Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.
—Frederick Douglass
Protest! Strap on your marching boots and hit the streets.
You raise awareness and strengthen solidarity through action.
Protest is the meat and potatoes of the Resistance. Every progressive hero marched. Because it works.
Protestors get the message out to the rest of the populace. A group of people marching in solidarity is impossible to ignore. Gathering in large groups reminds like-minded people that we have strength in numbers, and it also raises awareness on the issues for people who may be on the fence. Protest keeps up morale too. With the day-to-day slog of living under the ridiculous nightmare of having a misogynist, racist, teen-beauty-pageant-locker-room-peeping, conspiracy nut, orange orangutan with a troll-doll-hair comb-over for president is beyond belief, and it can be exhausting! Going to a protest, being there surrounded by fellow patriotic Americans who give a damn about democracy, is inspiring and exhilarating. A protest reminds you that you are not alone. This harrowing era is something we are all going through together.
No single action achieves more than protest. Marching in the streets, holding signs, chanting slogans, it all may seem a little old school in these days of Facebook and Twitter, but the power of words and action in real life will always complete and surpass what the virtual world can do. Protest has always been at the vanguard of real social change. By protest, I mean any type of public gathering that raises awareness, whether it involves a march, a sit-in, or a demonstration. Look at the civil rights era. Everybody remembers Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, but that speech only makes sense and resonates in the context of the era’s protests, sit-ins, boycotts, and marches.
America has a very long history of We the People demanding and getting justice by protest. These movements successfully used marches, rallies, speeches, boycotts, sit-ins, and demonstrations to raise awareness and sway the opinion of the nation at large. Vietnam War protests brought together people from a lot of causes—African American rights, Chicano movements, the clergy, women’s liberation, and veterans—all marching for a common, uniting cause. In just a few years, the protests changed how America saw the war, going from 68 percent of Americans agreeing with the war in 1965 down to just 28 percent agreeing with it by 1971.
Now is the time to forge a movement, to forge a unified voice. All the other tactics covered in this book are important too, but probably none more so than protest.
Here is the secret: they say America is a democracy, and everybody gets an equal say in how things are run, but everybody really knows that the game is rigged in favor of the rich and the powerful. The rich can buy influence. The Supreme Court declared with Citizens United that corporations giving money to politicians is a form of free speech, which is of course obvious horse-pucky. You don’t have to be a lawyer to see through that. It’s wrong and unjust.
That is what we are up against. The rich have always used the power of money to keep themselves rich. They may have money on their side, but we have sheer numbers on our side. Ultimately, history has shown that our side, the 99 percent, the Resistance, can be the more powerful side when we get together, when we organize, when we gather, when we march, when we protest. Protest is how we throw our weight around. Protest IS free speech in action.