amory. Aspca.. Now we turned the word "rescue" into a washed out version of saving. Nukes. We forget that one nuke will wipe out life with years of darkness... Remember iran in 1979??? "Nuke Iran" YES. PROTESTS MATTER
  • tajen 9y ago
    But are those changes due to a shift in people's perception and values, inherent to evolution of newspapers and universities (or anything that changes culture, including the job market), or were these changes actually triggered by the demonstrations?
    • ebola1717 9y ago
      I mean, it's all interconnected, so yes. - Activists who lead protests often work with writers, journalists, and professors - Protests also draw attention to otherwise less mainstream issues - just look at how we talk about income inequality today vs before Occupy, or prison reform and police brutality before BlackLivesMatter - There are feedback loops. Successful protests draw more protesters in the future by drawing attention to and legitimizing grievances. - yes, changes in technology or the economy also matter
  • ci5er 9y ago
    This all seems to be an expression of the zeitgeist. Popular perceptions shift. Things get accomplished democratically (or through court fiat without too much blow-back) and protesters protest, because, you know, man, that's what they do. Other than creating some photo fodder for the National Geographic 2100 edition of the natives, I'm not sure that protests do anything more than pound the dirt on things that are already top-of-soul to the public. In other words: Maybe minds are not changed. It seems to me, as I observe it, the after effect is that they are hardened and protests are actively harmful in that regard. I'd like to hear your counter-x on that.
• jccalhoun 9y ago
  I would like to think that there is but it seems like any time the current administration gets significant negative reaction it just turns even further towards racism. As for local members of congress, I live in Indiana and our republican senator seems content to toe the line despite the fact that many of my friends called in protest of the healthcare repeal and I did not see a single post on his facebook page or at him on twitter that supported his vote. My fear is that Pence does somehow end up as president since he is both a career politician who knows how to work the system and seems to want a theocracy.
  • formula1 9y ago
    My first reaction is to not let the threat of a foolish group of leaders to become more foolish override ones place to voice their opinion. Second thought is that these foolish leaders stay in power as long as they can point a finger and or claim superiority I don't think silence helps but it's important to stay principaled and not turn protests into riots which gets difficult at high volume and where people are instigating it
• everyone 9y ago
  If you want to influence someone, or some orgnanisation, you need leverage. It could a reward, or a threat, something. Otherwise how can you motivate them to accommodate your wishes? _ Eg. A well organised strike threatens the businesses profits and can be effective. _ But simply marching on the street, who cares about that?
  • orionblastar 9y ago
    This is the 21st century, protest via social network sites. Tell your grandmother that Trump is a jerk, etc by uploading a meme or something so she can share it with her friends, etc. :) Sign an online petition to boycott a place that does something wrong. Write to advertisers and sponsors of their advertising that you will boycott them as long as they support that group and tell your friends and family. Maybe someone can make a protest website called iprotest.com or something?
• kazagistar 9y ago
  Protests speak, but so does money, and since citizens united, it speaks louder them ever before, drowning it the relative whisper of the people.
• forapurpose 9y ago
  When I hear this question, my answer is: Imagine the world without the protests. Imagine if nobody protested Trump's actions, or Putin's. Imagine if something horrible happened and nobody responded, they just went about their days. Imagine the terrible, demoralizing, crushing silence. Protests are a public service message that what is happening is not ok with your neighbors; that it matters to them. That's why I encourage people to show up, even if it seems pointless; each additional body matters: 10 people is still better than none; 100 better than 10; 1,000 better than 100, etc. Silence = consent.
  • gonmf 9y ago
    Oh yes, imagine the silence of people peacefully talking with each other and forming their own opinions, and come election time change the government. Having opinions without being told by the opinions makers, crushing. Imagine the property that wasn't destroyed, the lives that weren't lost, the sides that didn't become more and more polarised.
    • forapurpose 9y ago
      I'm against any violence. Protest does not at all require violence.
• lngnmn 9y ago
  Only a hipster snowflake's magazine could put such question in a headline. A crowd is a major hardwired social heuristic. When someone sees a crowd of protestors or supporters almost automatic mental processes of estimating it's size and more importantly of taking a side wether one is with it or against it are triggered. It also forms a emotionally charged long lasting memory - a hostile crowd is a major life threat. Crowd of supporters is associated with protection and change. This is freshman's social psychology 101. Number of likes, BTW, and numbers related to social events in general works in the same way. Social heuristics are hardwired and hence easily exploited by media or sales departments. The best strategy is to convince a potential buyer that there is a presumed crowd of enthusiastic buyers behind him. Tesla is the obviously example. Crowd of protesters is a major concern even for Trump.
• Animats 9y ago
  What's worked recently in the US in protesting? Gay marriage succeeded, transgender rights backfired, some local success on $15 minimum wage. The Bundy Malheur takeover fizzled out. Big wins on gun rights. Any visible pattern?
  • horsecaptin 9y ago
    One might argue that gay marriage succeeded because it is good for the economy. All gays I know are incredibly smart, savvy and professionally successful. They worked for many years and became a financial and political force, not to mention they succeeded in getting people to like them and empathize with their cause.
    • nocoder 9y ago
      I think this is the point. The success of any protest movement depends on whether it can be galvanized into a political force. This can happen either when the protesters have economic and financial influence in terms of sheer numbers. Alternatively, it can happen when the protesters learn to organise in a way that they become politically relevant by voting along certain lines or candidate, but even here the numbers are important.
  • RightMillennial 9y ago
    Gay marriage didn't become a legal right in the U.S. through protests. It became a "right" after the U.S. Supreme Court dictated that States cannot makes laws banning it.
• dmichulke 9y ago
  Protests are a consequence of a democracy that isn't. If people had power, they would cast votes (on laws or representatives) instead of wasting their precious time walking around with little to no observable effect.
  • setr 9y ago
    Well no, because you still need to convince the majority to your opinion... your single individual vote is still meaningless on the macro scale
    • dmichulke 9y ago
      Protests also needs to convince but in protests consent/dissent is not even measured ...
      • ebola1717 9y ago
        Protests aren't meant to persuade - they're meant to draw attention. Persuasion is a separate step in the movement. Look at BlackLivesMatter. The initial protests drew attention to issues of police brutality that most Americans had little knowledge of. Then, journalists contextualized the history of police violence and attempted to persuade readers. Protests also help frame a narrative, which make people more amenable to persuasion.
    • NumberCruncher 9y ago
      Why should the majority share my opinion? Maybe I am wrong. Maybe it would be boring, because there wouldn't be discussions any more. Different opinions may coexist.
      • setr 9y ago
        ....because in a democracy, majority vote rules So obviously if you want something to change...
  • Broken_Hippo 9y ago
• PhasmaFelis 9y ago
  "The biggest mistake that was made during the Holocaust was that people didn't speak up. The Holocaust took place because individuals, groups and nations made decisions to act or not to act. The world was quiet then, but we must not be quiet again. Now we know better. We must all commit to making the world a better, kinder and more understanding place. Perhaps it's as simple as speaking out when you see something wrong and saying, "I know better." But please, never be a bystander or a perpetrator." --Sonia K., Holocaust survivor. http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/19/opinions/holocaust-survivor-trump-charlottesville-sonia-k-opinion/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/19/opinions/holocaust-survivor-tr... Fascists gain power when good people stay silent out of fear or ambivalence, when the millions who might oppose them each believe themselves to be alone. Protests may not cause direct and immediate policy changes, but they let allies know that they are not alone, they let enemies know that they are not in total control. That's huge. It's vital.
• d4nt 9y ago
  We've forgotten the core point of protesting. The article skirts near the truth in the section about how hierarchical organisations are more effective than the modern decentralised variety, but it frustratingly seems to still miss the point. The Iraq war protests, while massive, never seriously threatened the government or the established order of things. Whereas, the Poll Tax riots in the U.K. where relatively small, but Thatcher was ousted by her own party within months. Protests work when they threaten to overthrow the government. They could either do that through existing democratic processes, via financial means (e.g. tax revolt) or violently. But the point is the same, governments are motivated by self preservation. Protests need either powerful organisational structures with figureheads that could assume power, or a broad enough base with sufficient reckless abandonment that it could turn into armed uprising. Without either of those things, the incumbents in power are not threatened enough to act. The actual event where you all march on the streets is just a demonstration that your organisation is powerful enough to threaten the government. It's not meant to be a fun day out with the kids.
  • ebola1717 9y ago
    Zeynep Tufecki's boom Twitter and Tear Gas argues this exact point very thoroughly. Would recommend to anyone interested by this discussion.
  • mnm1 9y ago
    This is the only thing that makes sense. The people, governments, and institutions being protested only know one language: violence. Otherwise, they will hold onto their power no matter what, as long as they can. People often forget or never learn this. There are lots of parents teaching their children all sorts of fantasies about government, armies, and police, that these are institutions that should be respected and trusted rather than feared, disbelieved, and toppled. Attitudes like that lead to the ineffective protests we've seen lately. The people being protested do not care if there are millions in the streets if those millions will never pose a threat and those millions cannot pose a threat if they have delusional misconceptions about their role and the role of the people they're protesting. A lot of power and responsibility lies with parents and many of them are too clueless to see the world for what it is, let alone teach their children to react to it properly.
• unabridged 9y ago
  Maybe protests do something, but they are less important than the primary elections every 2 years. The House can be completely changed every 2 years. People just need to get smarter with their voting and candidates will start to represent the people. The time spent protesting is better spent fielding candidates, coming up with a platform that helps 80% of the population, and going door to door to spread the message.
• jondubois 9y ago
  A protest can only work if the people who are in power feel that their lives are being threatened. They get death threats all the time and they take notice of big upticks in numbers. If enough people want a politician gone, they will be. There is a point when people's will can transcend the boundaries of the law.
• dunk010 9y ago
  The author manages to completely rip off Adam Curtis's excellent documentary film Hypernormalisation without a single reference to it. Well done.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• paganel 9y ago
  It depends on how you protest and who does the protesting. The lame-ass protests you see happening in most of the United States are ineffectual because they don't threaten those in power, because they're either holiday-looking marches or they're staged by students/young people, who are easy to ignore. The only way you can change something by protesting is by projecting power. You do that either by the way you do the protesting, i.e. by actively engaging the police forces in trying to reach the seats of power (Parliament, Government's buildings) or by taking up in the streets the people who have the most power come election day, i.e. lots and lots of middle class people. Movements like BLM are ineffectual when protesting because they do neither of the 2 things I mentioned above: they don't actively engage the powers in Washington and they are not joined by lots and lots of middle class people. As such, they'll remain ineffectual as long as nothing changes. Source: me, a guy living in Eastern Europe who has grown-up by watching protests toppling Governments and who has actively joined those kind of protests once I grew up.
  • puranjay 9y ago
    Protests are only effective if they affect economic structures. One of the most effective protests in Indian history was the Gandhi-led boycott of British-made goods. This directly impacted British economic structures. A handful of people blocking a highway for a few hours isn't going to impact anything much.
    • rdiddly 9y ago
      Yeah ironically it only tends to impact people who are just as powerless as the protesters.
  • ismail-s 9y ago
    BLM entered the social conscience of plenty of people, and managed to influence discussions in the media, even in some countries outside the US. That in itself is a pretty strong form of power.
    • jononor 9y ago
• wiz21c 9y ago
  Protesting is also a personal act. Regardless of the actual usefulness of protesting, protesting definitely helps us to actually not resign. Protesting in itself is a commitment of oneself to a cause. Not protesting is definitely putting oneself away from that cause. So the question of the consequence on the "system" is, to me, second. I protest because I disagree, then I protest to remove the cause of that disagreement.
• darepublic 9y ago
  Right leaning = "wing nut", Centrist = "quailing".
• featherverse 9y ago
  No of course there isn't. And if you're only just now figuring that out, now in 2017? Then you haven't been paying attention. Come on, protesting hasn't been real since the requirement of having "permits", and the creation of "free speech zones". We live in a tyrannical police state masquerading as a peaceful democracy, where trouble makers are gunned down by death squads who are later pardoned by the courts. Just posting a comment like this on the internet will lead to downvoting and social penalties. Did you know that this site participates in the practice of "hell-banning"? That is where they silently blacklist people for expressing their unpopular opinions about any particular subject. Those people can no longer contribute, but they believe that they can because the system lets them post. But nobody ever sees their comments. It's the exact same thing as what the government does. Many of "the people" belong to the tyrants' pyramid of control and those who don't are brainwashed by it. "Is there any point to protesting?", hah I say. Wake up.
  • kelukelugames 9y ago
    I know reddit has shadow bans but I am not aware of it on HN. Do you have any proof?
    • featherverse 9y ago
      No they don't, they just ban people. Maybe they used to, but it's an unpopular method.
      • 4ad 9y ago
        A HN ban is a shadowban. The user doesn't know he is banned unless being told, and he can post normally. You can, however, see all dead posts by enabling showdead option in your HN settings. I encourage everybody to do that. There are extremely few spam posts, most dead posts are dead for different reasons. Often I see people having been shadowbanned for years.
    • grzm 9y ago
      Enable "showdead" in your profile. You can then view posts by banned accounts as well as posts that have been killed.
• balance_factor 9y ago
  An easy way to test this article's hypothesis would be to sit down with the old hands who help organize these protests - let's say, some of the old former SNCC and Black Panther types advising the younger Black Lives Matter organizers, and ask them if they think a series of demonstrations are the means to change things. I am pretty confident, because I have spent a lot of time around organizers of different colors who go back to the 1960s (or 1930s) that 99% of the time, they are going to say no. It's a very easy way to falsify this hypothesis. I mean, you might get this reaction from some 16 year old who has come to their first demonstration, but you would rarely get it from someone seriously involved. New Yorker articles about such matters usually have some flaws, but this one is much worse than usual as he didn't do a very simple thing to falsify his hypothesis.
• orlandob 9y ago
  Gotta pay rent.
• honestoHeminway 9y ago
  You need to very well understand what you are protesting against, that this monolith of power is not a monolith - more something like a medieval wall, with cracks and fractures. You need to find these fractures, and apply force only to these weak points, to bring down a avalanch. And then what? Then the machinery will repair itself- replacing damaged careers with new up-jumped individuals and the process will continu. The goal should actually be to understand the nature of humanity, not as in "I-understand-to-feel-self-rightous-about-it", but in a "Know-your-bricks-to-build-a-house" way. There will always be those who claw and crawl for power and control. Taking away that control, for example by a basic income, is percived as hostility towards by that mindset. So protesting for it, will not lead to change. Now, if you state that anyone who recives basic income must join a group- who strives for a endavour, and that the most succesfull of these groups shall be taken as example policy in that sector. You only subtile changed the demand. But you crafted it more compatible to human nature. Suddenly protests can be succesfull.
• Overtonwindow 9y ago
  A viewpoint from the political world: In a word, no. This is because the protests are mostly running on raw emotion and not sustained. I see people screaming at empty buildings on the weekends in DC and it accomplished absolutely nothing. If you really want to make change in America with a protest, it must be consistent, and constant. Show up at 10am on a Tuesday at the US Capitol. Return every single day. These one-off venting of outrage is too easily ignored.
• sopooneo 9y ago
  Perhaps not directly. But might initially ineffective protests consolidate and inspire the participants towards larger actions?