Does Protest Work?

 David Wallace-Wells takes a run at the last decade of social and political protest to try and determine if protest actually achieves anything.

My own take is that "protest" rarely does work. Those idiots who glued their hands to the Macy's Parade route are not changing minds. Too many of the radical protests are not at all intended to change minds but signal righteousness. On the other hand, the fact that the protests exist often signifies that the issue is important. Wallace-Wells mentions that climate protests have led to significant legislation surrounding climate. 

Broad concerns about climate are not, however, limited to the protestors. I have not and likely will never go to a climate protest, yet I think it's currently the second most important issue facing the US (after Trumpism). The climate measures that Biden has embraced have won my loyalty, even if I think those idiots throwing soup on Van Gogh are, indeed, idiots.

There's also the Code Pink protests. Do we really think that people turned against Iraq because of Code Pink had some protests? The most persuasive case might be that Occupy did reorient people towards caring about wealth inequality, yet I bet there are a non-negligible number of Trump voters who care about wealth inequality, because that's their lived experience. 

Too often, I think protests are roosters taking credit for the dawn.

What's more, the reality of massive backlash absolutely exists. I remain convinced that the Defund the Police nonsense cost Biden support among enough middle class Black and Latine voters to prevent him winning North Carolina and Texas. The chaos unleashed by anarchists is often the best friend rightists have. 

Wallace-Wells and others would do well to revisit Crane Brinton's old work about "Thermidor" or how revolutions inevitably slip back into the forms that existed before. True change, enduring change comes in steps. It's frustrating and slow, but it's also why liberal democracy - for all its myriad faults - remains the best form of government.