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.
Protesting was effective in the past but it doesn’t mean it still is.
Why do those in charge get so upset about protesting?
Does it make them look bad? Yes. Does it raise awareness about an issue they would rather stay quiet about? Yes. Does it garner sympathy from like minded individuals and groups? Sure does! Does it get in the way of their plans and cause a scene? You got it! Does it generate news coverage, spreading the word of what’s going on far and wide? Often.
Boy, all that sure sounds pretty ineffective to me! If they don’t want you to do the perfectly legal thing, it’s because it is effective against them.
So when do the protests force them out of office and stop them from having influence and power?
With the peaceful protests I’ve been to or that have happened at my university, most of the time they haven’t tried to stop anything aside from cops being stationed waiting for it to deescalate, then the protest eventually fizzles out and people forget it happened. There are a couple exceptions to these though:
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One protest happened at the same time as a bunch of other protests on different campuses, and a large number of troopers and other law enforcement with weapons shut it down and arrested dozens of people for refusing to leave an area. There was a lot of shady (and illegal) actions happening between the university admin and Texas government, where even Zionist Reddit shitlibs thought it was extreme. There was an investigation going on led by a student-run newspaper since then, not sure if it’s still happening. As far as why they did this, my guess is: (1) fear of property damage based on actions in other protests and (2) governor Abbott wanting to put on a political show by exercising his power, but I highly doubt it was because it posed a real threat to their power.
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The official student newspaper reporting on pro-Palestine topics painting the university in a negative light, eventually leading the university to fire the entire newspaper. Probably due to a fear of reputational damage so they wanted to impose additional obstacles (which of course backfired).
Overall these didn’t result in any actual policy changes so there wasn’t much of an outcome. It did cause some reputational damage, where even FIRE thought our admin was too fascist and ranked us almost last. It’s probably impacting their enrollment and hiring faculty at least a little bit (but there are a lot of other factors negatively impacting this as well). Also resulted in more financial burdens for the protesters involving bail fees and needing to fund their new independent newspaper in different ways.
There was another (non-peaceful) protest I heard of in the area involving an ICE agent being hospitalized and protestors facing terrorism charges. This also didn’t result in any policy changes, but did have some real-world harm to fascists and threat to their security, but also larger financial burdens and a lot more difficult to build popular support over.
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Protests are a step in a process. Let people get worked up, stop trying to shame them for not immediately solving the problem for you. Encourage, don’t discourage
According to Chenoweth, the number refers to peak, not cumulative participation. She also says 3.5% is not absolute – even non-violent campaigns can succeed with less participation, according to her 2020 update to the rule.
That’s the opposite of what her update said (well, it’s rather misleading). Her update noted cases where nonviolence failed even when they beat 3.5% - including one case that achieved 6% participation. She did note that most successful attempts didn’t need to reach 3.5%, but also that reaching that is no longer a guarantee.
Her original research only went to 2006, there’s been a few recent cases which broke the rule. Like she said in her update, history isn’t necessarily a predictor of future results. I think there are also some very recent cases like Nepal where 95% of the movement is nonviolent, but violence at the very end of the movement tips the scale. (IIRC something similar happened with the Iranian revolution, though the results of that were decidedly undemocratic in the long run). There’s some nuance with Nepal as well- the organizers did not choose to go for violence, it was largely an unplanned mob reaction.
Based on the totality of her research (which is publicly accessible and based on publicly accessible data), I still think nonviolence is more likely to achieve success than violence, but it really annoys me when articles like this one overstate the effects. It makes it really easy to tear apart the argument.
Strikes work even better
Yup. Stop the economy, they will buckle or start a civil war.
None of these protesters were one day scheduled way in advance in dedicated areas behind police lines meme displays.
It’s a great reflection of the peacefulness of the protesters, but they’ll only laugh at a scheduled state sponsored venting session with a dancing chicken.
Perhaps I’m too skeptical, but maybe the purpose of this kind of article (that’s written by a large paper and owned by who?) is to keep the oppressed, oppressed. Protests have done nothing for the us - the authoritarian leadership is here, and rights are being taken away quickly. Maybe protests work is certain regimes but not others.
Protests work as a show of force (to the target of the protests) and to generate solidarity and increase numbers (for the protesters).
For them to actually work as a show of force, there has to be a credible threat of violence (or political action) waiting in the wings. All of the successful non-violent protests in the past had this. The idea is that you work with us on these reasonable requests or we put your heads on pikes. Without leverage, the protests are just a means of venting pressure.
Without a connected political action that the energy is channeled into the protests would be ineffective but the political action can be just people voting en masse as long as there are still fair elections where they can do that.
“This messaging was brought to you by billionaires that don’t want to be kirked”
“Keep at it guys, we’re going to give in to all your demands while you starve and we’re living in luxury bunkers with a lifetime of supplies. You’re so close.”
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
Is it causation or correlation? If something gets a certain level of support, things change. Doesn’t seem like a deep thought.
What stops president from sending troops and shooting those protesters?
Ideally (when it comes to the US) what stops him is that those kinds of orders would not be carried out or state officials would resist them. If that doesn’t happen it could be a Ukraine’s Maidan type situation where violence against protestors only creates more anger and eventually the pressure on politicians in power is high enough for them to do something. For Trump that would be enough Republicans finally standing up for the people instead of sucking up to the wannabe dictator…
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.
Ehh, collective violence is different from lone wolf violence and have very different outcomes. Also the vast majority of these lone wolves follow right-wing ideology so us being pushed further to fascism is arguably their goal.
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?
And the Dems winning the midterms means nothing. They have rolled over already what makes people think they won’t continue to do so.
At the very least it would buy more time as they are not just doing whatever the leader of the other party demands of them. As long as democracy is functioning enough for it to even be possible for the opposition candidates to win you should do everything you can to make that happen. It’s a whole different ballgame when that slips away.
Thanks to the protests being effective, Palestine is no longer being genocided, immigrants aren’t being sent to concentration camps, and the US is not threatening random countries… oh wait
Short term gain. It’s more about long term awareness. It is unfortunate for those now. But it’s not something that changes overnight.
What is awareness going to do? People are already plenty aware of what’s going on, this was one of the first genocides to be livestreamed.
Awareness of the future leaders of the regions. Some things are not an immediate fix.
ok so it will get fixed after the damage has already been done, got it
A reductive way to put it. But hey. If you have any better ideas, go get em.
I’m not saying I have better ideas, but if it doesn’t fix anything until it’s too late, “very” is not a good word to describe its effectiveness
But you crap on mine for understanding that I don’t have any better ideas too, but am aware of what protests do in terms of change? Got it.
Know what works even better? Voting.
*People mad at me suggesting voting lol.
Voting in a capitalist system is why we’re here in this mess. From pac money to [anti] voter laws to gerrymandering to banning 3rd party candidates, voting is a complete and utter sham disguised to give us agency over our lives. It’s anything but…
Voting for the “lesser evil” is also why we’re here in this mess. It doesn’t work. At all.
We aren’t “mad” at your comment. It’s just naive and wrong.
Where do I vote against genocide or for healthcare? Or hell I just don’t want to support billionaires, where do I vote for that?
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
So voting doesn’t work I the US? So your screwed cause protesting doesn’t work. Especially the half assed way Americans do it. Go out on weekends and have a big one every couple of months. Look at France for where it worked but they didn’t do it half assed.
No, voting every 4 years between one capitalist war monger vs the other capitalist war monger doesn’t work.
Voting works, but it doesn’t work if that’s your only tactic.
Let’s not even argue what “works better”, we need a diversity of tactics and we need to take all the power available to us.
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.
