3 Points on Protests

I would say I’m a pretty political person, but I’ve never actually done anything. I guess you could call me an armchair revolutionary.

I’ve thought a lot about protests, they’ve always fascinated me. What drives a group of people to really to unify behind one idea and go out and march about it? What happens after the protest? Do we see societal change? Not to discredit a protest, but its a real life dramatic movie.

Here are some of my initial critiques of modern day protests.

1) Who leads a protest?

A protest needs to have a leader. I think there needs to be someone who can guide the protest. To help organize. Even if your movement claims to have no leader, there are still those who are guiding the protest.

Which leads to the second problem. No one should really lead a protest, it gives the government, or the oppressor’s a target and once the target is torn down the protest fails. For instance, Joshua Wong is the face of the Umbrella Revolution and other protests in Hong Kong. Various pieces of propaganda has been spread about him. They claim that he is influenced by foreign powers. He’s also been arrested multiple times.

It seems that each time he gets arrested, or torn down the movement gets weaker. It is quite the quandary isn’t it. A protest needs a leader, but a leader gives the enemy a target. And when the target is hit, the protest is hit. But lets explore a protest without a leader.

2) Without a leader, how do you have a unified message?

Without a leader, you end up having a protest that doesn’t have a strong unified message, and the inability to guide the protest toward anything meaningful. People don’t always agree on topics. There’s a wide range of views on each topic.

Lets look at Occupy wall street for instance. It was an incredible idea, lets take up the space across from Wall St. as a protest against economic greed. After being forced out by the police, I believe it ended up failing because people who came out wanted different things. Some people believed in tearing down the whole system and starting again. Some people believed in a stronger wealth tax.

Without a unified message, a protest is weak and prone to disorganization. People can pitch in and help to organize the protest, but there still needs to be structure. But as seen in the previous point, a leader gives the government a target.

3) What do you do after a protest?

My last question is, what happens after a protest. Many times, protests can be futile. We’ve seen successful ones like Arab Spring and the recent Black Lives Matter protest. But what happens if nothing changes, do you just go home?

Let’s look at the Hong Kong protests this year. This was an incredible, wildly successful protest. Hong Kongers came out in droves. They protested in the streets. They formed a human chain around the island. They voted. They even took over universities.

Yet absolutely nothing has changed post protest. In fact China has consolidated its power with new laws and arrests of ringleaders of protestors. What was the point? Was the protest a failure? They tried so hard. But in the end, it didn’t even matter.

In closing, I ask these 3 questions as a critique of how we view protests today. I question the success of how protests and activism are viewed as final solutions to the systemic problems that we face.