Do protests actually do anything?
Do protests actually do anything?
Tons of protests going on everywhere against Israel, but not a single government has changed their stance
Only ones that can materially disrupt things.
A protest with a permit or with permission is a parade.
Even those can still have some benefit - it can act as a networking opportunity for people to meet each other and plan other events / get involved in other ways, it can give a morale boost to people considering giving up, etc.
Sometimes. It depends on a lot of factors. Protests can convince people to change their mind, it has happened in the past and does happen on some situations these days as well. Protests can also have negative effects as well, considering things like where, when, and how a protest is carried out can either change people's minds or entrench them even more in their own opinion.
At the end of the day, the outcome of a protest is just as unpredictable as what a person will do in ten years. Or even the next hour, really.
Hmmm, ig it works if people in charge are actually someone who are willing to accept their mistakes and change their minds, which does not seem to be the case for the situation in question
Protests rarely have a fast rate of changing political situations. Take a look at the suffragette movement. There is also a big difference of success between peaceful and violent protests.
I dunno, effective protesting will most of the time target the rich, or oil companies etc. instead of changing peoples minds. talking is a good tool for that instead.
Preceding the Iraq War, there was the largest worldwide protest in history to try to stop the war from happening.
Protests are helpful at showing public sentiment, but they rarely change policy.
MLK was assassinated after he started focusing on class issues. The FBI tried to threaten him with an anonymous letter telling him to kill himself.
The Stop Cop City protestors in Atlanta are being charged with terrorism.
Fred Hampton. Gandhi. Leftist governments that won’t bend to fascist/capitalist countries’ bidding. Edward Snowden, Julian Assange. Real threats are “reasoned with,” and if that fails, neutralized.
Immediately after the UK anti-war protests, I remember seeing how shaky Tony Blair was in a sabre-rattling speech (The same day or a day after), knowing that 1million people had hit the streets to disagree with what he was saying.
So they are acknowledged by politicians.
Policy on the looming war did not change, due to back-scratching alliances between the countries involved. The USA was shouting 'jump'. The result, Allies: 'how high'.
Good thing that just like the USA that they replaced Blair with someone who just had the balls to be an absolute piece of shit with zero remorse. Donald Trump and Boris Johnson make Blair and Bush look like fucking brilliant men of great integrity, which they are assuredly not.
Both the women's suffrage movement and the civil rights movement in the US were significantly fueled by protests. It takes more than protests, but protests can play an important part.
Notably, these movements had effective protests because they actually tried to force a change with their matches. The civil rights movement marching through Selma was to a registration office, because they were being denied the right to vote, and they were effectively saying "go ahead, tell us all no, all at once."
Suffragettes not only demonstrated but worked together to convince their husbands to embrace the movement, and even that only happened because Wilson had a stroke and his wife effectively ran the office while he recovered.
Modern protests are skipping the most important step. They're obstructing, being seen, but not actually trying to accomplish anything specific. Or if they are, their objective with each protest is so obscured by the media as to be rendered moot. What good did blocking traffic for half an hour do, other than to sour people to your cause?
Every time a person is killed by a cop, fucking get 500 people to go to the police station responsible and have every single person demand the footage of the killing. One after another. Inundate then with requests, clog up their operation, get fucking arrested if you have to.
Protesting alone doesn't accomplish anything, unless you protest with some teeth.
Building off this, people have to look at more than just the protests. "Radicals" shape the Overton Window, think Malcom X.
In a world where nobody protests and nobody is participating in radical activism, nothing changes. In a world where there are protests but still no radical activism, there is usually no change, though the media and capitalists will feign care and "listen to the issues". When the protesters become the moderates, the ruling class finally cedes some power to stop social revolution.
In a world where there are only radical activists, no moderate protesters or passive bystanders, there would be social revolution, monumental change. This has happened before, and it's why the ruling class concedes changes as the overton window becomes more radical.
To a lot of people this looks like "protests work!" but it's not the protests primarily, it's the threat of social revolution, led by the radicals and supported by the new moderate position of protesting against the status quo.
This is an incorrect and rosy generalisation of the suffragette and many protest movements in general. Protest movements are inherently messy and disorganised. The suffragette movement itself was infamous for infighting, because they couldn't decide whether they were only fighting for voting rights for women, or equality in general such as 8 hour work days for women.
It took more than 50 years later for these workplace equality ideas to become more mainstream as second wave feminism in the 1970s. Even then, the second wave feminists were prone to infighting, due to feminists not agreeing on what a woman should be, usually by excluding lesbians and trans women.
If you think modern protests are too disruptive and only work to sour people to your cause, remember that suffragettes literally committed arson, improvised bombings and attempted assassinations. The extreme violence was met with immense public backlash, to the point they were painted by the media as literal terrorists.
Feminism - Suffrage, Equality, Activism | Britannica - https://www.britannica.com/topic/feminism/The-suffrage-movement
Farmers protested all over Europe recently and got what they wanted, which is to get rid of latest environmental regulations (that would have enforced an end of subsidies on diesel, reduction of nitrates use in fertilisers etc).
Yeah, but farmers have a powerful lobby and they produce our food. So they got some power behind their words.
Yes because:
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There is a visible action taking place. You are standing for something you believe in. This gives other people who may lack confidence or opportunity something to notice.
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Those in authority cannot claim what they do is an unopposed position.
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Those you are protesting on behalf of, even if they are going through hell, know that someone somewhere is not prepared to let their circumstances go unnoticed.
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Those you are protesting against know that someone sees what they are doing.
Maybe if the person who’s actions are being protested against are reasonable. When protesters are met by military forces and detained in trumped up charges of terrorism, then they don’t work until there looks to be consequences for the person/group being protested.
As a rule of thumb if you have the military on your side protests get crushed. Look at Egypt for an example of what happens once the military gets involved.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle\_of\_Blair\_Mountain](The Battle of Blair Mountain) is a good example on the US end. Striking US mine workers crushed by the US military on US soil. You could argue that it was one of many events that led to labor protections, but it wasn’t the inviting event and those protections came more than a decade later.
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I think they can work, but only when certain pieces are there. The protest must have:
- A clearly defined goal
- Existing support somewhere in the government, or a financial incentive for people in the government that oppose you.
For example, civil rights and women's right to vote had some governmental support. The protests had well defined goals, and helped raise awareness and support for those people already in government to enact change.
On the other hand, the 1% protests a few years ago, and more recently, BLM, had ambiguous goals. Without clear goals, no existing government support could be identified. And there was no financial incentive for others to act. The protests raised awareness but ultimately had little real effect unfortunately.
I do wonder if things have changed though. I think public shaming helped enact some changes in the past, but no one has shame anymore.
What was unclear about "stop killing black people or anyone else just because you have a badge!"?
All black people, or... /s
Read up on the civil rights movements or how women got the right to vote.
Protests 100% work
Only when there's enough people that it's bordering revolution. Note how many national guard were not only deployed, but actually found themselves in gun battles (over civil rights), it was nuts by today's norms.
History shows that protests worked either when the vast majority of the population striked, or when they were violent.
I am quite disillusioned that gathering in a single square for a few hours with some signs will ever change anything.
Note, 100% can work, but don't work 100%.
There were plenty of less peaceful groups too. So I guess they 100% worked too.
Yes, mobilization is a strong message to government in democracy. It says we do not like the direction, we are going and we will vote you out or cause more disruption. In my town we mobilized in front of our MP's office due to the partial privatization of medcial aid. Our MP ended up changing his vote and siding against his party, as it was the will of the people. Participation in democracy is a powerful tool.
You need to use your protests as recruiting grounds for more direct pressure on your government. You should establish or join a lobbying organization and recruit volunteers. You will have these people write letters to the editor, solicit for donations, call and write to your representatives, and schedule in-person meetings with government officials.
Standing on the street and yelling by itself is not enough, you need to become a part of the establishment to affect change, but you can grow your organization by finding people who have proven to be motivated. A protest is a great place for that sort of thing.
You've summed up the key take-aways I got from my youthful protests of days gone by. 1) Teach the newbies about the current protest issue and possibly related issues. 2) Recruit. 3) Make contacts. 4) ORGANIZE. Not everyone can lead or organize for an issue, but everyone can be a helper. Your local government officials don't care about your single voice, but they DO care if you represent a block of voters that are going to vote based on policy X. A petition with a bunch of signatures means more than a single letter, but an organized group with many letters and petitions and phone calls all identifying as voting members of Anti-Fraking-Club (or whatever), which meets every Y days and wants new regulation Z .... that will get more attention. It might not be enough to combat the deep pockets on the other side, but enumerating the members of an organized voting block is better than noting some rabble rousers in the streets.
No, protests can't enact policy in democratic countries. Voting can, boycotts can, and strikes can. You can organize all of the three as part of a protest, but it's a lot more work than shouting with a fancy sign, and a lot less fun to do.
Check out France protests sometime
It doesn't work all the time sadly
Just like boycotts, you need to have many many people joining and supporting the cause to actually make an impact within the world and the community, otherwise it’s not very impactful and govs could easily do any to prevent it from happening aka silencing ppl.
Though that saying, ppl shouldn’t be made to feel guilty for not doing so, if certain circumstances prevent them to do so eg disability, addiction, lack of options etc etc cuz unfortunately in the world we live in today, capitalism plays a huge part in our society today, therefore there’s is no “truly” ethical consumption in the world we are in today.
Some, but not all.
Just remember, if the protest is peaceful and easy to ignore then nothing will probably get done. You must disrupt the flow.
Effective to the degree they have a material impact on the economy and psychological impact on the powerful and their lackeys. I would argue many of the BLM protests had an effect, if minor, because many cops quit and many cities still have fewer cops than they did before due to difficulty hiring.
Blocking commerce, looting, and arson of empty buildings have significant economic and psychological impacts. From an American perspective, successful social movements like, the suffragettes, civil rights movement, anti-slavery activists, and workers rights groups all engaged in such strategies. It wasn't until well after that these movements were sanitized to be "non-violent".
Protest toppled a couple of leaders during the Arab spring. Even with Israel, Biden has started sanctioning West bank settlers and sends veiled threats about respecting life. It is not much, but without protests, we wouldn't even see that.
Some protests in the Arab Spring even caused civil wars, at least one of which is still ongoing to this day.
Some do, some don't. What kind of answer did you expect?
Thanks Sherlock
Edit 5 days later: I'm sorry for calling you Sherlock, I was made aware how disparaging that is, and can't get by without correcting it and apologising. You don't have to accept it. I now know how that kind of behaviour makes me a pathetic worm. But I can do better. Eventually.
I think the best way to put it is that protests can be effective only when they present a credible threat of some sort against the people who have the power to make changes to whatever the protest is about. That threat may be direct violence, it may be electoral change, or it may be something else, but a credible threat of some sort is absolutely required.
Protesting against Israel, therefore, is of little use in most situations. The protesters pose no credible threat to Israel, so their decisions aren't going to change. And the protesters generally are not representing much of a credible threat against their own governments either, so their own governments are also not moved to change.
That said, some of the protests against Israel have involved blockades and strikes against businesses involved in shipping war materiel, and those have been very effective in terms of the costs they impose:
Yeah, that's an excellent example. Those protests posed a credible threat to that specific business - indeed, to some degree they even already carried out some of the threat, just to show it was credible - which made changes to what they had the power to affect - their own actions.
Only if it hurts their bottom line
Or if guillotines are involved, ask the French.
Netanyahu and also Trump to some extent have made guillotine seem pretty reasonable
It goes it goes it goes
Sometimes.
You mention the specific example of Israel which is literally the most complicated conflict in the entire world. Most people are already aware that it is happening, all the arguments on both sides of that are very well known, there is not really anything novel that can still be said about it. So protests about it (on any side) are not going to have a lot of effect.
Protests generally don't change policy, although politicians may use them as justification for something they already want to push through.
No
Depends. If they're focused on specific demands and done at the right time combined with direct advocacy, they can do a lot to affect change.
Yes
Absolutely protests change the world.
Better than staying inside and not doing shit. It shows community activism.
I recently looked up the history of a 1969 civil rights protest at the college I went to, and found a newspaper article tracing changes at the school right through to the current day.
A big difference is they were protesting decisions at a university. It may have been a general movement across the country but it was really a large local protest against a local entity. The protests against Israel are generally not in Israel, and even if the goal is to change one or more supporting country’s policy, the protests really aren’t that big relative to the whole country or its government.
I think the protests are still too small, given the scale at which they’re trying to influence a change
It works when a government already sympathetic to the cause is in office
Protest movements against hostile state apparati usually have to get a bit more....intense, before they get change.
Difference between the civil rights movement and the Egyptian Arab Spring uprising
Nope.
The world is fucked.
Only thing that could possibly turn the tides would be a massive return to the guillotine.
They do alot more then bitching about something on social media and expecting that to change anything...
Both are "bitching". Both are raising awareness. Both don't seem to be changing/doing anything.
Almost like peaceful protesting doesn't always work.
The only thing the state understands is violence, money and power. We can do nothing to threaten their power or violence, but we can threaten their money through general strikes. Bring capitalism to its knees and they too will bend.
Depends who's protesting and what's the support for the protests among general population. The problem with most of the protests you see is that the people that do the protesting are the same people that oppose the government. So yeah, no government is going to react to protests done by people that don't vote for it, no matter how big. If the actual people that got the government elected protest or support the protest then they listen. Of course most of the time people know what they are voting and the government is doing exactly what it promised so they will not protest.
There have been more criticisms from governments as time has gone on - Brazil in particular has been in the news today for it.
South Africa has taken actions as well. And even if these two countries didn't do this because of protests, they help to encourage protests in other places, to help to change more minds.
You can never know exactly what a protest accomplishes, that's one of the ways they are so easy to minimize.
What did brazil say? Didn’t hear anything about this
Sometimes they do, sometimes (most times probably) they don't. However they don't work 100% of the time if attempts are never made.
In our small town - just a few thousand people, in an extremely red area of an extremely red state: there is a lady that stands on a corner of the main street though town (1 of 10 intersections). She wears her mask with a Gaza flag pattern and holds a Gaza flag with a small poster board that says like "Free Gaza" or something.
I support her right to protest, but I'm not sure that it's doing anything or what her goal even is. No idea what her protest is designed to do other than virtue signal.
On the other hand I spend time in February making sure my kids and friends/family on social media see images of civil rights protests - brave people attending school or sitting at a lunch counter.
I think protests can work and can change things, but context and strategy matter a lot.
It depends on the amount of violence and monetary damage.
Depends. A protest that happens for a grand total of a single day will do jack shit. A protest that lasts several days usually tends to get some results. If the end result is a piece of shit, an organized front will start protesting again.
The thing about protests is that they have, more than bring attention to something, is annoy and/or threaten the powerful. If you ever see a protest where the police is protecting the people, that shit is most definitely defending oppression (happened a lot in Brazil in the last 10 or so years). You know how strikes are almost always shown as utterly villainous, something done by "freeloaders" who "don't want to work", by corporate media? That's because it's annoying the powerful, the protest is working and the powerful are fighting back behind the scenes.
Protests that "don't bother anyone" are bound to be forgotten like a tiktok video. That's a real problem, because sometimes a lot of innocent bystanders also get annoyed, like in the case of strikes. A strike of bus drivers will fuck up a LOT of workers, and possibly hurt them much more than any powerful figure, so it's super easy to turn public opinion go against them.
That's the problem of society, the majority of people don't have power, so the only way they can be heard is by joining up for a common purpose. Powerful people can make one or two calls to fight back against a mass of protesters.
That's a great question. What I would say is the wheels of justice turn painfully slowly.
I am sure Antony Blinken is well aware of domestic concerns over the wellbeing of Gazans, the unfortunate reality is any big decision against or at Israel will come with negative consequences.
The path of least resistance might be allowing the Israeli's to squeeze out their own leader democratically. Is that the best way? Well, probably? Not always?
A pacifist may look to the Vietnam War, Libya or Iran and say action was injustice, an activist might look at the Rwandan Genocide and say pacifism was injustice. Diplomacy has to do it's thing.
Protests are very good at causing civil unrest, damaging public property, making other peoples days worse, and swaying their view further away from your cause
If any of those are your goal, they can be quite effective
Protests can be highly effective if you follow the proper procedures, set a time and place that is well publicized, apply for the proper permits, coordinate with local authorities, stay within the allotted boundaries making sure not to overcrowd the area, do not disrupt traffic or commerce, do not intimidate the peacekeeping agents placed there to protect you, and please do not damage the provided velvet ropes or barricades