I used to think that protest marches by liberals, progressives and other groups who are labeled as leftists (environmentalists, for one, same sex marriage advocates for another), served a valuable purpose. Indeed, I have participated in several, the largest in Washington, DC protesting the Iraq War in September, 2005. However, as time as gone on, I’ve reconsidered their significance, especially in light of the way the media covers these events.
The Occupy Wall Street protests, for example, were portrayed as either led by a bunch of dirty effing hippies and/or thugs by the mainstream media. Rarely did the coverage of those events address the underlying issues of wealth and income inequality that was the focus of the protests. All too often the authorities’ viewpoint, i.e., that these were often violent, lawless people whose behavior justified a militarized, aggressive and forceful police reaction – i.e., having police use tasers, pepper spray, head bashing batons, rubber bullets, tear gas and stun grenades – was the dominant theme media outlets ran with. We’ve seen much of the same in many mainstream media portrayals of the protests in Ferguson, MO this last two weeks.
More troubling, however, is when the media simply ignores the protests entirely. The anti-war protest I attended had anywhere from 100,000 to 300,000 protestors and prominent politicians and political figures who marched ans spoke at an after-march rally. Yet, if you watched television that day you would have hardly known that anything had occurred at all, as most media simply ignored the event. There were no national media interviews of the leaders of that protest. At best there was some local coverage but nothing in depth. Tea Party rallies of a few hundred people got more coverage a few years later.
In short, unless the national networks cover the event, and cover it fully and fairly, the protests do little good in my opinion. Now, there is a big push to hold an international day for marches to support action on climate change scheduled for late September. The New York City march link can be found here:
However, I don’t believe that these marches, now matter how large, will accomplish anything. The media has a standard narrative regarding climate issues in which, invariably they allow “both sides” of the issue to voice their “opinions” even if one side has all the scientific evidence and the other side consists of professional “deniers” and “skeptics” essentially funded by large corporate interests and billionaires who are heavily invested in fossil fuels, such as the Koch brothers.
Perhaps, I’m cynical, but I can’t help but wonder if the environmental organizations funding these protests would be better served spending their money in other ways, such as for example, campaign ads against politicians who are in the pocket of the oil, gas and coal industries, or ads in favor of politicians who support action to reduce our dependence on energy from carbon based sources and who support rapid expansion of renewable energy. I’d also suggest they spend their dollars on social media campaigns which are easier and cheaper to organize and have the ability to reach many more people.
But I’m open to hearing the other side of the argument. So, please tell me what you think about the value of large scale protest marches in an age where mainstream media is ever more concentrated in the hands of a few large corporations and social media allows far more rapid dissemination of information regarding political and social issues. (Yes, I know I’m showing my bias in that last statement).
I’m with you. It’s better to manipulate the system than expect our worthless media to help your cause. They’re better off starting interest groups than marching.
Marches – in and of themselves – don’t do much more than feed into media stereotypes. They will focus on the dude in the loincloth and the dreadlocked beard and ignore the hundreds of other people, then sneer and talk about hippies.
But I think the protests in Ferguson have had an impact. I think OWS had an impact.
The paradox is that those that would up the ante and make the march more violent will create exactly the sort of violence that causes the media to sneer, but it also insures coverage.
You have to have a police riot to make your point, it seems. Luckily, the police are usually happy to oblige.
If the demonstrations in Ferguson continue, there may not be any money for snow removal in Nov. How much is the mayor of Ferguson willing to spend to defend one policeman….1 million…5 million….pension fund contributions?
I think Occupy Wall Street might have had some minor impact. I think the larger Occupy movement was totally ineffective because of how poorly organized it was. People couldn’t really articulate what it was about, and it accepted supporters from every liberal cause under the sun (except Occupy also refused to call itself liberal).
The Ferguson protests have a pretty clear goal: give us answers about what happened to Michael Brown. To the extent that they will have any effect at all, it will be because the organizers could articulate a clear grievance and redress.
I think like you that protest marches in themselves don’t do much. The key is to use them as a tool for other types of organizing. If you collect contact information from all the people attending the march, for example, you might be able to persuade them to make phone calls to their representatives or vote for a particular initiative. And protest marches are also just fun. One way to get people on your side is to give them something they enjoy doing.
There’s good reason to suspect that in the eyes of much of America, Protest Marchers=Hippies. We have seen how fashionable hippy punching has become for pols on both sides. The nooz uses the aforementioned linkage to dismiss mass protests in order to concentrate on infotainment. So, no, protest marches no longer avail us of much more than a few hours outdoors and the chance to see the cops’ latest riot gear.
I was an anti-war/torture/rendition organizer in Fayetteville, NC, in the 00’s until after the election of 2008 – when I moved back to Upstate NY, after losing my job.
A fun place to protest, since it’s also the home of Fort Bragg – as in, NOT fun at all!!!
As for marches, I don’t know how much good they do for the greater public, because our MSM ignores most of the liberal ones, but, instead, gives time to conservative ones – think Brooks Brothers “riots” in 2000.
I found marches to be cathartic for the people marching. It also gives us a sense of community, and more voices, than must screaming into the void, or typing furiously.
What I did find very interesting though, were the reactions of people TO our protests.
Initially, we were reviled, and threatened.
Yes, even death threats.
We had police snipers on the roof tops to protect us from Freepers and other assorted Reich-Wing loons.
As time went on, W’s actions garnered less and less support – and, opposition to us started to cool down a bit.
You still had the hard-core crazies, but more people starting honking approval when we were on street corners at rush-hour, instead of flipping us the bird and screaming at us.
One sign that the worm had turned, was at our march in Fayetteville, in early 2005.
As we were marching from the assembly point to the protest site, we had the snipers I’d mentioned protecting us, as well as cops on horses.
As we were marching up this hill, with me near the front, I saw this helmeted and armed Robocop on a horse notice me.
I had been the MC for the hour we gathered before marching, so I was easily identifiable.
Well, as he sees me, his helmeted head turns to me, and he slows down to my pace.
He stares at me, and I get very nervous – but I remembered my peaceful protest training on how to handle police confrontations and arrests.
Don’t resist!
As I’m walking, he keeps pace and continues looking at me.
Then, finally, his gloved hand made the international peace sign, and he sped-up and rode off.
A Fayetteville policeman – probably, ex-military – had given me, an anti-war protest organizer, the peace sign.
The people around me had seen it, and were astounded!
I mentioned it when I was speaking at the protest.
That little action by that policeman, made a lot of us very, very happy.
Someone HAD noticed! š
I too have had a few moments of joy as you describe.
I see evidence of environmental groups spending plenty to advertise against the fossil fuel candidates. And demonstrations/marches can be effective if their message stays consistent and the groups don’t get co-opted. Moral Mondays is an excellent example of effective organizing that includes demonstrations.
But yes, the anti-war demonstrations were singularly ineffective in achieving the stated goal.
Marches are interest groups.
It is essential to feel, to know, you are not the only one. You are not alone. Especially when unbalanced power is part or all of the issues being addressed. Important also to safeguard against the lone wolves who may take the entirety of the redress into their own hands irresponsibly or be easily manipulated to do so.
In issues like anti-war, racial injustice, pipeline construction, etc. the group presence is no less essential than the research and investigative work.
Group demonstrations provide imperative, solidarity and support for the latter. Research and investigation supports, validates and reaches different constituencies.
Without demonstrations and the human voice shouting or weeping in unison, power wins no matter what study groups determine.
It is absurd to think otherwise: the whole nation would be Ferguson if Americans had not marched in protest. There would be 60 hour work weeks, African Americans and women wouldn’t have the vote…
More troubling, however, is when the media simply ignores the protests entirely. The anti-war protest I attended had anywhere from 100,000 to 300,000 protestors and prominent politicians and political figures who marched ans spoke at an after-march rally. Yet, if you watched television that day you would have hardly known that anything had occurred at all, as most media simply ignored the event. There were no national media interviews of the leaders of that protest. At best there was some local coverage but nothing in depth. Tea Party rallies of a few hundred people got more coverage a few years later.
Oh no, but who would have predicted that the corporate-owned media would, through action or inaction, slant its coverage such in a way to politically benefit its corporate pimpmasters even at the cost of journalistic integrity?!
Despite the whining by the Teahadists, the media has never been liberal. It’s why I can’t take the fawning people do over asshats like Brian Williams or Richard Engel.
Liberals need to get over their sentimentally stupid idea that conservatives and disaffected moderates can be convinced by such frippery as rhetoric and appeals to their better nature and evidence. Conservatives are not in the short term convinced by anything short of pocketbook appeals for the rich/cultural ego-stroking for the non-rich and the political equivalent of pain-based classical conditioning stemming from the results of their own actions. And the latter is by no means assured.
This doesn’t mean that protest marches are a waste of time. Protest marches should serve as a vehicle for political organization and engagement. Who gives a fuck whether they by way of direct contact or the corporate-whore media convince conservatives and right-leaning centrists of a different course of action? What matters is whether it exercises the muscle of liberal consensus and organization. This is why I consider the OWS protests as ultimately a failure while I consider the Moral Monday movement a blueprint for our future.
Hell, I got over that during the Oakland Induction Center blockades in 1968.
I guess you don’t include yourself
I don’t know what this means and neither do you.
It is all a big waste of time and or money. Just like signing petitions, none of this counts if people do not get out and VOTE. Want to protest use your VOTE! Nothing is more valuable and powerful a weapon for true change then the VOTE!
Not disagreeing with you but adding a caveat: Honest tabulation of the votes and protection for the physical act of voting.
Consider an America with no marches and no one passionate enough about a fundamental issue to turn out in the streets. On any issue.
Then, to take your point, what if several thousand people protested and no one noticed. Actually, that indeed happened in 2004 at the Republican National Convention in New York. A half million people marched through the streets and caused nary a media blip. Twice the number at the famous March on Washington. And it was a march against the continuing Iraq War (which yet continues a decade later).
And since then, the marches have been ignored largely and the ones that did do any good have been ruthlessly suppressed with paramilitary tactics and federal-state-local cooperation of law enforcement, military, and intelligence.
So where we are on the first amendment right to assembly, free speech, freedom of the press, and as Fergons shows freedom of religion, is continuing to speak, assemble, document, and put faith into action regardless of its immediate effectiveness just to keep asserting our human right to do all of those things. Our human right to speak out, assemble to petition governments for a redress of grievance, document and disseminate the truth about events or political opinions, and the acting out of religious faith for healing in the face of police abuse.
Fail to speak, fail to assemble and protest, fail to document the truth, fail to act out of religious compassion and the Constitution becomes a dead sheet of paper. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights becomes empty words and not a symbolic evidence of human progress and values.
At one time because of world war we had a serious conversation about the minimal set of universal global values that would apply in a society that self-consciously understood that universal values were needed to establish justice no matter how much they were breached. That conversation and the documents it produced is why Amnesty New Zealand sent observers to Ferguson and why volunteer lawyers from the National Lawyers Guild risked themselves to get the names of people being detained.
In other countries, anonymous detainees disappear in the law enforcement system, some never to return. And the US is slipping towards the methods of Guantanamo being domesticated in US law enforcement just like the spying on US citizens wholesale has become the SOP for the NSA.
Protests are still necessary to test the seriousness of the country’s commitment to constitutional order. Just like voting is still necessary to gauge the sentiments of American voters.
Effectiveness is a long-term measure that requires strategic thinking. Protests and especially protest marches (which generally require significant planning, funds, designated leadership, and legal permitting) are another tactic.
The Civil Rights movement was not effective in removing Jim Crow laws through protest marches alone. The most effective tactic, and the one that drew the most murderous response, was voter registration.
Judging from the response to Occupy Wall Street and to Ferguson, the issue for organizers is being so effective that you bring down all the forces of the state against you.
A secondary issue is the post-9/11 conflation of protest with terrorism just because of “there might” be a terrorist embedded in the protest. Most organizations using protest as a tactic these days are keyed to sorting out provocateurs (and that includes terrorist wannabes) who could sabotage their particular movement. And most do extensive training of protesters who intend to take a few risks in what is counter-productive.
But it is the role of the conservative to convince those seeking progress that every tactic of forcing an honest conversation is futile. Right-wing media folk will lie. Commercial media folk will censor or be co-opted by the status quo. Law enforcement will use escalated theater to play to the media on public safety and public health reasons for their massive response. Showing up in riot gear automatically get media to describe the situation as a riot even when it is not. Wearing rubber gloves or hazmat suit implies a public health danger even when there is none. And so do the stories about protesters throwing urine that generally appear after the public safety justification for overreacting has been demolished. The narrative is that protesters are dirty and repugnant.
The protest in Ferguson and the protests in cities around the world did do some good. Oakland PD, under a court order on crowd control tactics, had to stand impassively while protesters held mirrors up to them so that they could see their aggressive appearance. What the consequences of that effectiveness in forced reflection will be waits for further events.
One of the long-term signals of effectiveness will be if the US starts dialing back on the culture of “toughness” (and pants-wetting that it seeks to assuage) and the infringements on civil liberties imposed since the end of World War II. Another will be whether the Friends of the City of Ferguson allow “I [heart] Ferguson” to sprout everywhere in the city, even in the residences along Canfield Drive.
Round Two: The Moral Monday movement will be the best test of a movement that uses protest marches as a tactic since OWS. What that will test is whether permitted protest marches and negotiated civil disobedience rules of engagement are effective means of popular political mobilization of a multi-issue movement with one objective–changing the NC legislature’s philosophy and policies regardless of party composition.
Marches have been enormously important. They are the only ones that have had a positive impact in the last 30 years.
In general OWS was effective until the issue became a law enforcement issue. When this happens the protest groups almost always become less popular – something which the protest groups fail to realize. OWS wound up polling worse than the Tea Party. They didn’t start out that way, though.
(Disclosure: I participated in our local version of OWS.)
I think OWS was a stupendous success, even if it accomplished nothing beyond this: at OWS’s inception, the corporate-media-driven “national conversation” was dominated by a non-existent “debt crisis”.
OWS completely changed this, focusing attention instead on income inequality (along with a number of other related issues, e.g., student loan indentured servitude).
The swiftness of this shift in focus was, in fact, rather breathtaking — and immensely positive. I would be hard-pressed to name another movement that accomplished so much in so little time.
And while the OWS core movement has largely gone dormant, numerous spin-off initiatives (e.g., Occupy SEC, Strike Debt) continue exerting significant influence in more-focused ways/areas.
OT: Obamacare Legal Foe Showed True Colors In 2010: ‘This Bastard Has To Be Killed’
By DYLAN SCOTT PublishedAUGUST 22, 2014, 10:39 AM
A recently surfaced 2010 quote from one of the major funders behind the latest legal challenge to Obamacare perfectly encapsulates the ends-justify-the-means ethos that is driving the litigation.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute is helping to pay for the lawsuit, Halbig v. Burwell, which seeks to invalidate Obamacare’s tax subsidies being offered on the federal health insurance exchange, HealthCare.gov. In 2010, CEI chairman Michael Greve made plain that anythingshould be done to stop the law. “I do not care how it’s done,” he said at the time. “I don’t care who does it.”
Here is what Greve said at a 2010 conference hosted by the conservative American Enterprise Institute, where Greve is an adjunct scholar, as The New York Times’s Linda Greenhousereported this week:
“This bastard has to be killed as a matter of political hygiene. I do not care how this is done, whether it’s dismembered, whether we drive a stake through its heart, whether we tar and feather it and drive it out of town, whether we strangle it. I don’t care who does it, whether it’s some court some place, or the United States Congress. Any which way, any dollar spent on that goal is worth spending, any brief filed toward that end is worth filing, any speech or panel contribution toward that end is of service to the United States.”
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/halbig-obamacare-2010-bastard-has-to-be-killed
“Political Hygiene”! Sounds like red blood fascism to me.
well, as some TPM commenters are asking, with that language, are we sure he’s talking about a piece of legislation and not our President? the guy needs a visit from the Secret Service
All mass protests are a waste of time and effort… until you win.
What people expect is that ‘win’ (I’ll equate win with change) usually takes a LONG time. Take Cund’s excellent post above as an example. He protested for years. Did he ‘win’? Most would say no, he did not. However, it became the general consensus that the war was a stupid mistake, making further protests unnecessary. His protests may have had nothing to do with that, but at least he was right.
And making progress on entrenched social issues can take far longer. Years and years. How long did it take Gandhi to ‘win’? Years and years. One may say that Martin Luther King never did ‘win’, that his battle is ongoing. You are trying to convince a majority that they are wrong, and are trying to change their perception. Very few humans, let alone Americans, are going to do that without a long sustained program.
Gandhi and King also has something else going for them. They had people willing to take a beating. Not once, not twice, but over and over, for years and years. King’s and Gandhi’s main message was not really peaceful protest, but teaching their followers to take a beating, without resistance. That is brave beyond belief. What modern American political issue has followers willing to do that? The whole militarization of local police departments are based on cowing protests so they quit. In order to change that you need to take a beating. If you fight back you lose. Loot, you lose. Throw back the tear gas, you lose. And if they refuse to beat you, you have to up the ante until they do. Peacefully upping the ante until you take a beating and are hauled off to jail (until the jails cannot hold any more) is how you ‘win’.
So…..no, mass protests are a waste of time. Until you can put together a mass movement willing to spend years and years taking a beating, your protests are laughable. THAT is why the media ignores them. Because they look at the crowd and know they are not serious.
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So I uprated this because I think that, overall, it’s quite good and worthwhile.
But I think this is problematic:
So you think “a mass movement willing to spend years and years taking a beating” arises spontaneously from nowhere? How do you think such a movement gets started, before it gains that sort of momentum?
People who are unwilling to take to the streets quickly lose their right to do so.
Many people, when they organize or participate in demonstrations, seem to think they are engaged in a kind of moral witnessing before God or whatever might be (to them) the equivalent. I suppose this comes at least in part from the Quaker tradition, but also from the idea that even unpopular or little-known causes have to show up and “demonstrate” their commitment to some position.
My own belief is that a demonstration is a constructed event for the purpose of mass communication and influencing public opinion. From the very conception you have to think of the media and how it will be covered. If you are not going to get coverage, or if the coverage is going to be used against you, there’s no point in doing it.
But to a considerable extent this depends on the issue and the nature of the demonstration itself. Back in the 60s there were many demonstrations against the Vietnam War, for example. Many of these were huge and had the backing and participation of major public figures. Opposition to the war was already huge. Even then, government and press manipulation was widespread, and yet, these demonstrations were effective.
There are issues aplenty today, and the potential support is also there. I suspect the main problem is in the planning, or lack of same. I don’t know why that is, but to me that is the main question.
One more thing. Not only must you be assured of at least some good coverage, but that coverage must form part of a larger action strategy with definite goals. For example, if you can quote from press items as part of a lobbying campaign to influence specific influential officials to support specific legislation or specific executive policy.
Even if there is little legislation these days on the federal level, don’t forget that there are many other levels of government.
I think the very fact we know about so many protest marches is that they do a lot of good. I have seen them discussed in so many books! And Occupy Wall Street affected many people:; it still does. These protests are not unknown. They are remembered. You discuss and develop new ideas, and meet new people to work with, on these marches, too. They have a tremendous effect. If nobody had come out, it would have been terrible. You also see how many people agree with you.
bearing witness publicly is something we can do. I think we do so with little hope of effectiveness, but motivated by a sense the something is better than nothing, and how can our consciences allow us to do nothing?
RE: research and marching Shouldn’t we have known about this?
from http://www.uppitywis.org/blogarticle/other-michael-b-police-shooting
Dan Wilson’s blog
The other Michael B. police shooting
Submitted by Dan Wilson on Wed, 08/20/2014 – 12:37pm
There is a scene in one of the “Naked Gun” movies in which Lt. Frank Drebbin, played by Leslie Nielson, is asked to turn in his badge. Drebbin responds, “but now if I shoot somebody I could be charged with a crime.”
Nothing illustrates better the difficulty of getting any kind of accountability when a police officer murders a citizen. Notice I used the term murder. Why not. If you get away with murder you are still a murderer in my view.
Whether the death of Michel Brown in Ferguson, Missouri will result in any significant criminal charges or even a conviction is an open question. If history is any guide I am not optimistic.
One only needs to turn to the other Michael B. case, Michael Bell, a 21-year-old Kenosha man who, in 2004, was shot in the head at point blank range while he was in police custody in front of his own house in front of his mother and sister.
The Kenosha Police Department quickly concluded it was a justifiable homicide and the officer who kllled Bell is still on the job today.
It took years of civil litigation to reveal that the investigation conducted by the killer’s co-workers was a whitewash and evidence that would have justified a homicide charge was suppressed.
In Ferguson it is apparent the Ferguson Police Department is incapable of investigating their own and have already meddled in the case with the release of the convenience store robbery video. Certainly with the Justice Department involved there is less chance of a whitewash. But for the most part, police shooting cases are investigated by their peers who focus on clearing their comrades.
Michael Bell’s parents launched a campaign to have all police-involved shooting cases investigated by an outside agency and, in the spring of this year the bill passed the Wisconsin legislature and was signed into law by Gov. Scott Walker. This makes Wisconsin the only state with such a law.
In a recent article in Politico Michel Bell’s father noted that it is too convenient to view the Ferguson case through the lens of racism. His son was white, as was his killer. It is about police accountability and that can’t happen when police investigate themselves.
Shortly after passage of the law Dontre Hamilson, 31, was shot 15 times by a police officer in Milwaukee’s Red Arrow Park. Police claim Hamilton grabbed the officer’s baton. Only in the past week was that investigation completed and forwarded to the district attorney’s office. It remains to be seen how well the Michael Bell law will play out.
The law was passed in Wisconsin because of the unstoppable force of the Bell family. But let’s hope the idea catches on countrywide. Justice demands it.
What has been reported but not widely known is that that the Ferguson PD from the beginning would not investigate their own. They filed no report and immediately flipped the incident to the St. Louis County PD for investigation. The St. Louis County PD incident report is the one that is empty except for officer referring (Darren Wilson and badge number), date, time, location, and victim’s name and address.
Yes, the philosophy of aggressive policing is a huge factor, especially after the good press in Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point and the media PR blitz of Rudi Giuliani. But the abuses of minority victims (including the mentally disturbed and hearing impaired of all ethnicities) and youth in general points to a general attitude of who has lower status definitely not accorded rich white men.
One huge area that has been missing is independent evidence of police misconduct. Due to some recent court cases about using cell phones to video police misconduct, that likely is changing but all too slowly. It is this evidence that quickly undid the false orbital jaw fracture story the Ferguson PD and CNN were trying to spin.
Make sure to ban the sale of sauerkraut on the street dogs, and carbonated drinks, and beer. After all, methane is a potent greenhouse gas.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/08/25/americans-dont-like-protests-but-prote
sts-may-work-anyway/