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Protest Power

Submitted by Sarah on Thu, 02/22/2007 - 7:47am.

Wow.

Orcinus often blows me away and has done so again this morning. In Sara Robinson's post Why Protests Don't Work......And Why They Do she muses on Protesting 101 by Barbara O'Brien at Mahablog.

The six basic rules for demonstrations discussed are:

1. Be Serious.
2. Be unified of purpose.
3. Good protesting is good PR.
4. Size matters.
5. Be sure your opposition is uglier/more hateful/snottier than you are.
6. Demonstrations are not enough.

Check out the comments too, the authors join in.

Sarah's blog
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I like, I don't like

Submitted by Summerisle on Fri, 02/23/2007 - 6:54am.

I think that Sara at Orcinus' post is really great, particularly her suggestion that protests need to put forward a new paradigm or 'reality hack' as she calls it: here's part of the section from her post:

"It takes an unthinkable, unimaginable idea -- gay couples by the hundreds, grinning in their gowns and tuxes on the steps of City Hall as they clutch their newly minted-marriage licenses, for example -- and suddenly, stunningly, turns it into a concrete, here-and-now reality. And once that reality has been brought into existence, even if only for a few hours, days, or weeks, it's like releasing a genie that can never be stuffed back in the bottle. The terms of the conversation shift forever. The old structures are broken. Reality finds itself scooting over to make room for the new order.

And so it happened that Southerners who couldn't feature sitting next to a black person at a lunch counter, eating tuna sandwiches and drinking sweet tea, saw it happening with their own eyes -- and realized they'd survive it."

That sounds great....Camp Quixote, anyone?

The thing that I have the objection to isn't Sara of Orcinus' post but the original post on Mahablog that Sara is meditating on. That post goes way beyond the six rules talked about above and, at least in my reading, advocates a kind of Young Democrats taking to the street ethic, with everyone being nice and groomed (because you don't want to be interpreted as "Not Serious") and everyone is not really all that confrontational or demanding because you 'Don't want to be the bigger asshole' (the word she uses). She objects to the carnivalesque nature of protests she's been to in NYC and thinks that they should be more unified and on task, she thinks that it demonstrates a lack of seriousness and lack of unity, in short she thinks that the protests that have been going on for the last eight years or so have been too undisciplined and are alienating to the mainstream.

Seems like in her original thought people should just get crew cuts and chant "We want some change in a couple of years, when you think it's convenient, and we won't stop until you say you might think about it".

But the post on Orcinus is much better.

Agreed

Submitted by Sarah on Fri, 02/23/2007 - 6:40am.

Our responses to hatemongers trying to establish a presence in Olympia included reality hacking carnival spirited actions, and we were very successful. At the time there were ongoing discussions about whether "everyone" should be more sober and serious and on the same message. I think we did fine with the variety we displayed.

I suppose knowing how to do the nice and groomed actions is valuable knowledge but I believe it is only one of many tools in our protest tool box.

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