I have been to several political protests lately and want to get involved in figuring out how to make them more effective. Not that the “aged hippie” thing is bad, but perhaps we need a freshening of ideas for 2025 instead of relying solely on 1965. There are a lot of smart people here. So any ideas?
The best way to protest is not to protest for one’s own side, but to infiltrate the opposing side. Any time MAGA folks are gathered, join them, but hold signs saying “I Love Trump Because I Hate America” or things like that.
Violence worked for MAGA.
Some thoughts I shared with my local Dem group are that each event should be focused on one issue. The first gathering I went to, outside City Hall, people had signs addressing any number of issues. One well meaning person brought extra signs for those that didn’t have one. I ended up with a pro LGBTQ rights sign. Absolutely important issue - and I did carry it - but that’s not the particular fight we were bringing to our useless representative. I felt it just made us look like a bunch of folks who are mad about everything and anything Trump is doing, with no clear message.
Also, I feel that the tone should be “we” are all getting screwed. Don’t be antagonistic to the opposing side’s voters; pointing out their flawed thinking only makes them dig in. Forget about the cult members who will never change and instead invite reasonable folks to be a part of the opposition to all the shite Donnie and the Grifters have wrought upon all of us . Make it an Us against the oppressors thing, and not citizen against citizen.
I agree a single issue protest is more effective. But there is so much going on that is awful it is hard to focus. Yesterday’s theme was to stand against these horrible dehumanizing deportations and imprisonments. But the speakers were all over the place addressing deadly serious issues such as Gaza, healthcare, veteran treatment, the environment, social security, Ukraine, fascism, Doge, and more. Everyone has a cause near and dear to them.
How do we put it all together in a coherent message? And how can we get youth involved?
The Trump admin is doing this on purpose. Putting out a blizzard of executive orders on different issues, attacking the left on multiple fronts at once so they are unable to focus their outrage and their campaigning on any one area.
The omnicause is a phenomenon that predates the Trump administration. It’s probably somewhat inevitable if your political coalition consists of multiple loosely-linked groups with different passions and issues of concern, rather than a relativelh homogeneous bloc, but yeah, I wish people would stay on-message. (To some extent, protesters seem to have figured this out with the more polarizing issues, and are mostly leaving the Gaza flags at home, at least at the events I have attended. But the big risk, as I see it, is inadvertently reducing support for causes that could and should get bipartisan support – e.g., if people start to associate supporting Ukraine, or public libraries, with being one of Those People, that makes those positions less popular than they were before!)
I wish I could find an old clip from the Daily Show circa 2003 showing one of those protests that became a pile of random signs. In any case, not only do protests need to be singly focused–and those who would distract from the focus shown the door–but there needs to be a willingness to let people be allies even if they don’t agree on everything. If you’re protesting about how the administration is handling deportations, and someone else is in agreement with you and wants to join, it doesn’t matter what said person’s opinion is on Israel, or abortion, or gay issues, or trans issues, or any of the things that all get used as shibboleths by the left to fracture itself.
As much as I want to support a “people’s movement”, I think leadership is needed. And right now the left has no leader in the United States. Crowds are gathering for Bernie and AOC — and I think that is a good thing. A nationally recognized leader or leaders can come to symbolize support for left causes, without needing to get into the dirty details which often end up in sniping and scaring away those less-involved who might otherwise join the cause. But we have to build up trust in a leader, and that’s not so easy right now.
One other huge flaw with a lot of protests done by progressives so far is that they come in the form of pissing off the very people whose support they need. For instance, those Just Stop Oil protesters who kept blocking roads or obstructing people who were commuting to work. It makes people angry against the cause.
An example of a good protest would be the Japanese bus drivers who protested against their employers for bad working conditions by letting commuters travel on the busses for free and refuse to collect fares. That is a protest that wins the support of the commuters.
One of the posters asked about getting younger people involved. I’ve noticed myself that baby boomers are way over represented in most of the marches and protests. During the George Floyd protests/riots in Minneapolis people in there 20’s were overwhelmingly represented. I wonder why these same people aren’t in the streets now.
As far as improving the effectiveness of the protests I wish they were more serious. There seems to always be a small group of people dressed like clowns pounding on drums and they inevitably become the local news headliners.
Maybe baby boomers feel a more direct threat to their social security or the future for their children.
During Vietnam Nam the young protested because they were the ones being sent off to die in Asia. BLM may have resonated with the young because black youth are often being directly targeted by law enforcement.
Perhaps it is harder for the young to see the damage coming long-term than we who are older. Or perhaps young people feel despair that nothing can change. We certainly paint a gloomy future for them no matter the politics.
I have to admit: I never figured Social Security would be there for me in the first place, and so the idea of a direct threat always felt — redundant?
The vast majority of Baby Boomers are currently receiving Social Security payments (and, for many of them, Social Security is their primary, if not only, source of income), so for them, it’s a matter of significant concern that their current financial situation could be suddenly upended.
My weekly protest is 99% white Boomers, a few non-white and/or non-Boomers, me (X), and my teen (Z). Bless the former hippies. We all do have a variety of signs because we all have a variety of things pissing us off the most, or in my case I wanted a simple, legible sign that fits all occasions (“no kings”). We don’t disrupt traffic, and if someone gets out into the street or starts to talk back with some yahoo yelling at us from a truck, we quiet them down. We’re trying to be as normal and non-threatening as possible. It’s harder to write us off as thugs or paid protestors from out of state or looters or rabble-rousers or whatever when it’s just mostly elderly people chilling. I think we’re going for a “We are just like you and he’s going to make you made enough at some point maybe you’ll join us” vibe. For now.
I just got laid off, so this tail end boomer can actually get out there easily now.
I agree with the single issue. Not just for protests but in general. Just because I may think Murkowski is generally odious, when we align then we can protest or caucus together. I think that a lot of indy/dems have a sort of purity test where everyone in the tent has to agree on everything.
For example, my son is trans. I don’t think he should be kept out of collegiate sports (he probably can’t make an inter-mural squad, much less a competitive team). I’m good if that isn’t a hill someone else is not willing to die on. As long as that someone else respects basic rights and dignity, along the lines of being ok with having some unisex bathrooms and using my son’s preferred name and gender. At the same time, I won’t insist on that person listing their preferred pronouns, nor ban the barricades for to protest for women to join men’s sports. A simple “peace” and “live and let live” is fine.
How about
“What’s he’s doing to them, he’ll do to YOU”
Most of these problems are due to the oligarchy elite trying to take more and more of the pie, or more accurately giving us less and less crumbs.
So maybe have signs telling people that the ones who are causing the problems for all of us (and by “all”, I mean those on the left and right) are the billionaires gaslighting us into thinking their false promises will “solve” our problems. We need to convince the people that the rich and powerful are our enemies, not each other; a class war rather than a culture war.
Very good.
I’m not so sure about that. “Trump is a man of the People. He talks like us. He hates the same people we do. It will never happen to me!”