Reply #17: as a blanket statement, that is not correct ... [View All]

[welshTerrier2]

first, there are a few fallacies in the OP's financial calculations ... for example, i attended two anti-Iraq war demonstrations in Boston ... took the train one way to the first one ... ran up a whopping $4.50 tab ... many of the demonstrators took local transit to get there ... that's a buck each way ... let's say the average was $3 or even $4 per person ... the crowd for the first demonstration was about 25,000 people ... the second one might have been roughly 5,000 ... that doesn't run up much of an "event fund" ... the point is there were dozens of these demonstrations all over the country ... could we have sent money off to some far away place to organize an event most would not have attended? i suppose ... but that misses an important element of attending demonstrations ...

demonstrations take democracy to the streets ... they remind us that it is we citizens who have, or at least should have, power in this country ... demonstrations energize movements ... you don't get that in the same way by watching a bunch of speeches at an event on C-Span ... it just isn't the same thing ... and yes, it's true that any given demonstration is not going to change the world ... but in getting out with those of like mind and sharing the emotional high that good demonstrations can bring, some are moved to sustain and even deepen their commitment ... otherwise, many remain isolated from the core of activism ...

it is true that many demonstrations SINCE Vietnam have not been overly effective ... but i remember the Vietnam protests very well ... one of the many mottos was "we're bringing the war back home" ... we can argue all day about whether the anti-war movement shortened the Vietnam War ... i believe it did ... and it was more than that ... it indoctrinated many of us into a life of progressive politics ... for a while, whether true or not, we believed we were approaching a populist revolution ... the nightly news was filled with the confrontations between student protestors and national guard and police ... America was ablaze and no one knew how far it might go ...

we don't have national protests like that anymore ... at least not with any kind of regularity ... our campuses are no longer hubs of progressive resistance ... so these times are very, very different ... but to say that it must be as it seems to be today and that protests are a waste of time fails to understand what once was and could be again ... i have no problem seeking other means, as the OP suggested, to gain a stronger voice in the national dialog ... all avenues should be pursued ... but to make a blanket statement that demonstrations are a waste of time is just not correct ... in the right time, in the right place, revolutionary change often eminates from the people and not from their more conservative elected representatives ...