In my living memory, demonstrations worked to help get Lyndon Johnson out of office and to end the Vietnam war, but it took a long time. In recent years,
we have seen major demonstrations occur but with much less effect. The million man march did remarkably little to reduce actual racial hatred or discriminatory behavior. The Occupy movement was around for a few months, then petered out to no noticeable effect. All the marches against Trump last year may or may not translate into electoral change, but even if the Democrats succeed in the mid-terms it isn’t clear that those marches really helped. (There are almost certainly other protest movements that I am not mentioning, as well as some that may have actually been effective. Feel free to mention them here.)
Today we have the March For Our Lives. Does anyone in that movement or on the sidelines suppose that these protesters will be able to stick it out and keep up the protests for the several years it could take for major changes to happen? (Note: this may be a quicker turnaround if the polls about general support for gun controls are accurate.) Or will they give up after one or two or a few defeats and retire from the field, embittered about the political process?
What I’m interested in discussing here is what people think about protests and demonstrations and occupations as effective tools for wide-spread and long-term change. For myself, I think it can work, but as a tactic it has to overcome a lot of initial resistance, some of which in this case comes from the youth of many of the protesters (younger than the ones against the Vietnam war, if memory serves).
I think that the much less showy ground game on the local level, working it’s way up to the national level, is more assured of success, partly because it operates without generating knee-jerk resistance. This has been one of the best tactics in the Republicans’ arsenal for the past several years. But it takes a lot of dedication and willingness to do hard work outside of the spotlight and without the emotional rush of public exposure. I don’t know if the people in this particular movement have what it takes to make it work.
The anti-war demonstrations did nothing to end the war and may in fact have prolonged it as Nixon dug in against the enemy. The “Silent Majority” hated the hippie scum protesters and Nixon got lots of mileage by vilifying them. His real problem was ironic: the “Silent Majority” themselves turned against the war.
The Occupy movement was an utter failure for the best of reasons. Nobody inside or out knew what the exact goal was. The civil rights marches of the 1960s were far more successful because ending segregation was a specific identifiable thing that was achievable by a multitude of small steps by individual actions and laws.
The Woman’s March the day after Trump’s inauguration also didn’t have a one-sentence goal like “give us the vote” but had the larger intention of getting woman politically active. That has worked. The number of woman running for office has soared and will hit record highs in November.
The March for Our Lives will make a difference if the aftermath is to put pressure on elected officials everywhere to make even small changes that burst the bubble of impregnability that the NRA has erected against gun laws.
I agree and advocate for the small-ball game of getting people active at the local level and getting supporters elected all the way up the chain. Republicans have been extremely successful at exactly this. Getting individuals to feel that they can make a difference if they get involved is far easier if they feel they are part of a larger movement that is doing similar work everywhere, as with the civil rights movements. It’s not *either *marches or local change. It’s one leading to the other leading to change that begets more change and more participation and more bodies in office, a virtuous cycle.
I participated in some of those demonstrations. But what I also remember being involved in was campaigning in electoral politics to defeat LBJ in elections, especially next door in the Wisconsin primary (which he lost badly, just 2 days later, despite a ‘sympathy’ vote).
As I recall it, it was Johnson’s growing feeling that we couldn’t win the Vietnam war, and that a re-election battle would tear his party apart, that made him decide not to run again. (And health problems, though we didn’t know it at that time.)
I don’t remember Johnson ever saying anything in public about having doubts about the war; it was clear that the popularity of Eugene McCarthy, and later Bobby Kennedy, were rising along with general anti-war sentiment, which was fueled in no small part by the anti-war demonstrations.
In any case, that was 50 years ago this year, and that was only an example of how demonstrations as a tactic probably had some political influence. It sounds like you’re agreeing with the premise that this is not the usual outcome of the tactic of using demonstrations for political change.
If you have halfway decent politicans in Charge, then large-scale demonstrations can wake them up that their current politics is wrong.
Or you have disgruntled racists marching against positive Change, and get ignored.
If you have power-hungry politicans without decency in Charge - like Trump - then demonstrations won’t Change anything. He can either ignore them, or - what was already done with Black Lives Matter and Occupy - send in a few agents provocateurs, Arrest everybody over “starting fights with cops/ vandalism”, let the right-wing tabloids lie about it until the majority associates legitimate protests with vandalism, and let the arrestees rot in prison with the Special US bail System.
The Change “March for our lives” might have is with large voter Registration - and that still leaves the hurdles of voter disenfrachisment, gerry-mandering, FPTP and all the other Problems that make US elections undemocratic.
It also leaves the Problem if the alternative to a paid-by-NRA Republican is just a paid-by-NRA democrat, or a politican who will actually have the guts for better laws.
Demonstrations absolutely work, but they can’t just be a one-off event. They have to be massive, and more importantly, the protests have to represent a movement that is relentless and sustained, and it has to be part of an overall strategy. The Civil Rights movement and the anti-war movement of the 1960s had all of these elements. There were protests, but there was a lot more than just people in the streets. There was political activism. Artists, celebrities, and other people of social and political influence identified with these movements, and they connected with the protesters and inspired them at the same time. The Occupy movement had none of this.
If I were Wayne Lapierre I would be shitting in my pants at what just happened this past weekend. There have been too many people emotionally scarred by the issue of gun violence. These little kids ain’t goin nowhere - they’re just getting started. They’re not Occupy. They’re not antifa. They’re not a bunch of anarchists and stoners on the fringes of society, wearing black hoodies and bandanas, living in tent cities and hurling vulgarities at ordinary people walking to work. They’re young, energetic, and sharp-minded. The NRA and the white christian nationalists are going to be dealing with them for a long, long time to come.
Demonstrations are a good way to feel like you’re accomplishing something while smoking dope and hanging with your friends. Surprisingly, that doesn’t work.
If you actually want to accomplish something, donate money or time to a group that gets people elected.
Not every demonstration involves people smoking pot. I don’t recall seeing images of people smoking pot in Selma, Alabama, nor do I recall seeing anything remotely like that this past weekend.
Donating money can indeed be helpful, and I agree with involvement in local politics, which is often overlooked. At the same time, though, donating money is often passive and largely invisible unless you happen to give lots of money. And I’d submit that our reliance on this passive form of democratic involvement is partly why American democracy has been weakened in recent decades.
Contrary to what some have posted, demonstrations often go hand-in-hand with other forms of activism. They get people charged up. They show people that their cause is more than just a few mouse clicks and a skimpy $50 donation. They encourage others to come out and get active in the political system. Demonstrations by themselves don’t work, but they can be part of a larger, overall strategy, including fundraising, phone banking, letter writing, and other forms of activism.
I suspect those who believe that demonstrations are ineffective are speaking mostly from the very limited and narrow American experience, in which money is the alpha and omega of all politics. Looking beyond our context, though, it is clear that demonstrations can be explosive and powerful. Demonstrations have even toppled governments, so don’t underestimate their power. Even looking at our own history, the relentless energy of the non-violent protests of the Civil Rights era ultimately inspired politicians to act. There were no super PACS then; protests numbering into the hundreds of thousands were a show of force that office holders had no choice but to reckon with.
Agreed. It all hangs on how the excitement and optimism the demonstration evokes can be converted into the hard slog of longer-term campaigning for a concrete objective. That’s often the weak point: that defining the objective can tend to divide, and whatever organisational structure there might be to support it isn’t geared up for (or sometimes particularly welcoming to) an influx of new people (especially youthful first-time campaigners), or there’s confusion when there are several organisations in the same field, not to mention the personal rivalries that inevitably creep in, especially in pursuit of “good” causes, where everyone might well be thinking they’re on the moral high ground.
You may be right about “quieter”, smaller, grass-roots-type efforts being more effective than large demonstrations–as you point out, it’s worked for the GOP. But at some point, the raw number of participants in a demonstration can achieve a gravity all its own.
If, say, seven million people gathered on the Mall in Washington to protest against _______, that would get a LOT of attention. And not just from the media (though of course, that’s where people would hear about it).
If nothing else, it gets the attention and raises awareness, which enables things like fundraising and all the other good things that come with activism.
The only truly effective mass demonstrations I’ve seen in my lifetime were the Tea Party. And those were effective because they also devoted a lot of energy to voting in primary elections, and they were at root an astroturf movement funded by billionaires (and politicians always do what billionaires want).
So I guess the best that demonstrators can do is vote like the Tea Party did. But even that won’t amount to too much unless the rich agree with your agenda.
Also the Tea Party voted in primaries, but they cost themselves several important seats because they picked candidates who couldn’t win in general elections. I would hope liberals do not do the same thing, as a conservative democrat who gets elected is vastly superior to a liberal democrat who loses an election.
Anyone who says protests don’t accomplish anything doesn’t even know what protests are for.
A protest should not be seen as a direct way of accomplishing a goal; a protest is a public relations exercise. The point of the March For Our Lives wasn’t to have gun control legislation passed on Saturday. It was to serve as an advertisement to get people involved in the gun control movement, to make voters aware of their goals, and to get public support.
Yes, protests must be supported by legislative action, activism, and the like, but how do you get people involved without some sort of advertising? A millions-of-people march is great advertising.
I wonder whether the novelty of big demonstrations has worn off.
And I also wonder whether the fact that there’s a sort of “demonstration infrastructure” now, with experienced organizers on all “sides” who know how to draw big numbers and how to publicize optimally and so on - or even just a public perception that there is one - devalues all large highly-organized demonstrations. Sort of an astroturfing issue.
I dont think that any signle demonstration no matter how big, will itself make a big change.
Now they can if they are part of a larger movement. For example the ones about Vietnam, people were already growing tired and frustrated with that war and the demonstrations just moved it along. But dont forget even with Johnson gone the war dragged on for years.
Civil rights, that had been a movement for years ever since quite frankly, Joe Lewis joined the army and helped usher in many changes.
He was making two separate points. 1) lack of privacy (tampons and such) and 2) not being able to wear whatever backpack they want (probably not a first amendment violation, but in the same ballpark perhaps).
point one:
Something can’t be “essentially a First Amendment right”. Either it is one or it isn’t one. The only exception would be if its status as a First Amendment right was the topic of an unresolved court case.