protest

is effective when a protest movement throws up martyrs because every dead protestor leaves behind a mother who, in contrast to the many whose attention will waver, will invariably spend the rest of their lives finding out what happened to their kids and why.

When a protest movement throws up martyrs. Choose your massacre 'Peterloo' (1819), Amritsar (1919), 16th Street Baptist Church (1963), Bloody Sunday (1972), etc. One of the reasons this is effective is that every dead protestor leaves behind a mother and mothers of dead protestors will invariably spend the rest of their lives finding out what happened to their kids and why. In my adopted country, Argentina, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo spent 30 years protesting the 'disappearance' (extra-judicial murder) of their sons and daughters at the hands of the military dictatorship which ran the country in the late 1970s. Plenty of people supported them, of course, but the attention of these supporters tended to waver. A grieving mother's attention doesn't waver. ('Living martyrs' work too, so long as they're banged up in prison, preferably somewhere crappy, preferably on an island. See: Captain Dreyfus on Devil's Island [1], Nelson Mandela on Robben Island.)

is effective when a regime/system is teetering on the edge and just needs a push to send it over.

When a regime/system is teetering on the edge and just needs a push to send it over. The Hungarians of 1956 and the Czechs of 1968 were protesting against a system that feared them no more than a man fears a fly on his nose. The Czechs of 1989, on the other hand, were protesting against a system that had, in effect, abolished itself.

is effective when those in power are smart enough to realize that they can shore up their own position by acceding to the protestors' demands.

When those in power are smart enough to realise that they can shore up their own position by acceding to the protestors' demands. This only works when the protest movement has a clearly defined and limited goal... the socialist agitation for the eight-hour day of the early 1900s is a good example. As is the male suffrage movement in Britain of the late 19th century which the ruling, but not blindly reactionary, Conservative party astutely turned to its advantage through the Tory Democracy movement. Anarchist whose stated ambition is to tear down the system not only fail, but need to fail. If protesting is what makes you happy, and what gives your life meaning, what could be worse than success'

Matthew Lawrence Chesterton

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Matthew Lawrence Chesterton