Protests - Are they working?

Yesterday we started talking about protests in the car ride to our neighborhood. Considering that I was with a group of activist youth, I was surprised at what was said.

The subject came up as we were thinking about the best ways to run a campaign. It was said that protesting was a self-serving act and that it ultimately did no good. That there was no need for protesting in this day in age, because people and governments do not respond to protests.

At first, this took me aback. Who were these folks? They seemed to be very driven and socially aware, yet they were not in favor of protesting. What happened to the stereotype of activists being peace-loving, hippyish protestors, who chained themselves to oil company headquarters or conducted sit-ins? Was civil disobedience dying amongst our youth?

I was reminded of the Saved by the Bell episode where Zack and the gang fight off the oil company who wanted to convert Bayside into an oil field. My favorite part is when Zack pulled out the oil can in the middle of the oil company’s pitch for a news, improved Bayside, and sprayed oil all over the model, simulating the effects of the oil spill. Good times.

So, it turned out that these folks had some good ideas about alternatives for protesting. The one example they sighted that I thought was interesting was a group of college students whose tuition was raised, apparently unfairly and unexpectedly by the college. Instead of protesting or marching, they had 3/4 of the student body to delay their tuition payments for the first 3 months of school. They effectively caused the school to take loans and lose money in that time, making the school pays more to run the school, and offset the cost of the tuition hike.

Another example cited was a group of school kids who decided to pool their money to fight a large-scale corporation who was aiming at winning cafeteria contracts in their school. The informed students were unhappy about the company’s practices and choices for their meals. So, the students made their own lunches, with their pooled resources and gave lunches away for free. The action worked, making the company pull out of the school, as there was no profit.

Now, I am not sure if these stories are true or if they are merely fabrications, but it does pose the more interesting question – are protests an effective tool still today?

I went to a protest against the war in Iraq back in the day, before we invaded. It was an interesting event, because it certainly didn’t fit the bill for what I pictured a protest to be. There were tons of speakers, lots of random yelling, people performing street acts, people sleeping, etc. There seemed to be a real lack of overall unity or organization. Most people knew why we were there, but there didn’t seem to be much else going on to keep people together.

So, I think there may be some validity to the argument that protests aren’t doing as much as targeted, organized efforts to attack the money side of a cause. It certainly takes more thought, organization, and passionate individuals, but it seems to me to be more effective.

Still, the idealist in me wants to believe that protests and marches are an important way for us to voice our opinions.