As many people have noted the peaceful Restore Nature march of around 100,000 people made hardly a ripple in the media (The Observer had a story buried in the depths of the paper).... so Zoe Williams puts the dots together to reach the same conclusion we all have:
There is a problem when the media only give coverage to violent or high-profile protests that cause trouble.... peaceful protests look less effective, drawing people towards disruption!
I've been thinking about protest movements like the Suffragettes. They were a radical faction in a much broader movement, much of which advocated non-disruptive, lawful actions. But it is the Suffragettes we remember, and thank for women's votes.
It seems to me this is true more or less wherever you look in history. If you're in the labour movement, you know about the arrested and deported Tolpuddle Martyrs, but have you heard of the early trade union pioneers that were (generally) law-abiding - Joseph Arch, for example?
Recent studies of the abolition of slavery have moved from seeing it as a peaceful parliamentary achievement to the fact that the cost of slave rebellions and other economic pressures had already made it unviable - and we celebrate now the disruptive protests led by more recent black civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela (whose defense of the use of violence was precisely what got him jailed).
Seems to me, the claim that disruptive protest doesn't work is wishful thinking on the part of people comfortable with the status quo - and ignorant of history.
@GeofCox @_bydbach_ @ChrisMayLA6 Could it be both? The extremists demonstrate what the reasonable people may become if there is no change. Perhaps exploitative people need to be scared out of their complacency. The exploiters are not reasonable people either.
@GeofCox @ChrisMayLA6 @woo @_bydbach_ Back in the nineties, when we were trying various means to get government to let us in round the table (as a very middle class campaign using strategic litigation to produce legal protections for trans people) I used to reassure the more shouty activists that we weren’t against them but rather appreciated the opportunity to position ourselves as ‘the people you’d rather be dealing with’.
@christineburns @GeofCox @ChrisMayLA6 @woo @_bydbach_ If you want to move the Overton window, you need to stake out a maximalist demand then position your real needs as "moderate" (but still better for you than the status quo.)
The far right are terrifyingly good at this.
