Protests are a conversation starter. In the early stages of a movement, many people may be sympathetic to the cause but they don't know if others around them sh

Protests are a conversation starter. In the early stages of a movement, many people may be sympathetic to the cause but they don't know if others around them share such sympathies or to what degree. A large protest demonstrates that there is some significant portion of the population that holds these views, emboldening the sympathetic to speak up and leading the uninformed to form an opinion. Those in power or seeking to get into it feel pressure to be on good terms with these people all jumping on the bandwagon. But the protest itself never transitions directly into power. If there isn't enough public support to awaken, or if it paints the movement in a bad light, it will in fact probably backfire. Conversely a wildly unpopular reaction to the protests may build much more support for the cause than the protests alone could have hoped for (see for example the outrage many americans felt seeing early civil rights protesters being sprayed by firehoses and similar abuses). Maybe some prominent figures from the protest can leverage their increased visibility to become voices for the movement, and in turn gain personal political influence, but there isn't much functional difference between this and politicians who rose to prominence by other means. Ultimately if you're protesting something nobody is talking about, it will be talked about a lot more. If you are protesting about a hot-button issue everyone already has an opinion on, you're likely wasting your time.