A coalition of civil rights groups expects the turnout on Oct. 18 will be even bigger than the first nationwide protest held in June, which by some counts was the largest in U.S. history.
When you have a massive peaceful protest without damages it becomes far more accepted in the public eye to start doing economic damage after the government does not listen.
Martil Luther King had peaceful protests which achieved nothing by themselves, but they built momentum for the Black Panthers to fight for civil rights afterwards.
Communicative protests give people hope, get them organized with others, and shift less politically motivated people into taking political action.
Concrete actions, including strikes and civil disobedience, are often initially supported and emboldened by communicative ones.
The problem begins when people expect a concrete action from a communicative protest. (See: Beautiful Trouble)
This is also precisely the reason that at my local hyper liberal, 50501-organized protest, on top of everything I mentioned in my prior comment, there were also people informing others about not just how to engage in boycotts of various companies that provided the biggest material support to this administration, but also getting people to commit to a general strike, something most people there didn’t even know was a possibility beforehand.
Communicative actions help to both support existing concrete actions, and also create the hope and motivation for many to start taking those actions. In an ideal world, everyone would simply instantaneously jump to doing concrete actions, but that’s unfortunately not a reasonable expectation to have.
I disagree. Strikes and civil disonedience is what is effective
Those often come after peaceful protests.
Peaceful protests legitimize non peaceful protests which follow
Strike and civil disobidience are not non peaceful till the police start the violence
Partially yes but they are disruptive.
When you have a massive peaceful protest without damages it becomes far more accepted in the public eye to start doing economic damage after the government does not listen.
Martil Luther King had peaceful protests which achieved nothing by themselves, but they built momentum for the Black Panthers to fight for civil rights afterwards.
Both are effective.
Communicative protests give people hope, get them organized with others, and shift less politically motivated people into taking political action.
Concrete actions, including strikes and civil disobedience, are often initially supported and emboldened by communicative ones.
The problem begins when people expect a concrete action from a communicative protest. (See: Beautiful Trouble)
This is also precisely the reason that at my local hyper liberal, 50501-organized protest, on top of everything I mentioned in my prior comment, there were also people informing others about not just how to engage in boycotts of various companies that provided the biggest material support to this administration, but also getting people to commit to a general strike, something most people there didn’t even know was a possibility beforehand.
Communicative actions help to both support existing concrete actions, and also create the hope and motivation for many to start taking those actions. In an ideal world, everyone would simply instantaneously jump to doing concrete actions, but that’s unfortunately not a reasonable expectation to have.