In The United States, What Is The Coli's Thought On How Effective Protests Are?

[Prince.Skeletor]

So I was watching a TyT video about Mitch McConnell being yelled at while eating his meal in a restaurant in Kentucky. And then Ana said something about the right to protest.

And then I wondered, that's a great topic.
How effective are protests in the U.S.?

What did someone once say? One murder is a tragedy and huge amounts of murders are a statistic.
So many protests in the U.S., that sheer quantity devalues it, just like inflation with currency.

My thoughts keep protesting but not that much.
The other point is i've argued with lefties here on HL where I said there is no more anti-war movement in the left, the left has moved to the right.
And people used to flame me saying LOL @ no anti-war protests in the left and so on.

But here's the thing, what happens when you vote? Are you voting for someone who will not end the wars?
Because if you go out to anti-war protests but vote for someone who will continue the wars then you are not anti-war and you protesting is actually somewhat futile.
And on the right conservatives flip flop in voting quite a bit too.

How can someone be anti-war while voting for war?
But there are MANY people like this.

All i'm saying is I do not think protests have much impact and voting is where the strength is at.
People should focus on voting and education rather than futile picket signs hoping mainstream media picks up on it, because..... you know msm is our friend right? Even local news is bought now.

Instead of protesting with picket signs why not assemble a large group of people, groups all over the country, and you make a plan.
That plan is like creating a mission statement, knowing every political candidate's history/voting record/who corporations lobby them etc...
Then go door to door and educate people.
But the focus would be on corruption, not partisanship!

This is by far a much much more long-term and intelligent way to create change.

 

[mc_brew]

All i'm saying is I do not think protests have much impact and voting is where the strength is at.

i said something basically the same as this on another thread with a similar subject and boy higher learning was furious with me... they were ready to string me up... so for this topic, i say "NO COMMENT".....

 

[Serious]

Umm imo, a true protest should make people uncomfortable. Not in a violent and threatening way, but more so a shift in quality of life. For example two types of long term demonstrations which will in change are boycotts or physical blockades.

Protesting in your own neighborhood, surely brings awareness among local peers. But for true, legislative change, you essentially need to disrupt the flow of commerce, exchanges of goods and services, as well make business as usual hard to be conducted...

Essentially policymakers are too comfortable. So harassing someone at dinner is kinda fair game in my book.

In theory I like the concept of Occupy WallStreet, but the execution was terrible.

Despite all the protesting, people were still far too comfortable.

i said something basically the same as this on another thread with a similar subject and boy higher learning was furious with me... they were ready to string me up... so for this topic, i say "NO COMMENT".....

Link to thread.....

 

[mc_brew]

Link to thread.....

SENATOR MITCH MCCONNELL CONFRONTED AT RESTAURANT By Angry Customers

 

[Prince.Skeletor]

SENATOR MITCH MCCONNELL CONFRONTED AT RESTAURANT By Angry Customers

LOL ON THE SAME TOPIC TOO LMAOOO

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Protests are only effective if they are well-organized with specific objectives and specific ways of getting them. Or if they are massive.

Gandhi and MLK Jr. specifically and carefully organized their protests with particular objectives and ways of meeting their objectives. They knew who they were going to put pressure on, how they were going to do it, who they were going to pressure in what order. They themselves (and their followers) were willing to sacrifice a lot of time, sacrifice economically, sacrifice their money. And THEN it worked.

I think things like the March for Science and the Women's March were just dumb because they had no clear pathway to get what they wanted. It just made the protesters feel good about something and made their opponents take them less seriously. But there wasn't any meaningful pressure or meaningful follow-through at all. They were just marching to march.

Unless you've read extensively on the strategic planning undertaken by the successful protest movement leaders, you really have no business leading a protest. It would be like coaching a football team without being a student of the game or even knowing what the successful coaches had been doing. You will obviously fail.




Some mass protests have also worked if they involved a large enough portion of the population, even if they weren't as meticulously plan. Someone did an analysis of the last 100 years and found that a nonviolent revolution had a better than even chance of succeeding so long as it actively involved at least 3.5% of the population. So in the USA you're talking 11-12 million people. If you could get at least 11-12 million people actively involved in resisting the government, you could move mountains.

 

[Serious]

Protests are only effective if they are well-organized with specific objectives and specific ways of getting them. Or if they are massive.

Gandhi and MLK Jr. specifically and carefully organized their protests with particular objectives and ways of meeting their objectives. They knew who they were going to put pressure on, how they were going to do it, who they were going to pressure in what order. They themselves (and their followers) were willing to sacrifice a lot of time, sacrifice economically, sacrifice their money. And THEN it worked.

I think things like the March for Science and the Women's March were just dumb because they had no clear pathway to get what they wanted. It just made the protesters feel good about something and made their opponents take them less seriously. But there wasn't any meaningful pressure or meaningful follow-through at all. They were just marching to march.

Unless you've read extensively on the strategic planning undertaken by the successful protest movement leaders, you really have no business leading a protest. It would be like coaching a football team without being a student of the game or even knowing what the successful coaches had been doing. You will obviously fail.




Some mass protests have also worked if they involved a large enough portion of the population, even if they weren't as meticulously plan. Someone did an analysis of the last 100 years and found that a nonviolent revolution had a better than even chance of succeeding so long as it actively involved at least 3.5% of the population. So in the USA you're talking 11-12 million people. If you could get at least 11-12 million people actively involved in resisting the government, you could move mountains.

@tru_m.a.c @Broke Wave @88m3 @FAH1223

This is definitely a POTY candidate.

 

[Baka's Weird Case]

@tru_m.a.c @Broke Wave @88m3 @FAH1223

This is definitely a POTY candidate.

FACTS @Rhakim constantly posts long messages that are engaging and in-depth. and he destroys other peoples whole arguments on a regular basis

 

[newarkhiphop]

Protest work, both violent and non violent they've worked in this country before. Problem is we haven't had a true large, well organized movement since probably MLK. Organization and Coordination being the key getting 2k people to march around the local highway yelling ain't doing anything. A couple of million for a sustained amount of time with a agenda, that's where the power comes from.

Problem also is even the most oppressed here in the US lack the attention span or discipline,you get more excitement over a Drake tweet, the new iPhone or some British broad having a baby

 

[Wargames]

Protest are at best a tactic to gain attention and at worst just a cathartic exercise for people who feel powerless.

 

[mastermind]

Like @Rhakim said, protests work, but protest needs organization. If ten million of us all demanded alternative energy over fossil fuel and stopped buying gas, etc., the oil industry would change.

The marches like the Women's March where there is no real organizing and strategy except, "show up and be seen" is what is ineffective. If they were ever able to organize those millions to do boycott or protest certain people or companies or businesses for a long time, then they would have an impact.

 

[ColdSlither]

I'm all for a good protest, but most are just for show. A protest should put fear in the hearts of those who are targeted. But politicians know that the people at protests are really just paper tigers. Look at Occupy Wall Street. How did any of that translate to making changes at the ballot box? All those cacs did, in their smelly tents at Zuccotti Park, was ride high on their righteous indignation. They had no strategy or any sort of organization to make any real changes, when the world was looking at them to see what they would do. Unlike conservatives who actually get out and make shyt happen.

 

[Th3G3ntleman]

Hard to say really. I'm guessing we're talking about non-violent protest in that case we're talking about mostly failures. They're done more for self identification/gratification as opposed to actually accomplishing what they're trying to accomplish very much like what @Rhakim said.

In terms of violent protest if you have enough people that feel passionate enough to resort to violence than your protest becomes a revolution. That usually has a better success rate but it's hard to transform protest to revolution.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Hard to say really. I'm guessing we're talking about non-violent protest in that case we're talking about mostly failures. They're done more for self identification/gratification as opposed to actually accomplishing what they're trying to accomplish very much like what @Rhakim said.

In terms of violent protest if you have enough people that feel passionate enough to resort to violence than your protest becomes a revolution. That usually has a better success rate but it's hard to transform protest to revolution.

That's actually not true at all. When actually organized as an ongoing campaign/movement, non-violent protests are more effective than violent protests:


Violent Versus Nonviolent Revolutions: Which Way Wins?

"Chenoweth and her colleague Maria Stephan painstakingly collected data on 323 violent and nonviolent political campaigns since 1900. To qualify for the analysis, the movement had to be substantial in size, involving at least 1000 people active in the movement. They counted a campaign as successful if the goal had been achieved within one year of the peak of the event (as when Corazon Aquino and the People Power Revolution peacefully ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos from the Philippines in 1986).

When Chenoweth started out, she was fairly certain that the violent political campaigns would be more likely to accomplish their goals. But she was wrong.

The startling results are depicted in the attached Figure. As you can see, nonviolent campaigns have a 53% success rate and only about a 20% rate of complete failure. Things are reversed for violent campaigns, which were only successful 23% of the time, and complete failures about 60% of the time. Violent campaigns succeeded partially in about 10% of cases, again comparing unfavorably to nonviolent campaigns, which resulted in partial successes over 20% of the time.

FIGURE 1: Relative effectiveness of violent and nonviolent campaigns

Why the difference? As Chenoweth and Stephan lay out in their book Why Civil Resistance Works, there are several interlinked answers. First, nonviolent campaigns typically attract more participants, including women, elderly folks, and others who do not want to take on the risks or the moral burdens of running around with guns and explosives, but are willing to pass on information about government atrocities, and to engage in boycotts, strikes, or nonviolent protests. Second, when a tyrannical government acts to suppress a nonviolent movement, it is more likely to backfire. Government security forces don’t want to fire on unarmed civilians, especially when the crowd might include their mothers, daughters, friends, and neighbors. And if unarmed civilians are attacked, other citizens are likely to mobilize, and the government loses support from the international community and from the other pillars of its own society, such as the local media and the financial sector.

And Chenoweth had more good news: When a government is overthrown nonviolently, the new government is more likely to be democratic, and less likely to itself be overthrown, as compared to those that won using guns and bombs.

All of this raises questions about the wisdom of government policies that involve sending arms to revolutionaries, who often replace the current violent and tyrannical government with another one (eliciting longstanding hatred for the governments that helped the current dictators take hold)."



To punch or not to punch? The efficacy of nonviolent resistance

"Nonviolent resistance movements tend to attract a wider base of support than movements that use violence. Nonviolent movements have, on average, 11 times as many participants as armed uprisings. Research indicates that a government cannot withstand 3.5 percent of its population rising up in sustained resistance over time. In the United States, that’s over 11 million people. 3.5 percent of the population may not sound like a lot, but it’s almost four times the global turnout for the Women’s Marches, which were massive and unprecedented. The Women’s Marches already brought together a wide variety of people, but that movement will need to quadruple in size until it could conceivably make demands such as impeachment.

Nonviolent movements are more effective at building a broad base of support because violence can turn off less-committed allies. Violence frequently causes outside observers to feel empathy for the victim, even if the victim is themselves responsible for causing harm. Of course it’s wrong that when a Nazi gets punched in the face, people have empathy for him instead of empathy for his victims. But humans misplace their empathy all the time. We are terrible at matters of scale and we feel less empathy for acts we don’t witness than ones we do. You can know that a Nazi wants to commit genocide, but if you don’t see it happen, it remains abstract. When you see the Nazi get punched, a part of you may feel empathy because you are seeing an individual person get hurt."




Here are more links for people interested in the efficacy of nonviolence vs. the efficacy of violence:


Violence v Non Violence: which is more effective as a driver of change? - From Poverty to Power

The effectiveness of nonviolent action

Nonviolence is More Powerful Than Violence

The Psychology of Protesting Effectively - The Atlantic