John Anderson wonders if protests are the best way to engineer social change.
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Last year’s protests in Ferguson, Missouri, are back in the news this week with the release of a Department of Justice Report that largely supported the contentions of the protestors and critics of the Ferguson Police Department. Simply put, the FPD engaged in widespread racial profiling:
Among the findings, reviewed by CNN: from 2012 to 2014, 85% of people subject to vehicle stops by Ferguson police were African-American; 90% of those who received citations were black; and 93% of people arrested were black. This while 67% of the Ferguson population is black.
The FPD also sent out racist jokes in official emails.
Many liberal writers responded to this news with a good old fashioned round of “see I told you so.” Which isn’t totally uncalled for. After all, it’s pretty clear that the protestors were right and the skeptics and defenders of the status quo where wrong. But despite the DOJ’s finding, Daren Wilson isn’t going to be charged with anything. And while the Ferguson Police Department might be reformed, that hardly means much will change in the nation’s other 18,000 law enforcement agencies.
So sorry to throw cold water on the liberal round of self-congratulations, but I have to ask: Was protesting the best way to try to change the system? The protestors might have been “right” in their criticism, but in politics being right is never enough to bring change.
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Protesting holds an honored place in American democracy going back to the Boston Tea Party. And sometimes it has been an important tactic used by a variety of social change movements. But its track record in terms of enacting concrete changes is still mixed at best. The protests surrounding the death of Eric Garner didn’t result is anyone being charged; the protests surrounding Michael Brown didn’t either; the protests in Wisconsin didn’t bring Scott Walker to his knees; nor did the Occupy protests from a few years ago result in a major restructuring of the American economy. And don’t get me started on the protests against the Iraq War or globalization.
Which doesn’t mean protesting was wrong or inappropriate in those instances. People need to express their feelings, their outrage, and to take a stand against injustice. And protests do bring national oreven worldwide attention to critical social justice issues. But they are not necessarily successful in changing the fundamental nature of American politics.
While liberals first response is often to protest, conservative activists tend to engage in other tactics. They figure out how to frame the debate and challenge laws to block common sense gun control measures time after time, and they force Republican politicians to toe their favorite line or face the consequences of losing an election.
The sad thing for me is that there is a viable alternative—or supplement—to engaging in periodic protests. It’s engaging in the daily grind of doing politics. As Matt Yglesias put it a few years ago:
What’s needed is less whining and more doing. Doing what? Doing politics, of course. That means that every time there’s an election you’re eligible to vote in—be it a primary election or a general election—you look at which are the two candidates most likely to win and you vote for the better one. And you encourage your friends and coworkers to do the same. You should donate money to the PACs of politicians who you like. You should volunteer in person to do election work near where you live. And you should donate money to organizations that you like. When there are issues being debated, you should write to your elected representatives. You should consider running for local office, and you should urge good people you might know to consider running. If you have local elected officials who you like, you should encourage them to run for higher office.
At any rate, this is getting to be a long and boring list so I’ll stop. It’s dull because it’s obvious and it’s dull because participating constructively in politics is dull. As Max Weber said it’s like “the strong and slow boring of hard boards.”
Engaging in these sorts of steps is no guarantee of success. But while protesting can make people feel they are moving an issue forward even when they’re not, engaging more actively in local and national politics offers, in most cases, a greater chance of enacting real social change. Protesting alone isn’t enough.
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AP Photo/Bill Ingraham
The history of protesting has been very poor when you look at the success/failure rate in the USA. The authorities have use brutal force, the court system, and rewriting laws to suppress and criminalizes all sorts of protests. If this keeps up, we will be seeing violent revolution/insurgencies like those in Central and South America.
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
John F. Kennedy
Protest can be an excellent tool, but for full effect it must be combined with other things. Voting, for example. I know a lot of people today are disillusioned with the election system and think voting is pointless, but it must be pointed out that the African American community in Ferguson has had an extremely low voter registration rate. For all intents and purposes, they did not cast votes. Also, if you are not registered to vote, then you will never be asked to serve on a jury. If white people register and black people don’t, then you will always… Read more »