Stop Protesting
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This is how the current formula works out in the minds of the left:
1.Identify problem or issue
2.Organize protest, march from point A to B and garner media coverage for opposition or support of said issue
3.Visible opposition leads to the problem or issue being solved, thanks to a groundswell of popular support
There’s a problem with this equation. As currently executed it does not work. Think about it: the Bush administration has been able to push the Iraq war, CAFTA, the Energy Bill, the Bankruptcy Bill and numerous other bits of law and legislation that undermine America’s place in the world. Most, if not all, of these pieces of legislation have been the subject of protests dissenting Americans getting off of their duffs and out into the proverbial streets to make their voices heard, and yet… nothing.
One diagnosis says that such protests are given short shrift in the media, or that our politicians just ignore the dissent because the money from lobbyists speaks much louder. There are some truths to these reasons, but that just isn’t it. Protest isn’t working, and while it played a role in ending the Vietnam war its efficacy has been wildly overstated.
I can hear it already, the civil rights movement surely proves what I’m saying is wrong, right? No. First, the civil rights movement was unique in that it was not a specific policy or bill that needed defeating, but rather an entire earthquake sized realignment of the concept of society that had to be addressed. The issue of equality literally touched the lives of each and every American citizen in a real way every single day of their lives it is very rare that any issue is that big of a deal, even issues of war. But the civil rights movement has imparted an important lesson to us that progressives would do well to repeat mantra-like, over and over.
It’s the message, stupid.
It’s the message, stupid.
It’s the message, stupid.
Successful social actions have the advantage of being easy to roll of the tongue. Civil rights marchers demanded that all men be created equal. Yes, they had various issues some people were more concerned with getting decent wages than being considered equal citizens but the message from the protesters were simple: I Am A Man.
That’s what’s wrong with protests. Everyone brings their pet cause to the protest. If you’re holding a media event to talk about the Iraq War, talk about the Iraq War. Save the harangue about gender equity and social justice (WTF is social justice besides a slogan anyway?) and give concrete talking points about why you’re doing what you’re doing.
Yet, it is the very concept of protesting that I find ridiculous. It is patently absurd to slam people for not leaving their jobs in the middle of the day to go and wave a placard that won’t change anything. The media, and the public at large, are not interested in your protest and it won’t change their minds. It is quite a cost-inefficient way to preach to the existing choir.
I hear from progressives all the time that I should turn of the tv or turn off the radio . Yet, these folks are also the ones often prescribing the most ineffective solutions to the movement’s goals. As the sky is blue, we live in a media world that means broadcast, satellite, and terrestrial television; traditional and satellite radio; as well as print and the Internet. If you are not waging war for the attention of the American citizenry on all of these fronts you are conceding defeat. Modern protest isn’t about placards and folk songs, it is about media saturation and manipulation.
Even for groups that get some of the equation, it is no good if you don’t combine the two. Give up on the silly moral indignation and begin to understand that Madison Avenue is teaching us usable skills. Get into the media, and once you get there have a quick message and repeat it until the cows come home. Don’t ever say an issue is too complex, because they never are. Deal with the time and space limits afforded you and make lemonade out of lemons.
Some may still argue that protesting works, pointing to the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine. While the protesters did dramatically take to the streets, they did so in a coordinated fashion. They wore one color (orange) in solidarity, and stuck to the message at hand: the elections have been rigged and we won’t accept the results. Everything else rolled from that. Still, for most American political issues, protesting in the street will do more to harm than help, whereas developing a semi-competent strategy of using the media will position your issue in people’s minds ideally causing them to become reliable seeders of your position with friends and neighbors.
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© 2000-2011 Oliver Willis
The problem with protests
Oliver Willis, with whom I don t normally agree, has a great post up criticizing the left s need to organize protests (what Kundera critiqued in The Grand March chapter of Unbearable Lightness), and while most of his examples…
Your strongest point is the muddling of protest with multiple messages. Have a point and stick with it. Stay on message with the slogan and don’t use the media moment as an excuse to offer up every other pet cause. The worst examples of these are the large anti-war demonstrations – like the counter-GOP convention in New York last year. Just a maelstrom of discontent. To be fair, this isn’t all that new. Protests in the late 19th century often brought together a cavalcade of voices – 8 hour day, women’s suffrage, no child labor. But they were much more “on message” than some of these mass protests today.
Bullshit.
Actually Oliver, you missed the fundamental reason why MLK’s civil rights protests were effective.
It’s true that MLK stayed “on message,” but you’ve also got to look at the message. Or more specifically, look at what the message wasn’t.
Start with the most famous of MLK’s speeches: http://www.mecca.org/~crights/dream.html
Or read his letter from Birmingham jail:
http://www.nobelprizes.com/nobel/peace/MLK-jail.html
Notice anything missing?
Did King call his opponents Nazis?
Did King accuse his opponents of belonging to the KKK?
Did King accuse his opponents of killing children?
Did King liken his opponents to Communists or other symbols of evil in the world at that time?
Did King single out one person for an all-out attack?
Remember that King was fighting REAL segregationists and REAL white supremacists — Faubus, Fullbright, Wallace, Thurmond, Gore, Perez, Byrd, Conner, et. al. These were the most powerful men in Southern politics at the time. But King never engaged in personal demagoguery, never engaged in personal attacks or name-calling, and never encouraged his followers to target and destroy individuals. Instead, he focused on the suffering of his own people. He also did not consider it below himself to suffer alongside them, in marches and in jail cells.
Now look at what Julian Bond said at last year’s NAACP meeting:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/948509/posts
“The Bush brothers are big on preemption. First Governor Jeb Bush became the only governor to carry out a preemptive strike on affirmative action, and then President George Bush carried out a preemptive strike on Iraq, the only President in our nation’s history to attack a country which did not threaten or attack us first. Both strikes were unnecessary and unwise.”
“Their idea of reparations is to give war criminal Jefferson Davis a pardon. Their idea of equal rights is the American flag and Confederate swastika flying side by side.
Speaking of the Confederate swastika, my former home state of Georgia rates last in the nation in SAT scores. Before they think about raising the Confederate flag again, they ought to raise their SAT scores!”
“The average KKK member may be stupid, but the well-financed forces of the radical right are not.”
“… Justice Clarence Thomas, affirmative action’s poster child…”
“… Ward Connerly, the California Terminator … The only color Connerly recognizes is the color of money.”
Unfortunately, despite what Democrats believe, the Democratic Party’s “message” has gotten out lout loud and clear during the last few election years: “Vote for me, because my opponent is a Nazi-racist-fascist-supremacist and I care more than he does.”
I think it’s because today’s political left has run out of ideas that will appeal to a majority of Americans. And due to 40 years of media domination, they’ve also lost the ability to explain and argue their beliefs effectively.
There are other things (fixation on finding the “next JFK,” fixation on being a “new Democrat,” etc.) but I think that coming up with pro-active solutions instead of knee-jerk opposition and name-calling would be the best way for Democrats to start winning elections.
Even though I am not a Democrat, just once I would like to see a good race between Republican and Democrat candidates who both have good ideas and engage in thoughtful, substantive debate over them.
One could argue that “protesting” has an anti-democratoc core. After all protests, often composed of shouted slogans, simplistic placards and angry emotions, do not seek to educate or persuade; rather to intimidate; to outweigh the deliberative and rational with the emotional and irrational. So “Mr Representative”, your constituents supported the Iraq action by electing you after you pledged to support the President and you now are going to vote against it because of Ms Sheehans and her raucous demonstrators. The protesters, a clear minority, thereby gain sway over the majority.
Dugger,
“To be like the humans. To laugh, feel, want. Why are these things not in the plan ? I cannot, yet I must. At what point on the graph do cannot and must meet ? The great Ro-Man.
Alas, you’ve indirectly hit on why recent protest politics have failed: Democrats don’t have “a message”.
What is the Republican’s message? And don’t give me the family values bullshit. Tax cuts for the top 1%, doing everything in their power to ruin social security, invading Iraq instead of going after the real terrorists, doing nothing about the rising cost of oil at the same time the oil companies are making record profits, trashing women’s rights, and trying to stop stem cell research. Can you think of anymore?
Don’t forget about how we want to poison children and lock up all minorities!!!
SaveFarris,
Are you quoting Howard Dean in an approving manner?
I try to quote Dean as often as I can. Recent history shows that the more exposure the public has to Dean, the less likely they are to vote Democratic.
[...] 2:54 pm Oliver, in a post on the apparent ineffective nature of political protests, writes: Successful social actions have the advantage of being easy to roll of the tongu [...]
Let me get this straight…
You guys are saying that, after Cindy Sheehan’s son got his guts blown out looking for WMD’s, and then saw smirk-meister Bush on tape joking around about the search for them, at one point looking under his desk… that she’s not supposed to protest? THAT, AS YOUR PROPAGANDA OUTLETS PUT IT, SHE’S A “LEFT-WING MEDIA WHORE?” THAT SHE’S (to quote Limbaugh) “MAKING THE WHOLE THING UP?”
When you’re protesting, only one thing counts: that you have a point. Bush’s war is a mistake in search of a rationale, and kids are dying for it. THAT’S A FACT. Compare that to the protest at Terry Shiavo’s location… The zealots protesting there were die-hard life-at-all-costs morons, saying a judicial murder of a conscious woman was taking place, and the neo-cons made political hay out of it and got bit on the ass. Why? BECAUSE THEY WERE WRONG. Had Terry been found to have hearing, vision, and cognition centers left in her brain, ther would have been hell to pay. But no. Just right-wing lies again.
Iraq is an unjustifiable war, and will be remembered as a war crime; Bush a war criminal. Thousands of innocent Iraqi women and children were burned, shot, blown apart because of a war Bush shoved down the throats of Congress, the public, the world under false (and still-changing) pretenses… AND WE SHOULDN’T PROTEST IT?
Kiss my ass.
“Republicans have to defend against the truth; Democrats have to defend against lies.”
That’s more true today than when it was first written.
It’s just that simple. And it can be proven by their rhetoric: our commentary is specific and idea-driven complaints about real, concrete words and actions by our ‘leaders’, and the right-wing response is all ad hominem smears and attacks, but rarely a refutation of the charge itself. That’s why we make signs: to counter the right’s lie machine (see also Fox News).
I’ll hate Bush, Cheney, Rove, Ashcroft and their pals ’til the day I die, AND I HAVE A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO FEEL THAT WAY, AND TO SAY SO IN PUBLIC.
Oh, and one more thing: TWICE AS MANY AMERICANS ARE AGAINST THE WAR AS FOR IT, so you can knock off the subtext implying that war protesters are some tiny lunatic fringe. Pretty soon the only tiny lunatic fringe will be those still supporting Emperor George & his slimy fellow criminals.
The best decision Bush has made while in office was to not meet with Cindy Sheehan in Texas. He knows he cannot answer her questions truthfully. Maybe she should go after Karl Rove or Dick Cheney since tey are the ones telling Bush what to do.
SaveFerris,
The quote of Howard Dean you cited was eminently reasonable. Dean’s said some loopy things recently, but the quote you mention was one of the more sensible things I’ve heard from any politician, period.
dugger: “One could argue that protesting has an anti-democratoc[sic] core.”
Oh. My. God.
Please tell me you don’t really believe this. You actually believe that a peaceful assembly of like-minded folks to air their views is “anti-democratic”? You, sir, are a dumbass.
pionar,
Sigh. Even you have resorted to nastiness.
” You actually believe that a peaceful assembly of like-minded folks to air their views is anti-democratic ?”
Well, no – not particularly – especially since that is not what I said. You, not me, characterized a protest only as a peaceful assembly of folks airing their views. Is that all it is? Just a little congregation singing hymns out in the lonely pasture. There’s no attempt to gain a doisproportionate (sic – saved you the trouble) voice by being loud and provocative? To have the media treat the screamed views of a small vocal cadre on par with the views of the majority of the country? I argue it could be anti-democratic at its core (in theory) because in doing so a minority is seeking via the tactic of protest, as it is in reality, to gain a dispropriotnate (see the above sic) share of influence.
Dugger, I Reject Thoreau’s Philosophy and Thoreau Rejects Mine
woodwakr shows a fundamental misunderstanding of well … everything. Let’s just take one easy example, for starters. “TWICE AS MANY AMERICANS ARE AGAINST THE WAR AS FOR IT”. As we all know, if it is in all capitals, it is surely the gospel truth. I would assume that you are referring to the recent polls which showed that somewhere aroiund 60% of the people polled were worried about the war (why was that figure not 100% ?) or that they did not approve of the handling of the war. People, such as yourself, take that figure to mean that 60% are anti-Bush, when in fact, there are likely many supporters of Bush that are included in that figure as they may be disgruntled because we are not being more aggressive than we are.
Your specific and idea driven complaints sound like the laundry list of complaints (read : Republicans and President Bush are evile) that are trotted out daily by the folks at Kos, Atrios, Moore, etc …
Furthermore,
By Garnering a reporter to ask these folks questions you get a variety of messages each with a potential to hit home with a variety of people.
So protesting is not only a way of getting the message out its a way of garnering attention to various messages on a grander scale than say focus grouping.
O Dub are you going batshit crazy or what?
How come “I Am a Man” is not a slogan but “Social Justice” is?
Social Justice is what got you as a black person to be able to drink from the same water fountains as white people.
Thats what social justice is.
Yes the Media matters but it is one prong in the approach to achieving social justice. Protesting is the other.
The reason our approach is getting beaten down is because Cindy Sheehan and her supporters are in Crawford instead of on the Nationa Mall.
You forget that in the 60′s John Kerry and a bunch soldiers did what Cindy Sheehan is doing excpet they did it in front of the capitol building and the White House.
That is where Cindy should go next and all kinds of soldiers should follow.
I think it would he hard for reporters leacing daily press gaggles in the white house to pass by all those anti-war people and not be compelled to cover it.
So Oliver, for god’s sake you are totally fucking crazily wrong on this. You need a multi-pronged approach and just fixing the message alone will not do it.
Protesting will not move the issue. The reason Sheehan is cracking the media is because she isn’t someone marching around with puppet signs. She has a well defined and clear message. As morally correct as Sen. Kerry may have been it wasn’t his protesting alone that ended the war (and he understood the value of a decorated soldier protesting the conflict in order to sell it to the press), and that was over 30 years ago.
What has changed from 30 years ago? Why do you think ideas such as Marxism are still relevant?
Olliver, you are a smart guy don’t sully that with this bullshit stuff. Where is your kryptonite?
30 years ago we had a fubared war, today no different. OP truth puts an ad in the paper and garners 1.5 billion.
That is a protest. Granted its straight to the point. But the only reason I know about it is because I have signed more petitions and joined more email lists than normal humans do.
Most of america have no idea bout the ad. I stick to my original point.
If kery knew the value of a soldier protesting the war, then don’t you think Cindy Sheehan knows the value of a mother of a falen soldier protesting the war?
Go find that green rock dude, you need it now more than ever.
OOOOHH! JD I’m quaking in my boots. Your resplonse in a nutshell? “You, like all libruls, are wrong about everything.” You can’t face carefully and coherently refuting my statements, so you home in on questionable statistics. Just like you guys do to Cindy Sheehan.
(By the way… all you assholes attacking Cindy Sheehan should go eat shit, die, and rot in hell.)
Twice as many people ARE against the war as for it, if you count 1) those who think the whole thing was an illegal premeditated con-job & a disguised oil war, 2) those who think that even if removing Saddam was a good thing, it wasn’t worth the blood and treasure to have gone in, and 3) those who buy Bush’s justifications, but think the administration has bungled the effort in a disgraceful fashion, and shouldn’t have gone in with so little international support. I maintain that around 2/3 of Americans are represented in the three groups above, and about 1/3 are all for it, no questions asked, as is.
You gutless retards arguing for Bush should grow a spine and maybe a brain on top to match. I have both, and I understand what’s going on just fine.
So, JD, here’s your one last chance:
GO AHEAD AND DEFEND BUSH FOR MAKING JOKES ABOUT LOOKING FOR WMD’S, GRINNING WHILE SEARCHING UNDER HIS DESK FOR THEM, WHILE MEN LIKE CASEY SHEEHAN WERE DYING LOOKING FOR THEM.
Either specifically and convincingly defend your pathetically unfit leader, or don’t bother responding to me again.
PS: I write the high points in all-cap because many people skim the posts, and I want the main ideas to catch their eyes. But thanks for mistaking them for emphatic closing arguments; guess that means they’d have weight even without the caps!
[...] brought this about – in fact until Cindy Sheehan s protest the anti-war movement has been idiotic in its attempt to persuade opinion, and with the addition of relics like Joa [...]
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