Not OP but I have organised protests and researched the topic to inform my organising.
My answer is that it’s like any strategy: you have to make the right tradeoffs aligning with your goals. You will find many example of massively unpopular but effective protests (MLK’s protests for example had a >70% disapproval rating) or larger more popular protests that did not achieve their goals (pro-democracy protests in HK). A general rule like “don’t protest like this, it doesn’t historically work” is massively dependent on your specific context, and how the organisers execute. It’s entire possible for the same strategy to have inconsistent results.
I find it more productive to view protests as campaigns with defined goals. For example, economic disruptions and strikes would work if your issue has a broad support base, like issues of inequality, climate change or cost of living. It is highly unlikely to work in cases of minority rights, such as gay rights or protection of racial-religious minorities. Because if you do that, the majority could easily distance themselves from you and not display solidarity. Gender issues are a mixed bag.
Sorry if that’s not a helpful answer, but if you give me an example I can probably tailor the recommendations better.
Small-scale targeted labour disputes tend to not have that much broad support. The 2021 John Deere strike for example did not have that broad societal support. There may have been some support from the wider labour movement, but also opposition from the local court system, and business groups/ chamber of commers etc.
But it is hard to think of this happening at a larger scale, without broad support. I can’t think of any examples.
There are examples I can think where economic disruption has helped for minority rights, although some of these would for sure have had some level of popular societal support. - In Bolivia, rural indigenous groups caused roadblocks bringing the economy to a standstill, and successfully were able to resume delayed elections. - Recent Chile constitutional changes include gender parity and indigenous issues, was the product of very disruptive protetsts - Longshoremen refusing to move cargo from South African ships during Apartheid. - The ILWU many activities, including desegregating work gangs. Also oppposed Japanese American internment and were involved in the civil rights movement but I don’t know if there particular efforts were effective. - The Tailoress strikes which led to pay equality for women
Many successful protests have had some element of striking/boycott/business or economic disruption.
Is it possible to examine whether this specifically improves the effectiveness of protests? This would be my working hypothesis.
Not OP but I have organised protests and researched the topic to inform my organising.
My answer is that it’s like any strategy: you have to make the right tradeoffs aligning with your goals. You will find many example of massively unpopular but effective protests (MLK’s protests for example had a >70% disapproval rating) or larger more popular protests that did not achieve their goals (pro-democracy protests in HK). A general rule like “don’t protest like this, it doesn’t historically work” is massively dependent on your specific context, and how the organisers execute. It’s entire possible for the same strategy to have inconsistent results.
I find it more productive to view protests as campaigns with defined goals. For example, economic disruptions and strikes would work if your issue has a broad support base, like issues of inequality, climate change or cost of living. It is highly unlikely to work in cases of minority rights, such as gay rights or protection of racial-religious minorities. Because if you do that, the majority could easily distance themselves from you and not display solidarity. Gender issues are a mixed bag.
Sorry if that’s not a helpful answer, but if you give me an example I can probably tailor the recommendations better.
Good points.
Small-scale targeted labour disputes tend to not have that much broad support. The 2021 John Deere strike for example did not have that broad societal support. There may have been some support from the wider labour movement, but also opposition from the local court system, and business groups/ chamber of commers etc.
But it is hard to think of this happening at a larger scale, without broad support. I can’t think of any examples.
There are examples I can think where economic disruption has helped for minority rights, although some of these would for sure have had some level of popular societal support.
- In Bolivia, rural indigenous groups caused roadblocks bringing the economy to a standstill, and successfully were able to resume delayed elections.
- Recent Chile constitutional changes include gender parity and indigenous issues, was the product of very disruptive protetsts
- Longshoremen refusing to move cargo from South African ships during Apartheid.
- The ILWU many activities, including desegregating work gangs. Also oppposed Japanese American internment and were involved in the civil rights movement but I don’t know if there particular efforts were effective.
- The Tailoress strikes which led to pay equality for women
Those are the sorts of examples on my mind.
Sources:
https://inthesetimes.com/article/dockworkers-ilwu-racism-workers-apartheid-black-freedom-movement-bay-area
https://www.actu.org.au/about-the-actu/history-of-australian-unions