Do We Still Need Protests Or Is It All Just Spam and Wanking Nowadays

Great Debates
21

I think it is relevant. It’s a speech at a protest that has had a dramatic and continuing impact on this country. Can it be imagined that a tweet, Instagram, Facebook post, email, or anything else be imagined to be so impactful? I cannot imagine it. ETA: or if you like, you are free to compare any social media post with the Freedom Riders. Go ahead.

And I’m addressing this to a person who wrote the most important SDMB post in this history of this board, which went viral because of its sobering and very moving conclusion. You know, blimps. Or waterboarding. One of those.

22

I’m really only familiar with the Civil Rights protests and the ant-Vietnam war protest, and I think both of those were successful in affecting change. Especially the former. But we’re talking about frequent, sustained protests for years or even decades. I’m not seeing people these days have the persistence to pursue that type of action. We had OWS, which was an almost daily protest for a year or so, and it accomplished nothing.

I don’t know that I’d agree with the “spam and waking” analogy of the OP, but I think he makes a good point in that things are different in the post-internet age. For good or ill, it seems that protesting is often just a form of virtue signaling.

23

Prior to OWS, only a realtively small number of Americans who perused liberal blogs and message boards like this one were aware or how bad inequality had gotten, and none of the politicians nor the media were talking about it. After OWS dealing with inequality was an important issue that all candidates needed to deal with. No it didn’t get anything concrete done right away, and it didn’t have an end game resulting in its continuing far beyond its expiration date, but it did get the message out there.

Similarly with the Black lives movement. Blacks have been unfairly targeted by police since 1865. It is something that every black person knows. But until there were protests and riots in Ferguson and Baltimore, it was not something that your average white person paid any attention to. Now thanks to the Black lives matter movement, agree or disagree it has become a national issue, and led to a number of reforms of various police forces across the country.

Even take the Jugaloos. Prior to their protest I had no idea that they existed much less how they had been prosecuted by the FBI. Now thanks to their protest, an article about them was published in the Washington Post magazine and I agree that they do indeed have a legitimate beef. With luck this may lead to the FBI revisiting the situation and changing their mind.

In order to get any form of government action you need to get a influential critical mass of the public to demand it. Which means you need to first get a critical mass of the public to be aware that it is an issue. Sometimes this can be done through social media, but what goes viral and gets elevated to meme status is a total crap shoot. Most social media campaigns will either go nowhere or will heavily circulate among a small online community of like minded thinkers and never get out to the world at large. In order to reach everyone the best way is still mass media. But again getting the media to pay attention to your cause is difficult. Sometimes you are lucky and it pops up spontaneously like with the sudden interest in the opioid crisis. But again that is a crap shoot. In order to guarantee their attention, you need to give them something outside your message to report on. This means either a large event, such as the womens march, an unusual event, such as the Jugaloos or the kneeling of the NFL player, or a violent event such as the riots in Fergusson and Baltimore, that they can’t ignore.

24

:smack: I completely misunderstood your larger point–somehow didn’t make the connection that you were saying the medium (live speech at protest vs Tweet) necessarily enabled or precluded quality of rhetoric. If that’s a fair paraphrase, I agree, and apologize for my misunderstanding.

25

The same things were said about TV, though…or really any new technology. I could imagine a post on social media having the same impact someday in the right circumstance. A speech at the Democratic convention but televised on TV by a relatively unknown but charismatic black Democrat gave us our first black President, after all.

That said, I still think these are all just tools, and that actual, physical protest will always still be a vital piece in our collective freedom.

26

Were they really? By whom?

27

Even back in the days of Civil Rights, leaders noted that protesting was just one tool of many that needed to be utilized to enact change. Marching in particular was pointed out as a tool that ran the risk of being over-relied because it was relatively easy to do.

And protesting was and is about more than “raising awareness.” Protests can be about energizing the protesters for future action, keeping an already aware issue in the limelight, and, probably most importantly, inconveniencing those in power and/or those who tacitly support the status quo through inaction (think MLK’s moderate whites). Those who are actually involved in these sorts of things could probably also list other goals as well.

28

You think you’re kidding, but…

Way back when, the first issue of Hugo Gernsback’s Science Wonder Stories, June 1929, ran “The Threat of the Robots” by David M. Keller, M.D. In it robots play football inside empty stadiums because people could watch the games better in their homes via television.

We can do that today. Yet people flock even to exhibition games to be part of the crowd. They might spend half their time watching the Jumbotron and the other half checking their phones for tweets, but they’re there and they make great efforts and pay large sums of money to be there. The richest people with the best technology pay enormous sums to sit in boxes at the Superbowl and entirely ignore what’s on the field.

Half the people at protests are using their phones to record other people so they can live-stream the protests to people who watch from a distance. We want to be part of that crowd, and technology just helps us become part of bigger and better crowds. It’s additive rather than substitutive.

29

Well, I’m sure you can do a search as well as me, but here is a prediction that TV would never be a serious competitor to radio (and I could probably dig up one saying radio would never be on par with written newspapers :p…and probably one decrying the use of newspapers instead of books, and on and on):

People are always limited by their imagination when it comes to breakthrough technologies. I could definitely see something on the internet posted that could go viral and have as much impact as the MLK "I have a dream’ speech, which I agree is one of the most impactful speeches in history. It just takes the right circumstances and right person hitting at just the right time…just like it was for MLK, having his speech broadcast to a much wider audience and captured so that later generations, such as all of us (I was only 3 when he gave that speech, yet I’ve seen it dozens of times) could see it and be aware of it. And today you can now watch it anytime you like by just going to Google and searching for it, pretty much anywhere on the planet (that doesn’t have a Great Firewall or the equivalent, or that still has VPN holes in it at least).

30

Exactly this…it’s what I was trying and probably failing to say. And great analogy too!

31

I think it’s pretty odd to imagine that the world of America in 2017 is fundamentally changed since 1968 in such a way as to make protest irrelevant. If your idea is that the mechanism by which protest is successful is media coverage, that mechanism is just as important in 2017 with a fractured and distracted media.

BLM has, by any measure, been wildly successful. They are electing people. They’re about to get a criminal defense attorney elected as the DA in one of America’s largest cities. It will not be the last. They are changing police practices and rewriting union contracts. Like every protest movement, they are a contribution rather than the sole moving force. But it’s a heck of a contribution.

People forget that the Civil Rights Movement lasted decades. For years after the Montgomery Bus Boycott, King basically just went around giving speeches and not much changed. These things take time, even under the best of circumstances.

Scylla: You should read Taylor Branch’s trilogy about the Civil Rights Movement. Or even just Parting the Waters.

32

The way it works is as follows:

[ol]
[li]People make disruptive protests.[/li][li]The media makes this the focus of their coverage.[/li][li]If the media is sympathetic to the cause, then much of the coverage is positive.[/li][li]Other people who would benefit from or like favorable media coverage see an opportunity to get in on the act.[/li][li]Journalists publish favorable articles about The Cause.[/li][li]Social scientists publish favorable studies about the The Cause.[/li][li]Public opinion begins to sway slightly in the direction of media coverage/journalist opinion/social scientist studies.[/li][li]More Influential People - politicians, celebrities, etc. - jump on the bandwagon.[/li][li]Public opinion moves even further.[/li][li]Etc.[/li][/ol]

It can be very effective, given the right climate.

33

Even organizing and protests among very unpopular people–say, sex offenders–often leads to beneficial change. That’s because positive media coverage isn’t the only relevant mechanism. As other have said, protests are also a form of organizing. When people organize, they are more powerful than when they are disorganized. Some states and localities are now rolling back SORNA laws because of the efforts of sex offenders and their advocates to demand more fair treatment, even though the media coverage is still wildly biased against them (using fake stats about recidivism, focusing on child rape even though it’s a tiny percentage of registered offenders, etc.).

34

Being organized is not the same thing as public protests. I’m not aware of any public protests by sex offenders, and I highly doubt if such would be productive. Do you have any examples?

[I’m aware of some instances of sex offender registries being rolled back somewhat by court challenges, but I could also imagine an organized effort to provide relevant information to lawmakers possibly having some effect, if it can slip by under the radar. Public protests are another story entirely.]

35

It’s easy to stay in a filter bubble online, never reading anything that counters your pre-existing beliefs. Hard to miss though, when someone with a wildly different perspective blocks traffic on your commute. Or when your shopping trip is disrupted by a crowd in the mall. Or when a loud protest march parades by the patio bar or restaurant where you’re spending your Friday evening.

Protesting isn’t about directly causing change. It’s about making people in power, and those on the sidelines know there is a problem here. Once the comfortable, complacent suburbanites, yuppies, executives and politicians are shocked into recognizing the problem exists, then we can move onto the more complicated and nuanced work of effecting real change.

36

One other way public protests can work is by getting people inclined to be sympathetic to the cause to get really really riled up about it.

It’s a feature of democracy that a determined minority can often defeat a relatively apathetic majority. So if you have 10% of the population with a strong position on one side of an issue, such that they would absolutely change their vote on that basis, and the 90% on the opposite side but without enough fervor to actually vote on that basis, then the 10% can win. (And they generally will win if they are not already captive voters for the side more inclined to support them on that issue.)

So if you have a position which has minority support in the country, you can convert it to a winning one by converting the people on your side into fervent partisans. Public protests (especially if accompanied by heated rhetoric and sensational allegations etc.) can accomplish this.

Of course, the trick here is to accomplish that while leaving the opposing majority apathetic. If you convert the majority into fervent opponents of your cause, then you’ve undermined yourself.

37

I think it was a good point that a lot of “protests” are really more like “rallies”.

If a couple thousand Trump supporters get together to wave flags and talk about how the Mexicans and the Negros are ruining America, that’s not a protest, is it? Or is it?

When do you call it a protest, and when do you call it a demonstration, and when do you call it a march, and when do you call it a rally?

Lots of protests really just fill the social purpose of a rally. You go out in the streets, meet up with like minded people, and cheer for the same stuff and boo the same stuff. The exact name the organizers give to a gathering of like-minded people depends on how they want to brand the gathering, both to outsiders and to themselves.

Or take the social function of the well-known “protests” by the Westboro Baptist Church. Why did those bozos protest funerals, first for gays and then for soldiers? I mean, they taught that the entire world was hellbound except themselves, so what was the point? The point was to unify the membership. The “church” was really just Fred Phelps and his extended family, that he ruled over with an iron fist. And organizing those protests was a way to demonstrate to all the children and grandchildren in the church that everyone in the world hated, hated, hated them, and their only friends were inside the family/church. That’s why they switched from protesting gay funerals to protesting soldier’s funerals. Gay funerals weren’t divisive enough, you wouldn’t want the kids in the cult to be supported by other right-wing fundamentalist bigots. The point was to cut them off from everyone.

So these marches and protests and rallies serve an internal social function that’s probably much more important than trying to influence people outside the group.

When people contribute personally to something, they tend to strengthen their belief in it. Charismatic people take advantage of this all the time. If they want someone to like them they don’t do favors for that person, they ask the person to do a favor for them. And then the person becomes their supporter, because why else would they do that favor if they didn’t support the person? Asking for a personal tangible commitment–like attending a rally or a march–is a way to convert marginal supporters into committed supporters. It’s why food banks ask people to come in and scoop rice into plastic bags. The volunteer work is basically worthless, but people who volunteer turn into financial supporters, and the financial support is what they really want.

38

Public protest leads to organizing. You get a bunch of people to turn out and sign up for newsletter and future meetings. You get media coverage, even if negative, which causes people to google the group and learn more.

Google RSOL protest. They do a lot of protest activity in many different states, and have been pretty successful at organizing (which raises money for lawsuits and research, etc.)

39

The difference is whether it’s ostensibly aimed at the people who agree with you (rally) or the ones who disagree (protest).

40

Protesting today is about two things.

  1. Cargo Cultism. The civil rights movement had protests and they won, so if we have protests we will win too. The problem is that the civil rights protests were carefully designed to appeal to the median voter. They featured well dressed and well behaved people invoking the Bible and the Declaration of Independence. They picked test cases to illustrate their point and invoke compassion amongst undecided voters. For example, Rosa Parks was a small, hardworking women on her being bullied by a mean bus driver. Ruby Bridges, was a small little girl being bullied and screamed at by adults. They were also able to get the authorities to attack them on so people would have to choice between the peaceful protesters and the violent authorities.
    Since then most protest are counterproductive. OWS was a bunch of dirty hippies camping out and making a mess. The football players are protesting the anthem and the flag. Presumambly, motherhood and apple pie will come later.
  2. Recruitment and fundraising. The protests generate publicity for the groups doing them. If you go to one of these protests you will be on a mailing list and will be the target of fundraising appeals. They also serve as free publicity to attract money from wealthy donors looking for radical groups to support.