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).