Protesting in this day and age

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!