From what I remember of Occupy Wall Street and similar topic, the headline will find a receptive audience here at HN. BUT I won't tire of pointing out that pro

From what I remember of Occupy Wall Street and similar topic, the headline will find a receptive audience here at HN. BUT I won't tire of pointing out that protests sometimes have dramatic effects. So much so that I'm still not sure about the exact mechanisms. It seems so obvious that a government with all the guns should not be scared by unarmed protesters, right? Yet there is no shortage of examples showing the opposite. In Ukraine, it was some low five-figure number of protesters on a single square in the capital that brought down the government. Across the middle east, "Arab Spring" rebellions deposed of quite a few entrenched autocrats. Hong Kong, right now, is entirely peaceful and mostly students, and has China closer to a nervous breakedown than Trump ever will. Even Occupy Wall Street, favorite target of derisively dismissing "Hippies" and the left, has had significant impact: How often do you now see arguments framed as "The 1%" vs "The 99%". If that doesn't count as impact, your expectations are probably off. I got to experience this first-hand when the G20 meeting happened in Hamburg, Germany: Every single interview with one of the politicians attending that I saw mentioned Climate Change. If that wasn't the result of the protests happening outside, I don't know what did it. The Arab Spring especially has obviously not resulted in the sort of change people had hoped for. But to suggest it did not have an impact is simply wrong.