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is a way to show the government how many people are willing to step out of their comfort zone to make a point about changing something and to what degree they are willing to do so to make that point.

They show the government how many people are willing to step out of their comfort zone to make a point about changing something and to what degree they are willing to do so to make that point. The exceptions are: College students who become involved with mainstream protests because their comfort zone is more fluid. And impoverished people because their comfort zone is not that comfortable. The government can easily ignore protests or rationalize their participants' behavior. This is what usually happens. An exception would be the Vietnam protests. They, along with Walter Cronkite, were instrumental in ending the war.

is, along with anger, practically always derived from hope. Shouting out against injustice is always in the hope of justice.

Protest and anger practically always derives from hope, and the shouting out against injustice is always in the hope of those injustices being somewhat corrected and a little more justice established. John Berger

is an ineffective vestige of the industrial age where workers could directly force employers to do things. To recoup its obstructionist role in the modern era, it needs to be brought directly into cyberspace via such legal-but-obstructing actions as does attacks (i.e. Crowdsourced logjamming online systems).

The protest is a vestige of the industrial age, where workers could directly force negotiations with employers by refusing to work, thus shutting down actual operations. What's ironic is that the current day protests arise (partially) from the very end of the industrial age. The operations of the powerful no longer flow through the open (e.g. Wall Street is not even the center of the financial world now that's how out of touch OWS is with their real opponents), they flow through fiber optic channels and banks. Ultimately, mass popular discontent won't be effective until it transitions into the modern era. To have any real effect, protests should really all be happening online, via 'crowdsourced' DDOS attacks on financial institutions and their infrastructure, with citizens 'occupying' or voluntarily choosing legal-but-obstructing actions almost entirely in cyberspace, so as to actually interfere with the operations of today's elite. Anonymous (as fragmented, trollish, and uncoordinated as it is), is far more clued in about how to effect real change than protesters on Zuccotti Park. Protesting in Wall Street does not interfere with the operations of the financial elite instead, they are just making trouble for the owners of the park, for the NYC police, and while the mayoralty of cities is somewhat in bed with the powerful, they are not the source or primary 'center' of the powers that OWS objects to. Thus, the real opponents of the protesters have no incentive to deal with them, negotiate, or change their behavior. Instead, the protesters end up grappling with the police for media sympathy, which is a red herring that diverts attention from any real worthwhile cause especially since, ironically, most of the police are demographically on the same side (i.e. 99%) as the protesters.

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'

is ineffective because, in contrast to strikes, boycotts, or civil disobedience which interfere with operations, protests don't actually do anything, practically speaking, other than grab fleeting media attention.

Protests are ineffective because they are the successor to strikes, which originated during the Gilded Age. Strikes are an actual thing you can do to interfere with and block your opponent/enemy/oppressor's operations. You place them in a position where, if they do not negotiate or resolve conflict with you (hopefully with terms more favorable to you), they actually stand to lose something. The same goes for boycotts, and civil disobedience, in descending order of direct effectiveness. The problem with protests is that, practically speaking, they don't actually do anything. You are just a bunch of people complaining. Well, you could do that at home. You could be writing letters to your representative. You could be calling people. If the same number of people who would show up to a protest spent the same amount of time doing those things, they'd probably have more of an effect. Getting media attention for a cause isn't really a very effective way of causing change because the media is just looking for a sensational story, and once you've been 'going on' for awhile, it's not as interesting and novel any more.

is ineffective in its current form because it hasn't yet adjusted to the fact that the operations of the powerful no longer flow through physical spaces, but rather through fiber optic channels and banks.

The operations of the powerful no longer flow through the open (e.g. Wall Street is not even the center of the financial world now that's how out of touch OWS is with their real opponents), they flow through fiber optic channels and banks.

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