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.
Strikes work even better
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.
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.
Counterpoints: It is, in the present tense, not working.
What charile kirk backlash? What changed since the leopards finally ate his face?
Know what works even better? Voting.
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
