From emancipation to women’s suffrage, civil rights and BLM, mass movement has shaped the arc of US history
Trump’s first and second terms have been marked by huge protests, from the 2017 Women’s March to the protests for racial justice after George Floyd’s murder, to this year’s No Kings demonstrations. But how effective is this type of collective action?
According to historians and political scientists who study protest: very.
From emancipation to women’s suffrage, from civil rights to Black Lives Matter, mass movement has shaped the arc of American history. Protest has led to the passage of legislation that gave women the right to vote, banned segregation and legalized same-sex marriage. It has also sparked cultural shifts in how Americans perceive things like bodily autonomy, economic inequality and racial bias.
Having had numerous discussions on different protests and pondering about what the most effective form of protest is, I find this article a nice addition in the endeavour of answering exactly that. So thanks for sharing. It’s interesting to see, that peaceful protests have been more effective in the considered cases. However, I am under the impression that a final judgement is still not possible. According to what I have gathered so far even more violent protests may be shown to be effective. A classic, prominent example are suffragettes and their bombings, arsony, destruction of property etc… How effective protect can become and the level of acceptance within the population seems to depend highly on further cultural and/or societal contexts as well. For instance, one could argue that suffragettes had more leverage due to the immense efforts and losses during WWI, which inevitably made the societal backbone more dependent on women. It’s important to note, however, that suffragettes were a long running movement that has started to shape public discussion far earlier than WWI and it would not be accurate to reduce their achievements to their more violent protests alone. More precisely, it is debatable whether violence even was a positively contributing factor at all. At the very least, it can be argued that suffragettes were successfull despite these violent acts.
Another important factor seems to be how directly actionable the goals of the respective movements are. Combining with that, also how much of behavioural change is asked of the people in general. For example, protesting against violent police actions shifts the focus away from the general public and shapes the state as the responsible actor while climate protests may demand significant changes of each individual (in addition to policy changes). Furthermore, in this example, protesting for a change in the education and regulation of policeforces appears to have less requirements while counteracting climate change is much more demanding as it comes with significantly more challenges.
Strikes work even better
Thank you for sharing.
I’m from Russia, and I’ve seen thousands of people running from the police over a decade ago. I’ve left the country before the big invasion started, but I’ve heard of small, quiet protests, and even quieter, but organized sabotage of railways that run towards the border with Ukraine.
Many people still support Putin, might be hard to stand up to the empowered majority.
But my friends from Belarus participated in mass actions against Lukashenko; we know that the majority doesn’t support him at all, and yet nothing changed.
I’m not saying protest is ineffective, but sometimes it’s not, especially when the time passed and the system hardened.
It’s important to protest, a lot, especially when the situation is not dire yet. Not only when people are desperate, but when they’re in discomfort, when the politicians lie, when our rights are even slightly violated.
Now as a German citizen and resident I go to protests, sign petitions, and participate in other civil actions.
Boycotting and protesting with your money also works
If everyone just organized together and said … ‘hey, let’s boycott this one company and just this one company’ … and everyone did it, it would drive that one company to its knees and bankrupt it and even drive it out of business.
It wouldn’t affect most people terribly … we’d still be able to shop, go around do things and go about our lives without much disruption … but at the same time, it would scare the shit out of that one company.
Once one company gets destroyed, then everyone organize again and target another company and boycott them … then just keep the ball rolling and keep boycotting and driving out companies one at a time. After a month of doing this, every major company would be shitting their pants knowing that they would be next on the list.
These assholes don’t understand if you hold a sign up that says you dislike them … they never listen to that … but if a large enough group of us just stood back and withheld our money from them and told them to go fuck themselves, then they’d listen.
Boycotting and protesting with your money also works
I’d say it’s the only thing that works right now.
They don’t expect to be voted out (hell, I’m not sure anymore they expect people to vote at all next time); but they can’t control what you do with your money, they can’t force you to buy X or Y, so if you want to fuck them badly, take the money from them.
Stop buying/using something and you’ll see how short it takes for them to correct course. There’s one thing these bastards love: money. And they’ll do whatever it takes to keep it flowing.
they can’t force you to buy X or Y
Anti BDS laws: say syke
Data nerds (❤️) make gifs every year of the most popular search terms on Google for every day of the year.
It’s insane how effortlessly it highlights the fact that big megaphones = world consciousness control. Protesting works.
Idgaf if you have protested abortion since the 60s and are mad it’s still at issue. Idgaf if you hate traffic on your Tuesday commute.
I’ll go further; idgaf if you’re protesting something I disagree with; so long as it’s peaceful. Protesting works. Not much else does.
Do you think violence works? Wasn’t that Charlie Kirk backlash fun??
Protesting works.
What charile kirk backlash? What changed since the leopards finally ate his face?
The dissolution of your first amendment rights.
Did that change directly as a result of kirk? Pretty sure colbert got canceled before that, and firings of pro Palestinian voices predated it as well. People got louder but I don’t think anything materially changed.
Counterpoints: It is, in the present tense, not working.
The most you can truthfully say is “not yet working.”
I mean it’s been a year, Project 2025 is half complete and America is closer to a fascist dictatorship than ever before. There are two realistic conclusions from here on out: Either Trump keeps his hold on power through the midterms (either by winning or launching a coup, probably the latter)—in which case it’s game over—or the Dems win a Congressional majority, in which case protests will have amounted to exactly nothing. There’s no universe in which Trump sees people holding signs on weekends and is like “oh I’m sorry for trying to become a fascist dictator.” You can’t appeal to slow progress either, because the GOP isn’t going to wait for you to slowly progress yourself out of fascism. What do you envision as the result of protests “working?” How would that look like?
Know what works even better? Voting.
Depends on the integrity of the election system. With the current gangsters in charge, that’s subject to question.
There are also other strategies that are as efficient, probably even more so: one is to expand the attack surface. It’s exponentially easier to defend a few dozen potential targets than thousands. This should happen in parallel with voting and peaceful demonstrations. I won’t elaborate further on this platform.
Depends entirely on the vote and the country/region. Generally I disagree with you for the US at least. But the fun part is we get to do both. We should use every tool we have
