4 ms·

I would like to add my (unwanted) two-cents: I'm of the (soft) opinion that protests often cause more harm than good - or, will have a neutral effect - to a cau

I would like to add my (unwanted) two-cents: I'm of the (soft) opinion that protests often cause more harm than good - or, will have a neutral effect - to a cause, particularly when there is anything 'uncouth' to a protest such as violence or obstruction of traffic. As much as I hate to say it, I struggle to think of what the Women's March or Occupy Wall Street tangibly accomplished. Can someone provide studies or articles demonstrating the effectiveness of large protests in changing the populace's views?

rahidz 7y ago
Occupy Wall Street directly brought the idea of there being a "1%" into everyday political and social usage, which has significantly altered the way we discuss class in this country.
dudul 7y ago
The Tea party, Gandhi and his friends, Protests during Vietnam war, the storming of the Bastille. Now, in "recent" History I tend to agree with you. My personal opinion is that protests are not violent enough to cause real change. Edit: I would appreciate feedback from downvoters. I think the few examples I provided are valid to illustrate "protests that caused real change", but if I'm wrong I'm happy to learn.
- hnbroseph 7y ago
  wasn't the us involved with the vietnam conflict for the better part of 20 years? i was actually under the impression that the vietnam protests, while at times quite noticeable, weren't all that impactful in-and-of themselves. i think that, insofar as one might be inclined to point at "successful" protests, it's often really an issue of achieving a consensus amongst a plurality of those in power. perhaps protests can work toward that (i'm not sure); but if so, they could also work against it. i sadly doubt the protests in hong kong, despite their scope and intensity, will change much at all when the powers-that-be neither care, nor (seemingly) can ever be made to care.
  - dudul 7y ago
    Isn't it generally accepted that the US "lost" the war because of the violent anti-war protests? I didn't say one single protest changed the whole thing, but these protests changed the attitude of the population towards the war, made it vastly unpopular, and in the end the US had to give up.
wjn0 7y ago
What you're talking about is counterfactual inference, which is a non-trivial problem even in well-controlled settings. The effect of large-scale protests would probably be very difficult to quantify with the rigour you're alluding to. I'd love to be proven wrong, though.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> Can someone provide studies or articles demonstrating the effectiveness of large protests in changing the populace's views? Protests aren't about changing people's views as much as about normalizing active engagement by the silent whose views on the issue (even if they haven't deeply considered them prior to the protest drawing attention) already favor the protesters. When people already opposed to position a protest takes dismiss it as unconvincing, they are missing the point. Protests are about mobilizing allies not converting enemies. > I struggle to think of what the Women's March or Occupy Wall Street tangibly accomplished. OWS directly produced the rapid development of anti-elite populist movements of both the Right and Left which subsequently displaced the dominant faction of the Republican Party and drastically weakened the dominant faction of the Democratic Party, it's a major reason that we have the President we have and that the pool of potential opponents for him in the next election looks like it does. The meatspace Women's March and the online #MeToo protest movement were the central mobilizing elements in what has been one of the biggest ad most rapid social and political mobilizations of women and around women's issues—in government, workplaces, and society generally—in this country’s history, which had adverse repercussions for a number of very powerful people. It's a key element in the biggest increase in women on Congress from one Congress to the next ever.
jackpirate 7y ago
There's a famous paper called [DO POLITICAL PROTESTS MATTER? EVIDENCE FROM THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT](https://www.aeaweb.org/conference/2013/retrieve.php?pdfid=227 https://www.aeaweb.org/conference/2013/retrieve.php?pdfid=22...) that addresses these concerns. They use the weather as a proxy for randomized controlled trials and show that: areas where it rained during the tea party protesters had fewer protesters and the tea party movement had fewer votes in those areas. Because weather is essentially random, we can therefore conclude that the fewer votes was probably due to people choosing not to protest due to the rain, and if they had chosen to protest then there would have been more tea party votes.
2bsj22spw-2973 7y ago
I think Martin Luther King explained the rationale for civil disobedience very eloquently in his letter from the Birmingham jail.[1] Ultimately his and other protests led to legislation in the form of the civil rights act.[2] [1] http://okra.stanford.edu/transcription/document_images/undecided/630416-019.pdf http://okra.stanford.edu/transcription/document_images/undec... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_rights_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_rights_movement

rahidz 7y ago

Occupy Wall Street directly brought the idea of there being a "1%" into everyday political and social usage, which has significantly altered the way we discuss class in this country.

dudul 7y ago

The Tea party, Gandhi and his friends, Protests during Vietnam war, the storming of the Bastille. Now, in "recent" History I tend to agree with you. My personal opinion is that protests are not violent enough to cause real change. Edit: I would appreciate feedback from downvoters. I think the few examples I provided are valid to illustrate "protests that caused real change", but if I'm wrong I'm happy to learn.

hnbroseph 7y ago
wasn't the us involved with the vietnam conflict for the better part of 20 years? i was actually under the impression that the vietnam protests, while at times quite noticeable, weren't all that impactful in-and-of themselves. i think that, insofar as one might be inclined to point at "successful" protests, it's often really an issue of achieving a consensus amongst a plurality of those in power. perhaps protests can work toward that (i'm not sure); but if so, they could also work against it. i sadly doubt the protests in hong kong, despite their scope and intensity, will change much at all when the powers-that-be neither care, nor (seemingly) can ever be made to care.
- dudul 7y ago
  Isn't it generally accepted that the US "lost" the war because of the violent anti-war protests? I didn't say one single protest changed the whole thing, but these protests changed the attitude of the population towards the war, made it vastly unpopular, and in the end the US had to give up.

wjn0 7y ago

What you're talking about is counterfactual inference, which is a non-trivial problem even in well-controlled settings. The effect of large-scale protests would probably be very difficult to quantify with the rigour you're alluding to. I'd love to be proven wrong, though.

dragonwriter 7y ago

> Can someone provide studies or articles demonstrating the effectiveness of large protests in changing the populace's views? Protests aren't about changing people's views as much as about normalizing active engagement by the silent whose views on the issue (even if they haven't deeply considered them prior to the protest drawing attention) already favor the protesters. When people already opposed to position a protest takes dismiss it as unconvincing, they are missing the point. Protests are about mobilizing allies not converting enemies. > I struggle to think of what the Women's March or Occupy Wall Street tangibly accomplished. OWS directly produced the rapid development of anti-elite populist movements of both the Right and Left which subsequently displaced the dominant faction of the Republican Party and drastically weakened the dominant faction of the Democratic Party, it's a major reason that we have the President we have and that the pool of potential opponents for him in the next election looks like it does. The meatspace Women's March and the online #MeToo protest movement were the central mobilizing elements in what has been one of the biggest ad most rapid social and political mobilizations of women and around women's issues—in government, workplaces, and society generally—in this country’s history, which had adverse repercussions for a number of very powerful people. It's a key element in the biggest increase in women on Congress from one Congress to the next ever.

jackpirate 7y ago

There's a famous paper called [DO POLITICAL PROTESTS MATTER? EVIDENCE FROM THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT](https://www.aeaweb.org/conference/2013/retrieve.php?pdfid=227 https://www.aeaweb.org/conference/2013/retrieve.php?pdfid=22...) that addresses these concerns. They use the weather as a proxy for randomized controlled trials and show that: areas where it rained during the tea party protesters had fewer protesters and the tea party movement had fewer votes in those areas. Because weather is essentially random, we can therefore conclude that the fewer votes was probably due to people choosing not to protest due to the rain, and if they had chosen to protest then there would have been more tea party votes.

2bsj22spw-2973 7y ago

I think Martin Luther King explained the rationale for civil disobedience very eloquently in his letter from the Birmingham jail.[1] Ultimately his and other protests led to legislation in the form of the civil rights act.[2] [1] http://okra.stanford.edu/transcription/document_images/undecided/630416-019.pdf http://okra.stanford.edu/transcription/document_images/undec... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_rights_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_rights_movement