Demonstrations

[flexibeast]

i just came across a thread in someone else's LJ in which people raised doubts about the effectiveness of mass public protest, and suggested the need for "new, creative" forms of protest. i feel my response was worth repeating here:

Having had many years of experience as an activist, i would suggest that public demonstrations can have two effects:

* First and foremost, it 'demonstrates' the number of people willing to put themselves in the public eye and say "i stand for this" or "i'm against that". i once heard - from someone familiar who has worked with politicians - that if a politician gets just one personally composed letter (rather than, say, thousands of form letters), they start to think, "Hmm, maybe there's concern about this". If they get four or five such letters, they start thinking "Woah, okay, people are starting to get worked up about this". Similarly, when politicians see thousands and thousands of people out on the streets - well, depending on context, thousands of people on the streets of New York clearly doesn't have the same effect as thousands of people on the streets of, say, Macon - it tells them that people don't just want change, but that they are, in large numbers, actually willing to get off their butts and say so very publicly. Politicians are less concerned if all people are going to do is sit in front of the tv and say "Shit, that sucks."

Further, mass demonstrations are more difficult for the mass media to ignore or misrepresent, due to the sheer numbers of people involved - people who can tell their family and friends what the protest was actually about, and what actually happened at it. One example of this happened here in Melbourne several years ago, when there was a mass protest - ~100,000 in a city of ~3 million - against the policies of the Jeff Kennett government. The Herald Sun, a Murdoch rag and very hence [sic, *blush*] a promoter of conservative populism, and normally a disser of protests, covered the protest with the headline "FAIR GO JEFF!" Whereas with smaller, stunt-like protests, they were/are easily able to paint the protesters as fringe loonies who are pathetic at best and dangerous at worst.

* Secondly, it can help people feel part of a group that shares the same values that they do. So instead of feeling like "Hey, i'm just one person, what can i do?", people can go, "Hey, there's quite a few of us feeling like this . . . . maybe, just maybe, we can change things together!" So people feel empowered, instead of feeling fatalistic and apathetic. And that, in turn, can mean that they feel encouraged to go out and talk to other people about the issue in question, and encourage those people to get fired up about the issue themselves.

This particular protest may have been small, but all social movements that have ended up achieving significant change have started small. Heck, a small protest in 1968 by French students, on the issue of cohabitation, eventually spiraled out into a mass movement that resulted in the French government considering leaving (or actually leaving) the country. And more recently, mass demonstrations in France against youth employment policies got those policies changed.

It's no co-incidence that mass demonstrations have been a noticeable part of most, if not all, movements that have achieved substantial social and/or political change.

Comments

[flexibeast.livejournal.com]

No indeed, protests only work if they're part of an ongoing campaign. It's like a game of 'chicken' - it's a matter of who backs down first. If people only mobilise once for an issue, and no further mobilisations are organised - or further mobilisations are poorly attended - it tells the people you're protesting against that you don't have the will to carry on until change happens.

So in that sense, the Iraq war demonstration could indeed be seen as more destructive than constructive, because, as you say, it didn't achieve immediate change, and the momentum wasn't sustained, so it just made people feel disheartened.

But that leads me on to a whole 'nother rant about opportunist/careerist 'leaders' of such protests, so i'll stop there for the moment. :-)