Protests matter, but not always in the ways you think
Their shouts and chants -- "We don't get it, shut it down," "What's disgusting? Union busting!" and "Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Kavanaugh has got to go" -- could be heard throughout downtown
But do those demonstrations, which seem to be proliferating, make a difference?
"That's a difficult question to answer," said
The Women's March -- a worldwide protest of millions to change legislation aimed at reproductive rights, healthcare, gender equality, and equal pay -- was among the largest single-day protests in
But, activists have lamented that since then, there hasn't been more change.
Still, Reger and other researchers said, while research shows that protests don't always produce immediate results, they do tend to reach a large number of people, bring them to a cause, and over time, matter.
In addition, they point out, protests also give people a way to express their outrage and values, shape their identity and tell others what they care about, sometimes even after the original reason for the protest has largely gone away.
In
"They are promoting peace over war," said
Protests are proliferating
A
A half-century after "the tumultuous late 1960s, a time characterized by the civil rights movement, protests of the Vietnam War, and assassinations," the study concluded, the public tends to feel "that people who participate in rallies and protests today have become more extreme in their views, violent, organized, and effective in getting their voices heard, rather than less or about the same."
Protesting has long been a part of political activism.
In fact, America, as an independent nation, started as a protest against British rule.
"There is evidence protests make a difference," said
Efforts for unionization, for example, are different from people seeking to change public policy.
"If you look at the impact of protests on public policy it's not something that's usually instantaneous, but it is certainly consequential," Kruman said. "I wouldn't say the
Reger, Kruman and Brown all agree that the number of protests in recent years seems to be increasing, in part, because social media and the Internet is making it easier to broadcast information and organize activity online with a hashtag, like #MeToo, and in real life.
"It's so much easier now to spread a message to gather a group of people," Reger said. "You can actually do digital protests through social media. If you think about the women's marches that started recently, that was spread all through social media, Facebook pages, Twitter, Instagram."
Kruman added that in addition to public policy protests, there seems to be a resurgence of unionization, although the union movement has been in decline and faced political headwinds that are working against it.
Some police forces, like
This year, Brown said,
Patience is required
While grabbing a bite to eat at Campus Martius in
Protests, the said, can both activate and repel bystanders.
"You're getting people engaged,"
At the same time, Ward's husband said, protests aren't enough.
"Protests can be good as long as the people protesting are taking actions to do something about what they are protesting about," said
Moreover, he said, too many messages at the same time can drown each other out.
But, Reger said, it often take years, even generations, of sustained protests to see results.
Protests by fast food workers to raise wages to
And many of the women who began protesting for suffrage in America in the 1860s did not live to see the ratification of the 19th Amendment nearly 60 years later that ultimately gave women the Constitutional right to vote.
And in some ways, the hundreds of protesters who traveled to the nation's capital to rally in a final push to block Judge
But, change isn't the only way to evaluate whether protests are successful, Reger said.
Protests become a part of who the protesters are -- and how they want to see themselves in the world.
"That's something people get from protests: a sense of belonging, identity, purpose -- all those things," Reger said. "People who do longstanding protests are people who are concerned and engaged in an issue."
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