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Hate to say it, but protests and marches do jack shit these days in terms of pressuring our leaders.
If there were anything approaching a general strike they would panic. They just don't give a shit when it's several thousand people on a weekend in NYC with their striking permits. Why would they? That's a small parade. St. Patrick's Day is a larger disruption for the city.
If you put an actually large number of people there, they will listen.
No, not really. One of the great america propagandizing myths is that protests are effective. They're not, they can easily be ignored. What does work is organized strikes and planned disruptions of key targets with protests.
In certain forms, or in conjunction with other forms of activism it can still work. For example tree sit ins to prevent logging.
Occupy wall street, BLM, the protests when Row v Wade were overturned all largely accomplished nothing on their own.
Dude, the entire reason Ukraine isn't a Russian puppet anymore is they got enough people together to stop it.
In Vietnam the great anti war demonstrations didn't stop the war on their own but they grew into such a movement that the politicians were forced to stop. It was such a thing that the evil guy torpedoed peace negotiations just so he could be the one to have peace negotiations.
Large enough groups of people absolutely have an effect, directly or indirectly depending on the exact situation. BLM didn't solve police brutality but it forced the adoption of body cameras and brought about the end of qualified immunity in at least one state. It made it okay for prosecutors to charge cops criminally, so they don't get voted out for it in the next AG election. The Roe v Wade demonstrations got abortion on the ballot in several states, and it won on 4 out of 6. 5 states are going to have ballot referendums in November with possibly 5 more.
If you're looking for the crowd to solve the issue that day then you don't understand how building a political movement works.
I have grown up pretty much my entire life hearing and thinking that protests are the way to bring about change, but everyone conveniently leaves out the fact that you have to build that political movement too.
People want to show up for a protest and be done, many people don't want to do the work to be an activist and work for change, and honestly I don't blame them.
Hell I know people who went to BLM protests, Palestine protests and pro choice protests.... But don't vote, so sorry if I seem overly critical of protesting. I'm just sick of prevalent idea that it's all you need to do.
I would just be careful of rolling that over into protests are useless or people who just protest are useless. Everyone is playing a part. Although they really should be voting too.
This is exactly the correct take. Other fantastic examples include Ghandi and Nelson Mandela.
I think MLK had something to say about that and what it leads to