Yes, protests can be inconvenient. Freedom is messy.
The people who view protesting as “anti-social” aren’t ever going to join your cause. They don’t care about freedom, they care about safety and security.
There is a big difference between creating an incidental inconvenience, (such as by assembling 10,000 people whose mere presence disrupts traffic patterns around the protest site) and deliberately targeting fellow victims of oppression (such as by assembling a few dozen people to obstruct thousands on a freeway).
The former is a great way to protest. The latter is counterproductive.
If those few dozen people move their obstructive protest from the freeway to the driveway of the richest person in town, they get the same media coverage and motivate hundreds to come out and join them.
Assembling even a dozen like-minded people for a coordinated protest is out of reach for most folks. What usually ends up happening is that a huge protest happens and everyone goes and then most of them are finished. They did their part.
The big protest ends up being a performative event, for both the protesters and the administration/police. The big protests usually happen on a weekend, so that everyone can attend. Usually in an urban area, where office and government buildings are closed on that day. So you end up with a downtown area packed with police and protesters and nobody else.
And even if you end up with a consistent, long-running, well attended protest, the chances are slim that it impacts anything. We did this for a year in Portland in 2020, and it made no difference. Maybe 25-50 people during the day would hold vigil over the park, watch other people’s belongings and just be present. They’d chat with passers-by and make new signs, etc. But when evening came, things would ramp up as people got off their day jobs and came to join the crowd. The crowd would balloon to 5 or 10 thousand people sometimes, but even if it was only 500 or so people, they still had nightly clashes with police. At least two people died that summer.
It. Meant. Nothing. No meaningful change was affected. The police chief and the DA ended up resigning, and there were a few minor policy changes around how to better handle civil unrest.
I’m wondering, though, if we had been in a wealthy residential neighborhood, would things have been different? Probably. But could we get all those people to a suburb? Being in the city center provided all of the momentum. The foot traffic and downtown rush hour, drawing people’s attention, that sort of thing. I don’t know if that sort of excitement could be generated outside the city?
So…those a bunch of meandering thoughts, thanks for coming to my TED talk. :)
Yes, protests can be inconvenient. Freedom is messy.
The people who view protesting as “anti-social” aren’t ever going to join your cause. They don’t care about freedom, they care about safety and security.
There is a big difference between creating an incidental inconvenience, (such as by assembling 10,000 people whose mere presence disrupts traffic patterns around the protest site) and deliberately targeting fellow victims of oppression (such as by assembling a few dozen people to obstruct thousands on a freeway).
The former is a great way to protest. The latter is counterproductive.
If those few dozen people move their obstructive protest from the freeway to the driveway of the richest person in town, they get the same media coverage and motivate hundreds to come out and join them.
I think there’s room for both.
Assembling even a dozen like-minded people for a coordinated protest is out of reach for most folks. What usually ends up happening is that a huge protest happens and everyone goes and then most of them are finished. They did their part.
The big protest ends up being a performative event, for both the protesters and the administration/police. The big protests usually happen on a weekend, so that everyone can attend. Usually in an urban area, where office and government buildings are closed on that day. So you end up with a downtown area packed with police and protesters and nobody else.
And even if you end up with a consistent, long-running, well attended protest, the chances are slim that it impacts anything. We did this for a year in Portland in 2020, and it made no difference. Maybe 25-50 people during the day would hold vigil over the park, watch other people’s belongings and just be present. They’d chat with passers-by and make new signs, etc. But when evening came, things would ramp up as people got off their day jobs and came to join the crowd. The crowd would balloon to 5 or 10 thousand people sometimes, but even if it was only 500 or so people, they still had nightly clashes with police. At least two people died that summer.
It. Meant. Nothing. No meaningful change was affected. The police chief and the DA ended up resigning, and there were a few minor policy changes around how to better handle civil unrest.
I’m wondering, though, if we had been in a wealthy residential neighborhood, would things have been different? Probably. But could we get all those people to a suburb? Being in the city center provided all of the momentum. The foot traffic and downtown rush hour, drawing people’s attention, that sort of thing. I don’t know if that sort of excitement could be generated outside the city?
So…those a bunch of meandering thoughts, thanks for coming to my TED talk. :)