Protest Effectiveness Quotes

I think it's really important that we get rid of the idea that protest will create change.

Rallies, marches on Washington, protests, et al. are pointless if there is no action to make them mean something.

Does Greenpeace think it can stop whaling in Antarctica by publicly eating whale meat and declaring it delicious? What are these people thinking?

Occupy was not a movement, it was a tactic. You can't sit forever in a park near Wall Street. You can't do it for more than a few months. It was a tactic I had not predicted. If people asked me, I would have said "don't do it." But it was a great success, an enormous success, with a big impact on people's thinking, on people's actions.

I think, in a large way, it's, 'OK, you've knelt; you've made your point.' But I don't necessarily feel like that. I don't know what that looks like. Do I kneel forever? I don't know, probably not. But I think until I can feel like I'm being more effective in other ways, then this seems appropriate to me.

It's really important that we get rid of the idea that protest will create change. We don't realize that that kind of organizing worked only when the government was very strong, when the West ruled the world, relatively speaking.

People are telling me they're bored with all the attacks on Trump, meaning they were not effective. They weren't working. They weren't dispiriting people. They weren't, because Trump's fighting back. The Republicans never did, and the activists and the protesters are so over the top on everything, they're actually boring people, and they're converting people into Trump supporters.

I'm not going to vote for Donald Trump. There's no way I would vote for him under any circumstance. However, I think that the protesters may as well send him some money, because I think they're going to push people into his camp.

The relationship between violence and nonviolence in this country is interesting. The fact of the matter is, you know, people do respond to riots. The 1968 Housing Act was in large response to riots that broke out after Dr. Martin Luther King was killed. They cited these as an actual inspiration.

It's funny how social activists usually protest against the only things that have a credible chance of achieving the activists' goals.

Constructive complaint requires only two things: that what you are complaining about should be different, and that it can be different. It sounds simple, but too often our protests fail this test.

I recall saying that civil rights organizations, when they demand more than is legitimate, it hurts their position.

The main accomplishment of almost all organized protests is to annoy people who are not in them.

In 70s America, protest used to be very effective, but in subsequent decades municipalities have sneakily created a web of 'overpermiticisation' - requirements that were designed to stifle freedom of assembly and the right to petition government for redress of grievances, both of which are part of our first amendment.

I believe strongly that Occupy Wall Street had such limits because the local authorities were able to enforce, basically in our imaginations, an image of what proper civil disobedience is - one that is simply ineffective.

I have a feeling that demonstrations don't accomplish anything. That they become fads. I also feel that demonstrations wouldn't go on unless there is a TV camera. That part of it all is performance for the media. I didn't know whether they are completely honest.

Somebody once told me that if you laugh at a George Bush joke, or you send an email cartoon to your friends that makes Bush look like a fool, you feel like you've done something significant. But really, what have you actually done? Just expressing contempt for your leaders doesn't really accomplish anything.

The people who seem to us to be a very tiny elite, far off and mysterious, actually live in a fairly big world. The way they look at the planet is like they're looking at an index card covered in supply routes. We protestors had imagined ourselves this huge threat. But we were at best bemusing. To the extent that the people inside did care, it was almost like we were paying them a compliment-it reinforced their sense of power.

I don't think the state will allow people to occupy a particular space unless it feels that allowing that will end up in a kind of complacency, and the effectiveness and urgency of the protest will be lost.

Peaceful, lawful protest - if it is effective - is innately disruptive of 'business as usual.' That is why it is effective.

I honestly do not know if civil disobedience has any effect on the government. I can promise you it has a great effect on the person who chooses to do it.

I have said it before and I will continue to say that I don't think art is the most effective form of protest. I don't think it changes policy; I think it changes discourse, and discourse can change ideas, and for me, that's what it's about: having that space for conversation.

I detest symbolic protest, as it is an outcry of weak, middle-of-the-road, liberal eunuchs. If an individual feels strongly enough about something to do something about it, then he shouldn't prostitute himself by doing something symbolic. He should get out and do something real.

Time's Up is finally, it would seem, activism with some teeth. It isn't perfect, however. One of the first acts of protest - urging celebrities to wear black to awards shows - reveals a worrisome willingness to keep lunging toward those lazy, meaningless and empty gestures that cheapen the seriousness of an issue.

No one wants police brutality. No one wants inequality. But what I worry about it is when a protest becomes so large and the noise takes over that the original motivation for the protest and the conversation that should go with that protest gets lost.