Do Protest Marches Work? Part 2

If in fact protest marches, at least by themselves do not create change in government's or corporate policies - what will?

Francesca Polletta fifteen or so years ago published a book called Freedom is an Endless Meeting. In the text she, amongst other things, discusses how some social movements developed the capacity to make decisions. One of the points that she makes is that during the active student movement in the 1960s, an extraordinary amount of time was spent in people talking to each other, learning to listen to each other and making decisions in a way that everyone participated in (consensus). It was a slow, sometimes painful and almost always exhausting process. But it worked in that hundreds if not thousands of young people learned how to participate in a political process and perhaps more importantly they learned  to listen to what other people thought. They also learned that actions are more powerful when everyone agrees with that action.

It seems to me as if we have tried to take a short cut. We have gone from someone saying that there is a problem and then a small number of people deciding that "we" need to protest. If one looks at the writings of Micah White, the co-creator of Occupy Now (see his book The End of Protest), or read the L.A. Times discussion of how the Women's March was created - it is clear that there was virtually no discussion among the millions of people who participated, there was no process by which the people got to know each other, learned to listen to what each other were saying and certainly no one ever sat down and through long hours of endless meetings developed a consensus as to what the problem was and how to address it. While perhaps we are redefining who is on top - it is quite clear that the various movement were designed from the top down, not from the bottom up.

And that is why it is not working. We are in too much of a rush - we want to do something and we want to do it now. We want to see some results from our concerns before we have even determined what the problem is. While, as I have discussed elsewhere, social media may be a wonderful way of reaching out to people and telling them what is happening, it is never a discussion. The format does not engage individuals with each other. Endless re-postings of when and where is a poor substitute for small and large group discussions. It feels as if we are comfortable in having other people define the problem and create the solution. On any given day, somewhere in Canada, there is some sort of workshop or meeting where a well known presenter will drone on about the most recent attack by either the government or the corporate elite and telling us that we must protest - we must stop them. They may be right, but I think I would like to be part of that decision making process.

Protests do have some benefits. If the protest is focused on a specific problem, if there is a reasonable solution being proposed and if the people marching have the same goals - there can be results. Particularly if the local provincial or federal politician is from the Opposition, one can get provincial or national attention.  People, if the group is cohesive enough, get to meet each other and hopefully start to be engaged in a dialogue. If the protest is loud enough or has enough community support, the sheer fact that people are expressing their concern does inform the larger community of those concerns. It makes the people feel good and that hopefully will encourage them to continue. But if people go to the protest expecting to see changes - and no one has done the necessary work - then those protesters will once again be disappointed. How many times can one be disappointed before you stop going/caring?

To be continued