Why mass marches don't work anymore - my perspective

[KonaKane]

I was thumbing through some old photos taken of some large demonstrations I have participated in over the years, and noticed they all had one thing in common. With the exception of the moratorium on underground nuclear weapons testing, all the of the things we were trying to stop, went on anyway. We marched and marched, and we failed. Numbers didn't matter. Whether it was a simple candle light gathering of a couple dozen people in front of the Federal Building, or a million shouting people in the streets, the march may as well have never happened. The press ignored it, involved public officials were completely unmoved, and worst of all, the average person on the street just couldn't have cared less.

So I was wondering where it all died, the late great mass protest movement. Sheeesh, in the 60s a mass march was practically a one stop shop to getting something changed.

While I was trying to sort it all out, I glanced down at my iPod. There lay the answer.

Look how many average Americans now get up daily and plop down in front of their computers. They get their news from the favorite sources, check in on their favorite little blogs or forums, and maybe knock out a post or two.

When the go out to do their errands, they blast their favorite station or CD on their car stereos. The number of people who listen to news radio anymore is too low to not be embarrassing.

They ram in their ear buds, turn on the iPod or music device of their choice, and saunter into the world, a walking coccoon of self absorbed bliss. Sealed off, insolated from that bothersome outside world.

They will take pains to not say a thing to a stranger in line, or passing them on the street. They have been seen actually texting people sitting across the table from them.

Spontaneous, lively conversations in public between complete strangers almost never happen.

It's out of sight, out of mind. Wandering blobs of humanity enclosed in an orb of their own signifance, without a care of what's happening beyond it. Mass marches have little to no effect on people in their coccoons of choice. Nothing gets through.

So it is with the modern world. That genie just will not be rammed back in the bottle, I know that. So the question is....what is the next great vehicle for changing the minds and hearts of the masses? After we toss flowers on the grave of the large protest march, where do we turn?

[Larkspur]

1. When the military draft was ended, that spelled the end of the effectiveness of mass marches

When we had the draft, there was a sense of shared sacrifice and community. And since we were going to put our lives on the line for our country, we didn't want to be sent to pointless wars, like Vietnam. Once the draft ended, that sense of shared sacrifice and community went AWOL. We became consumers and narcissists and sold our citizenship to Big Business.

[KonaKane]

3. No shared sacrifice. Agree.

This must be the main reason that presidents avoid the draft anymore.

[Blue_In_AK]

26. +1

[Tesha]

2. Starvation will help change quite a few minds.

The end of (cheap) oil will be an important step towards the
beginning of world starvation.

Tesha

[Ex Lurker]

4. with modern organizing techniques ane ease of transportation

it's not that hard to get a fair number of people together and bus them in to Washington or wherever. So people tend to tune it out, I know I do. 50+ years ago, it took up to a week to travel cross country, and your job may not be there when you get back--it was a sacrifice. Now--take a few days of vacation, fly/bus in (and the ticket may be paid for, or at least subsidized, by some organization,) Listen to some bands and a speaker or two, fly back home. It's not the same, and it evokes a ho hum reaction. It's not spontaneous, it's organized from the top down, and people see through it.

[Terry in Austin]

5. Insightful analysis there

As a "graduate" of the sixties protest era, I've also given this a lot of thought over the years.

I'd say that the use of marches as a tactic was effective because it served as a means of manipulating the media. In the arena of social change, it's basically a war of words, and whoever gets the most time at the microphone has the best shot at holding sway.

So, bluntly, the protest march worked like a publicity stunt. As such, whatever effectiveness it might have had depended in large part on the novelty of it. It had the look of uprising in the streets, so it got people's attention.

Later, when you saw housewives carrying signs around protesting a rise in meat prices, you could be pretty sure that the whole idea had gotten cliched right out of existence. No more novelty, not a bit of resemblance to uprising in the streets.

As you say, media has also changed since then. Our tribe tells stories about itself around the campfire, and whoever holds the speaking stick gets to tell the story that everyone hears. Back in the protest era, there were just one or two campfires -- one, really: television. Now there are many more, and people seek out the storytellers that they prefer, not just the one holding the stick.

Where do we turn? Good question. Short of actual uprising in the streets, I think it's up to each of us to reconnect with a community. That's what the group around the campfire is, community. Individuals making a commitment to each other that also connects them to a place. Meet the neighbors. They're annoying sometimes, but they'll watch your house when you're away. They'll have an extra zucchini or two when the supermarket doesn't.

Getting Washington to change how it rules us is quite another matter, I fear. At this point, we're one of the oldest nations on earth, and I think that what we're seeing is a system that's just plain jammed up, dried up, ossified, senile and broke. It no longer governs.

Whatever comes after, well, it may or may not pass through a stage of uprising in the streets for real. That would be the bang -- I believe it's more likely we're in for a whimper. A long one.

[KonaKane]

6. Brilliant response. Gave me alot to think about.

I have been hearing "all politics is local" for many years. Maybe we should start paying attention to that again.

[Terry in Austin]

8. Right on

> I have been hearing "all politics is local" for many years. Maybe we should start paying attention to that again.

Totally with you there, bro!

:fistbump:

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

7. When they are not covered by the media they don't exist

Who can forget the RNC protests in NYC - oceans of humanity ignored by the media - obviously on purpose and in unison.

But they'll cover 12 TeaBaggers in a Safeway parking lot with a tight-in shot and estimate the crowd at hundreds.

I think that the more effective means in this day and age would be something that cold be organized over the internet(until they take that away from us) like a general strike.

I was thinking that organizing one day where everyone agreed to not buy any gas would be very noticeable. Anyway, things along those lines. I'd still love to see some honking giant in-person protests.

[Cleita]

11. That's the fate of the peaceful protests. You

need to disrupt business and get the attention of the people you are protesting. If they have to step over bodies or have them removed by force it gets their attention. Press is not needed when you focus your targets. Unemployed protestors should be camped on Ben Nelson's front lawn and his offices and everywhere he has to go, since he was the reason the extension of the unemployment benefits didn't pass.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

25. Interesting points.

[lunatica]

9. I've been wondering the same thing since Bush called us a focus group

I believe change is inevitable because the status quo of us being consumers first is simply unsustainable in the long run. When you have a million people who are unemployed about to be cut off you have a problem whether you know it or not.

I don't think the answers are found in the past. The changes have to be fundamental ones. We have to envision a different lifestyle. One that isn't based on consumerism and which is based on making do with what we have.

[KonaKane]

18. That arrogant son of a bitch.....

I remember when he said that. I felt like putting my foot through the TV.

[Cleita]

10. Peaceful marches don't upset them. You have to scare

them. In the sixties the sit-ins and disruption of business as usual got their attention. It also got the protestors beat up, arrested and sometimes killed but they were effective. It was the college students and young people who did the majority of the protesting. Going into the halls of Congress and blocking the hallways with a passive resistance sit ins is one way to do it. Picketing offenders is another way and forget this free speech zone crap. Free speech is where it's needed and to prevent it is to be in violation of the Constitution. Keeping the officials from being able to move around and do business as usual scares them. The problem is that all of us who did these things in the sixties are now in our sixties and seventies and none of the young people seem to want to participate.

[KonaKane]

12. Wow, great points all. The sad part is the apathy of the young today.

Well to be fair, they aren't all that way. But it certainly is prevalent. What is also prevalent is a virile cynicism with them, and how easily they parrot the wingnut meme of the day "they (parties) are all the same". That is an end run around thinking and I am constantly trying to set it straight with them.

I suppose not enough of the young are hurting yet. Odd, because I am reading that their earning power is under that of their parents for the first time in our history. We'll see what finally trips their triggers.

[Radical Activist]

13. "Raising awareness" is not enough to make real change.

Marches by themselves never caused changed anyway. More sophisticated tactics are called for.

But, I think you already gave part of the answer. We use blogs, ipods, social media, and popular culture to reach people. Corporate news outlets only give people a distorted worldview so it's an advantage that less people are listening. We provide the alternative. We also have to take more direct measures to pressure the institutions of power, or simply take them over.

[KonaKane]

15. Ok so my next question to you is....

Once you've blogged, iPoded, Facebooked and podcast to people, how does that translate to them heading to the voting booth and electing leaders who will do what we want?

That is where I see the break down. I see no follow through to electing new representatives. We skype and blog and text and post till we're blue in the face, and more conservatives get elected.

[Radical Activist]

30. It's the same problem with marches.

Marches and demonstrations are a good first step to get people together but it doesn't get things done if that's all you're doing.

The answer is to have groups doing more sophisticated actions and use those online tools to recruit people. You know what those other actions are. Support serious progressive candidates who aren't just doing a symbolic campaign to talk about issues (ie not Greens). Recruit good candidates. Recruit enough precinct captains to take over the local Democratic Party. Use direct action tactics that are more than symbolic publicity stunts. Get involved on the ground level with an issue-based organization working in your area.

[Joe the Liberal]

14. True, mass marches/protests just won't cut it anymore......

unless you're with the tea baggers where the media people covering their protests outnumber the actual protesters themselves.

Protests/mass marches in this day and age are a huge waste of time imo, because like you said what is ever accomplished by them? Nothing, at the end of the day everyone just goes home with a feeling of "I did something" and whatever they were trying to change continues on unchanged. Even if the protesting/mass marches were consistent I doubt they would still get anything changed. It seems like it's just an old tired way of doing things that won't work anymore in this century, we need something new.

[kgnu_fan]

16. I have a different experience. Mass marches have been working for participants

Feeling of solidarity, new connections with fellow marchers, finding out about different groups, getting energized.... all rewarding. Great reports abound from US Social Forum last week, for example. It gives sense of community, sense of "we the people". I think lots of organizing is happening on the ground, learning from each other, exchanging success stories and problem solving skills, to bring back and to be used when back in own community.

I don't care about stupid mass media, they are trashes anyway. What important is to nurture real people connection on the ground, not on the screens of stupid tv. There are lots going on whether they are seen on tv or not. "Real" is happening and we are finding out more that human community is made up of people.

[KonaKane]

17. OK, so you agree with me that they are a big feel good rave for participants

My next question is....so what? How does that translate to changing hearts and minds and motivating those souls to the voting booth to elect liberal/progressive lawmakers?

[kgnu_fan]

20. It translates to community organizing

It is not just "a big feel good rave for participants".... It is a different kind of networking than facebook and texting. Much deeper way of connecting.

"changing hearts and minds" has to be done by everyday people, not by tv

[KonaKane]

23. Do you think, in the modern day, any protest has ever translated to the voting booth?

Because I have never seen that. I hope I'm wrong, and would love to be handed an example to the contrary.

[mistertrickster]

19. I agree, but I don't think that's the whole story. MLKing believed that mass demonstration

really had no effect EXCEPT TO FORCE NEGOTIATION.

It was the arrests that forced the issue of the injustice of Jim Crow laws, not the marches.

As for Vietnam, I think it's very arguable that mass demonstrations did any good at ending the war at all. There was a lot of mainstream "backlash" against protestors skirmishing with police . . . in ways that King would have never approved of.

On edit--The guy who wrote the book on mobilizing grassroots political action -- Saul Alinsky -- thought that the anarchic yippie approach to protest (flag burning, drug use, general bohemianism) was completely narcissistic, and worse than worthless because it alienated the very people that needed to be persuaded.

On further edit--the Hispanic community, using local radio stations to coordinate, succeeded a year or two ago in showing politicians that they were a force to be reckoned with . . . their clothes were color coordinated (white), they were on message, and they had massive turn-out in multiple cities on the same day.

[Lorien]

21. Marches certainly work in France, so they can work in the modern era

and I find myself in conversations with total strangers regularly. Sometimes in a checkout line, the gas station, grocery store, doctor's office, while taking the cat for a walk...but then, I don't walk around texting people or wearing earphones. Like attracts like; if you don't want to feel like you're a "Wandering blob of humanity enclosed in an orb of (your) own significance" then don't act like one. Turn off the TV and go for a walk. There are millions of like minded people out there more than willing to talk about what's going on in the world.

As for effective protests; I think that we will have to be bold and take a French approach. When farmers in France wanted change they blocked every road in and out of Paris with their farm equipment. Maybe we need to create flash mobs, not just marches, in areas in ways that will force people to take notice.

[KonaKane]

24. Good points, but what the French farmers did was more than a march.

It was an action - which is quite a bit different and more aggressive. Those can work better but of course they are more dangerous. When I was in the organization effort for putting an end to underground nuke testing ("American Peace Test" back in the day) we had marches, but when we got on busses and headed to the Nevada nuclear testing site for the purpose of trespassing and getting arrested, that was called an action. Some of us took some blows to the head by Wackenhut security forces for that too.

But I do like your idea of a flash mob. The thing is, they would have to do something more than leave people with the impression "they showed up with some signs".

[snagglepuss]

22. k & r nt

[entanglement]

27. Middle class protest politics is too politically disoriented and confused to be anything more

than a "vent" to provide a release for the immediate frustration of the protesters. In fact, large sections of the ruling class prefer that people's anger is dissipated in precisely such a fashion.

[KonaKane]

29. "Let them have their little protest. They'll get tired and go home."

actual quote overheard at one of our early anti-nuke protests, from notorious police department shithead Sgt. Michael Gerrard.

And sad to say, that's exactly what happened.

[demwing]

28. Mass Marches Are Only Effective If The Media Watched

but in these days of Bloggers and Webcasts, WE are the media.

Why just sit back and wait for the MSM to show up, when we can turn on our OWN cameras, write our OWN editorials, and create our OWN news?

Marches aren't ineffective - the MSM is ineffective. We have to change our target, not our ammunition.