Yes, no, maybe. Depends on the protest and what you’re trying to affect.
Numbers matter but organization matters more. Ten thousand people milling around is not going to do much but a thousand folks on the right location with a definite message may get some action. Ideally, you want ten thousand folks with a definite massage in the right place at the right time.
Protests are really noisy PR. It’s getting to the point where you need a degree in public relations just to organize a protest that reaches people and gets them to respond. The BLM organization did a great job of this – they are also now facing fraud and corruption charges and did nothing of consequence with all that money they raised. Being able to protest effectively really depends on deciding FIRST what it is your group actually wants. Otherwise, your organization can become a cautionary tale. Ask BLM.
But that’s probably not what you want to know. You’re probably wanting to know if protests change things. Well, no, not really.
Look, if you and your buddies show up on the capital steps and holler loud enough, some secretary may just come out and use a lot of empty air to placate you. More often than not, they will just wait until you go away. A bunch of loudmouths isn’t a good way for politicians to gauge how the political winds are blowing. Sure, there are probably a lot more folks that feel the same way that didn’t show up but how many and do they actually all agree with the ranting your group is doing?
Massive protests are usually indications of a crisis – folks are riled up, usually over a specific incident or specific legal/legislative acts. Okay, that is easy for politicians to deal with – they take the crowd’s side and do what they can to placate the crowd. Then everyone calms down and goes home. Sometimes this will get significant change. Usually it just shelves the irritant.
Sure, it gets attention focused on the issue but only for a time and usually a very short one. Protests are most effective when they are rare. Incessant protests on everything including the kitchen sink or on the same issue all the time just become noise which people will learn to ignore. So much for focusing attention.
Worse, your protest can focus all the wrong attention on your cause. The anti-Israel protests are a poster child for this. Taking Hamas’ side, however caveated and nuanced as your position may be, immediately after Hamas perpetrated an horrendous massacre makes your organization look like it is planning to join the jackboot jackasses. This is what they call ‘negative PR’ and yes, you really can have bad PR. It takes work but it can be done. Just ask Bud Light.
Here’s what protests don’t do – they don’t convince people that you’re right. Here, the best example is the Civil Rights Movement. By being absolutely committed to peaceful protest, the Civil Rights Movement got positive attention on themselves and negative attention on the idiots opposing civil rights. It’s one of the rare cases where protest gets people off the sidelines and at least thinking about what the protestors were talking about. They weren’t convinced by the protests to consider what the protestors were saying but the peaceful nature of that protest counter imposed on the violent reactions to it did make people start thinking.
The vast majority of protests don’t accomplish this. Most either get ignored as political noise or outright irritate the very people you were trying to convince. The various climate activists obstructing traffic have set their cause back at least a decade. Annoying the heck out of innocent people does NOT make them want to join your cause. It makes them want to see you arrested.
Violence doesn’t convince people you’re right. It usually convinces them that you’re a nut job. It definitely convinces people they need to not be around you and your crazy friends. Worst case, it convinces people to start demanding your arrest. Are there exceptions? Not really. I know, you’re thinking the BLM riots but those only got positive PR in select, very Democrat and very ‘woke’ cities and states. What you didn’t see was Antifa getting kicked out of Georgia – which has a deep streak of blue but evidently not deep enough – and a map of where the protests were. Seriously, how racist is Portland, Oregon that it had protests for over a year?
Presently, BLM leadership is finding itself in legal trouble over a variety of issues, mostly stemming from using the charitable funds they raised for their personal use. I can’t think of a single thing accomplished by BLM other than organizing riots. As time passes, they will probably see some legal trouble from all the people hurt in those riots. Hint: protests are supposed to make life better for the people you’re protesting on behalf of and this ain’t it.
While the Lamestream Media largely backed BLM the rest of the country noticed the violence and there was a LOT of pushback. This was part of why the protests never made any significant showing in red states or more rural areas of blue states. Republicans and Democrats alike were appalled at the violence and it showed in their social media.
So, yes, that BLM received so much support from some cities and states is a bit of a win, the overwhelming backlash – to the point that the organization barely still exists – proves that this isn’t really much of an exception to the violence doesn’t work rule. It’s more like a politically expedient bump in the road to Democrat irrelevance.
But climate activists get governments to make big changes, right?
Nope. Not even close. Mostly, they turn public opinion away from the whole ‘save the planet’ thing.
Oh, you’re right that there have been massive efforts, mostly in the West, to save the climate by self destructing our economies – I might be a tad biased – and those efforts have thrown a huge amount of money at corporations that then make little progress other than lookie, cheap solar panels, subsidized by China and hey, we killed all the birdies with these honking huge, inefficient wind farms!
Okay, even if you are on the Chicken Little side, you have to admit there hasn’t been any significant progress. The atmosphere has more CO2 now than when the efforts to reduce it started 20 years ago. Tiny improvements in the US and Europe do not begin to offset China’s massive and growing use of coal and its underwhelming pollution regulations. All of the ‘progress’ was in the political and corporate realms, with both politicians and corporations making more money than progress.
Protestors? Useful theatrics and useful idiots aside, most climate protests have been bad for the movement especially over the last five years. Okay, so blocking the highway to Burning Man did result in an hysterical video but I’m pretty sure no one in the traffic backed up for miles was amused, let alone sympathetic to the cause. Folks that as a demographic group would be expected to be on the side of the protestors were cheering for the cops. Let’s just say that many of those people were probably a lot less supportive after the incident. Not sure if trying to convince them that the subsequent flooding in the area was because of global whatsis will help or not.
But I’d bet more on not.
You’re probably thinking I’m anti-protest. No, I’m anti-protesting for the heck of it. Protest can be effective BUT only if you have a very narrow goal and a very, very clear idea of exactly how to get there. No one can do what you want if you can’t tell them what exactly that is. Well organized, peaceful, directed protests can effectively focus public attention on the issue in a manner positive to your POV.
However, a protest can also do far more harm than good. This past weekend a bunch of kooks turned up at a port and attached themselves to a ship in order to prevent it from travelling to Tacoma to pick up weapons for Israel. They were physically removed, of course. Here’s the funny part – there’s literally no chance that ship was A) being loaded with weapons (it’s a vehicle carrier) and B) heading for Israel (shipping usually tries for the shortest trip – Tacoma to Israel is 35 days where Maryland to Israel is 15). So they made points with the folks that already supported them and angered almost everyone else that cared.
I’m not sure how they were defining success but that shouldn’t have been it.
Protest is a really bad choice for just venting your anger. What does that accomplish that screaming at the cat or tossing back a few beers couldn’t do better? Showing your backside to the world does not improve the world or your influence in that world. Get mad, get over the mad and THEN make a real difference. Showing irrational anger won’t change anything for the better and probably not at all.
Most protests are just noisy therapy sessions for toddlers. Unsurprisingly, these things don’t improve anything. They don’t even make the people involved feel better. Why bother if you aren’t going to make the world at least a tiny bit better or at least try to make some kind of positive change?
FYI, riots are not protests. Riots destroy property and people, in lots more ways than one. Riots usually leave decades worth of damage. Unless you’re trying to get the world to destroy itself, rioting is to be avoided at all costs.
The real answer is right now, most protests are ineffective by any metric. They are disjointed, semi-violent, incoherent and deliberately annoying to the public. The cardinal sin, however, is that they are way too frequent.
A big fireworks display is an event not just because explosions and pretty lights but because it’s not something that happens every day or every week or even every month. It’s different and special. It’s impossible to not notice.
Honking car horns, however, are a constant if you live in a big city. If it’s not right in your ear, you likely barely notice it. Even us country girls pay them little attention as we hear them pretty frequently in town.
The difference is frequency. When protests happen all the time, people very naturally start to tune them out. Doing stupid things like blocking traffic doesn’t fix this problem it only makes people angry and less sympathetic to your issue. If you want to use protest as a political tool, it cannot become background noise or it fails before it even starts.
Protest should be the last club out of the bag, not the first. There are other, much more productive ways to get attention to your cause that have fewer drawbacks and get better results – there was something you wanted, right? Protest is the club you use when all others have failed but to make it effective, you have to use it right.
- Clearly defined cause
- Clearly defined demands
- Organized and orderly event(s)
- Events appropriate to the type of attention being garnered
- Clear goals – know exactly what success will be
- Non-violent and unobjectionable
- Infrequent
Sounds like a lot of work? It is. You’re trying to change a world here – don’t expect it to be a cakewalk. Any idiot can chain themselves to a tree; it takes real creativity to get attention without looking like a total jerk. Be creative, not stupid.
If you really want to make a difference, use all the other clubs in the bag first. Yes, there really are other clubs in the bag. Start with writing your congressman. If you’re upset enough to march in the streets, you should be motivated enough to actually write a whole letter. If you can’t handle that, why are you really protesting? To change the world or to just fit in with your nutcase friends?
If you need to glue yourself to a sidewalk to fit in, you seriously need better friends.
MUCH better friends.
