Progressive Politics

Protest at their homes, and keep doing it day in and day out til they cave. they'll start listening

Protesting and marches are still an incredibly effective tool. I think what you're rightly pointing out is that communicative protests are not having many concrete effects in their own right, but that's already a known factor.

Communicative protests bring people together, they give people a sense of hope, and they strengthen existing community organizers and groups by allowing people to be recruited into local efforts that do produce concrete actions.

For example, I went to the recent Workers Over Billionaires rally near me. I knew damn well that it wasn't going to physically do anything to stop Trump, to harm billionaires, or reduce the power of the administration in its own right.

But y'know what I did see happening there? Hundreds of people signing up with a local group that helps immigrants safely make it to, and stay in, local public schools, and hundreds more getting advice on how to unionize their workplace, along with many people getting socialism-related literature, signing up to canvass for a local progressive candidate, and being given tons of stickers and pamphlets that will likely help promote a ton of other local progressive groups that all in their own way either concretely harm the administration's efforts, or help people in the community with all sorts of socioeconomic problems.

And at the end of the day, I, along with many others, felt much less despair. And if you want a strong movement, you want people that have hope, and not hopelessness.

Sure, there's a ton of very liberal people there wearing their "if the 3.5% rise up, dictators FALL" shirts thinking that communicative protests like that one will magically depose Trump if more than 3.5% of the population participates, but in the end, these protests have time and time again massively increased participation and funding going to groups that strengthen working class people's power, and harm the administration's efforts to harm all sorts of people, and that's better than nothing.

You're not going to get a 60 year old wine mom to go and break the windows of an ICE building, but you can get her to donate money to organizations that consistently file legal challenges, or encourage some friends to vote for a candidate that could eventually put much stronger legislative protections in place.

As the other comment says, it is an effective tool. However, you've been told that protest creates change on its own, which it has never done. Our media and education fills us with stories of, for example, the civil rights and that protests worked.

However, that was backed with direct action. There were people stopping businesses from functioning, breaking laws, and some targeted violence. Without this it's likely nothing would have changed.

We're told the "right way" to protest is peacefully. However, that's only the starting point. You get people to peaceful protests and then you organize them into groups who are willing to commit to more action. A lot of people won't be willing to go that far, and they're still useful in these peaceful protests, but these are a way to identify people who may want to take the next step.

Protesting and marches are no longer an effective tool.

Especially not single day protests a few months apart.

We still have to build the base. If we want to talk about a nationwide work stoppage but we can't even get 1% of people to a protest, then it won't be effective.