In spring we went to a protest. We gathered in the Copley
Square in Boston, shouted slogans, waved placards and listened to politicians.
We were protesting against the Muslim Ban, something we felt deeply about as
being unjust. After protesting for a couple of hours, we went to a neighboring
restaurant for lunch with a friend we had bumped into. Then we went home and
posted on the social media about our noble deed.
We felt good. We basked in the glow of having done our share
to defend our nation against the onslaught of idiotic moves by a moron that we
have elected as our president. And,
thanks to the social media, we burnished our image as patriots who stand up
against injustice. Some of us even
claimed that we were following in the footsteps of our forefathers who
participated in successful movements of their times.
All very positive for us, but did we produce any results? The
Muslim Ban got snared in the judicial system as being unconstitutional, which
probably would have happened even if we did not protest.
In a fine article in The New Yorker titled “Do Protests
Work?” (August 21, 2017), Nathan Heller cites a number of recent situations
where it did not. Two of the examples are Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives
Matter. No US policies have changed because of the former, and only three police
officers have been found guilty because of latter, with just one receiving a
prison sentence. The largest single day demonstration in the US history, The
Women’s March, was impressive, but did not do much to change the course of the
new administration headed by a misogynistic president.
In finding the reasons why the protests have lately failed
to produce results, Heller cites the Civil Rights Movement of the past as one
where success was achieved. “It happened piece by piece under politically
entrenched and physically threatening conditions.” “The keys to success were
the structure and communication patterns that appear when a fixed group works together over time.” “Once, just
getting people to show up required top-down coordination, but today anyone can
gather crowds through tweets, and update, in seconds, thousands of strangers on
the move.”
In other words, it
required an organization and a leader to create a movement in the past. Neither
is needed in today’s digital age. That seeming strength is also a weakness in
terms of results achieved.
Another factor is the motivation in joining a protest. In
the old days, success was defined as achieving the objectives of the movement.
The participants in the Civil Rights movement, or India’s Freedom Struggle,
would have felt like failures if the minorities were not given equal rights in
US or, in the second instance, India did not become independent.
That is not the case today. One objective of protest, as per
Heller, is to “make ourselves feel
virtuous, useful, and in the right.” If we solidify our brand on the social
media as a result of our action, we have achieved something. I admit this is a
bit cynical, but I do believe that on a personal level our loyalty to the cause
has become less important than it did in the past. As long as we get good
FaceBook posts out of it, our efforts are not totally in vain, even if the
objectives of the movement are not achieved. That lowering of the
“commitment-bar” to enter a movement leads to a poor success rate.
So, the social media
strikes again. Just as it has encouraged the dividing of our society into
tribes, this modern way of communication has forever reduced the effectiveness
of a popular way to bring about change.
What a Faustian
bargain!
