No, it probably won’t do much. But it’s understood that the preferences of the population are beside the point when it comes to political decision making in America. One may as well ask what Trump’s election was supposed to accomplish, given that he was, ostensibly, the anti-corruption, anti-bankster, hope and change candidate. In one’s own life, whether at work or in more personal relationships, I would think most are familiar with people feeling better when their “voice is heard,” even if nothing results. People want to feel like they matter.
Of course Occupy failed. Wall Street is a major center of power protected by the world’s foremost hegemon. Waving signs at it was unlikely to make it collapse or reform. There was a victory of sorts, as “the 1%” entered America’s collective lexicon. Whether that matters in the long run, who knows. It’s not unusual for people to celebrate glorious but doomed missions, like the charge of the light brigade, the Alamo, lost causers in the south, or martyrdom.
It sent a message to the world. A message that all Americans aren’t behind this buffoon. This message is not lost on the world. I quoted the story from Chinese English news agency Xinhua, in another thread, where they noticed the protest against Trump.
The protests in the Vietnam war led to America leaving, and losing that war. Those protests were noted by the leadership in Hanoi and lead to their resolve to continue the fight, knowing that America would tire of it before they did.
These same protests will lessen the time Trump has to screw over the country, as his staff will be busy denying they ever happened, and spinning this into support. Alternate facts they will call it.
Protests will mark this administration. Protests will happen whenever Trump tries to do something unpopular, and eventually, Trump will see that he’s not the messiah he thinks he is. Protests will doom him, slowly, one chip at a time.
And Gloria Steinem pointed out how protests will act to confuse and misdirect Trump’s policies when she told 1 million + women that if Trump decides to create a Muslim registry, we’ll all sign up as Muslims.
This is good American non-violent protest at it’s finest, and it will work. Slowly, but albeit, it will work.
Were you being prescient, or did you come across it someplace else? Because if it’s the former, that’s just spooky.
It’s genuinely disturbing when the administration comes out and says, “We lie. Deal with it.”
No, I read Kellyanne’s spin on the crowd issue and laughed. Alternative facts they called it. Because when the real facts didn’t fit your agenda, make up facts that do. The result is that anything the White house says now will have to be fact checked before I listen to/read it.
As to the OP: Selfies saying they were there and videos saying they didn’t smash any windows.
Also, empty bravado because they protested “courageously” even though there was absolutely no chance they would be harmed. Sorry, they’re not black people marching in the deep south in the 50s or early 60s. They’re not Gandhi. They’re not marching against Mao, Stalin, Hitler, or Pol Pot.
The fact that they can march so freely during the inauguration of “The Dark Lord of Evil” negates most of what they seem to be protesting against.
At most it’s pre-emptive marching, you can say you marched even if Trump does something 6 years from now.
IAN AK84 and cannot speak for him/her, but I thought that that remark meant that the Iraq war protests are now thought to have had the effect of encouraging political disillusionment. Not that that was their intended effect at the time.
I was concerned that the march might not have been as inclusive as one might have hoped, apparently being limited to people who can’t spell, but fortunately this is not the case. As usual, it’s the media that can’t spell. The actual document is titled Guiding Vision and Definition of Principles.
:dubious: I was protesting against, among other things:
Trump’s disregard of ethics policies in not releasing his tax returns;
the threatened repeal of the ACA with no coherent plan whatsoever for an improved replacement;
threatened assaults on civil rights such as religion-targeted immigration bans and/or registries, resumption and expansion of torture methods, denial of equal rights to gay/trans people, and voter suppression;
continued attacks on abortion rights;
disregard for and dismantling of government scientific research, and abandonment of science-based policy approaches in favor of corporate-friendly PR, especially on environmental issues;
indifference to police violence and double standards for policing in different communities.
How are any of those concerns “negated” by the mere fact that I was allowed to participate in a legally organized protest march?
What seems to have happened in your post is that you naively interpreted some of the protest rhetoric to mean that the protestors genuinely believe that we are literally living right now in a fully fascist state under the rule of a literal dictator. This is not actually what (at least the vast majority of) the protestors believe.
Sorry about the signs and slogans giving you too much credit for ability to understand rhetoric and metaphor. Your ability may have atrophied over the years from seeing all those Tea Party signs by poorly-informed conservatives who did in fact believe that the Obama administration was literally a socialist communist totalitarian police state where their guns were being confiscated and their children forced to get gay-married. :rolleyes:
I think it’s exceedingly rare that protests cause policy changes in the US. Maybe the Vietnam War protests did, but I actually think drafting college kids was the downfall. Certainly the Civil Rights protest of he 50s and 60s were successful, but they also relied on LBJ to actually get legislation passed. A weaker president would have failed. We all saw how effective the OWS protests were.
As some have noted, the protests can help as a moral booster, and that might indirectly help energize people for the next election, but that’s a long shot. I think we can say for certain that if the protest don’t continue, they would have been nothing more than a nice exercise in catharsis. If they do continue, they might stand a chance of doing something, but history is against it.
Still, gotta give props for organizing such a large protest, and it’s hard to blame folks for trying even against incredible odds.
Still seems like a ludicrous claim, though: that if everyone had stayed home in February 2003, we would have more young voters today.
However, I think it is pretty clear that youth turnout has increased since 2003, compared to previous elections. And to point to Iraq war rallies as the reason for Brexit? I think there are dozens of reasons more likely than a day of protest 13 years prior.
I hear this all the time. Or at least I USED to hear it all the time.Liberals USED to pretend they found abortion unpleasant and undesirable- hence Bill Clinton’s oft repeated line that abortion should be safe, legal and rare.
I used to think that was sincere. I no longer do. And most feminists no longer bother to maintain the fiction any longer. Lena Dunham is speaking for a lot of modern feminists when she says she wishes she HAD gotten an abortion.
I no longer believe most people who claim to be anti-abortion but pro-choice.
I think you are the second person to make some oblique mockery of the ahistoricity of this comment. I’m missing the joke. Either there is some major bit of world history that I am forgetting, or, more likely, you are fundamentally misunderstanding the point of this quote. If I am forgetting something, what is that I am forgetting?
Gotcha. I remember…I think it was a NOVA episode from the 70s on the Bermuda Triangle…someone mentioned (maybe it was Kusch himself) that if Charles Berlitz said a boat was red, you can bet your bottom dollar it was blue.
I think it’s more useful to regard protests as an expression of public sentiment rather than a driver of it. You’re not going to get policy changes or leadership changes just because a crowd of protesters demands it, but you may get it if it becomes clear that significant numbers of ordinary people are demanding it, and protests help to energize that group and publicize the cause.
It’s interesting that you claim protests don’t work and then cite the two most famous historical examples where they did. The Vietnam war was ended because it was a horror for a whole multitude of reasons, not just because college kids were being drafted, which reasons eventually led to widespread public opposition. Same with civil rights. It’s true that Johnson was exceptionally effective in getting the legislation passed, but if he had been a weaker president and failed, the public pressure would have kept building until it become inevitable no matter who was in charge. The protests helped accelerate that process, unless you want to argue that MLK and the various famous events of the era had no effect whatsoever.
OWS is a poor counterexample for several reasons. The organizers haven’t done a very good job of publicizing their mission or articulating a clear focus. Most people wouldn’t be able to tell you what OWS wants and many might be inclined to characterize them as anti-capitalist bums. Even the name is a bit misguided – it seems to suggest “let’s trash Wall Street” as a goal. The second reason it hasn’t done much, IMHO, is that the legitimate aspects of the movement are still in their early embryonic stages. People are only very slowly and gradually beginning to realize that for a long time now, they’ve been had, and that only the top few percent have substantially been sharing in economic growth. And even many of those who realize this put the blame in all the wrong places. Look who the morons just elected.
My take on the marches: everyone who marched or who supported the marchers was strengthened and given some hope. Everyone wants to know, what the hell can we do next? There are indeed limited avenues. Probably the midterms will be the big chance. Which means we need to start now to recruit and position for them.
There’s a lot we can do to pressure the media to push against the lying. The administration is helping there by insulting and trying to marginalize the press. Coming from a family of journalists, my guess is this could goad them into finally acquiring some spine. I see quite a bit more spine in the NYT since the inauguration, for example.
I believe a number of organizations such as Planned Parenthood and the ACLU have received an outpouring of support and money. Bernie Sanders has got an organization already on the ground as well.
What is heartening to me is that so many of the marchers were older. Men and women. It was not an Occupy crowd at all. It was mostly middle-class middle-aged citizens, predominantly white. These people as a group are not marginalized, naive, idealistic. In other words, they are the class that doesn’t protest, because they are busy doing their moderately successful lives and are pretty much okay with the government.
The fact that millions of us peaceable mainstream citizens came out in protest is not nothing. I don’t know what will happen but it surely is not nothing.
I don’t know if there will be more marches, but I think a good number of people who marched will become more politically active. While yesterday I saw a lot of pictures from marches posted on social media, today I’m seeing a lot of posts about not resting now, and that the march wasn’t the goal but just a starting point. The Women’s March website has a page up for 10 Actions/ 100 Days, starting with getting people to write their congress people, so the people behind the march aren’t resting.
Lena Dunham definitely doesn’t speak for me and for many feminists. I don’t think abortion is an absolutely terrible thing where it would be the worst thing to happen in your life and you’ll always be sad about it, but I also definitely don’t think it’s a fun thing that anyone would wish to have unless they have to. I think many if not most feminists think of abortion like a root canal. I do not want to have a root canal, they’re not fun, and I’ll do what I can in order to avoid the circumstances where I would need a root canal, but if whatever happens and I do need one, I’ll be very glad that I can have it. It’s the same with abortions.
Berlin in 1941 is a little late. If the quoted person wanted to Godwinize the discussion, maybe Berlin in 1934 would make more sense - in 1941 WWII had already been running for two years. And that’s a little late for protests.
Ah. She may have said a different year–but I think that’s a rather pedantic objection to the point, given that the Nazis ramped up atrocities significantly during 1941.
