I've always felt like people fundamentally misunderstand protests.

The whole "the protesters are being paid" thing pisses me off every time I hear it. The idea that no one actually feels passionately about something horrible that happens and needs to be paid for fake a protest is just demeaning. Especially since they only apply that logic to causes they don't agree with.

particularly ones that feel like they have no legitimate political outlet like voting

Protests piss me off because they're ultimately toothless.

I remember when there were legions of people protesting outside Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas' houses before Roe v Wade was overturned.

And I kept thinking "yeah, keep waving your signs and doing your chants. It's pointless; the judges don't give a shit. Nobody's listening."

Vandalizing property and smashing stuff is really not a great way to get the general public on your side

And then there's the 'they are just using it as an excuse to destroy stuff' line, which is also bullshit.

Protests are not carefully engineered media strategy designed to win low information people to the cause; they are an outburst of anger and frustration that usually takes place when suffering is ignored.

Thats not all protests tho

And the problem is that a lot of times those free for all protests end up hurting the people they're trying to help, either directly or indirectly.

Like, you guys literally can't read.

Vandalizing property and smashing stuff is really not a great way to get the general public on your side

I wss responding to a post that wasn't yours.

But I do not agree with your assertion tat because they supposedly "cannot be controlled" that means that its valid for it to be a free for all with easily cooped messaging and unclear intended goals.

I think there's a pretty hefty distinction to he made between that and other protests, and you yourself acknowledged there have been astroturfed protests as well.

Protests piss me off because they're ultimately toothless.

I remember when there were legions of people protesting outside Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas' houses before Roe v Wade was overturned.

And I kept thinking "yeah, keep waving your signs and doing your chants. It's pointless; the judges don't give a shit. Nobody's listening. May as well be yelling at clouds."

There's an old saying "those who make peaceful protest impossible make violent revolution inevitable"

IMO a protest is essentially fair notice that people are really pissed, and are being peaceful, for now .

It is not, as already noted, any kind of normal political argument.

People have ideas about what protests work and don't work and these people are often wrong. Yeah, stuff like vandalism piss people off but it does get media attention and that actually helps . You can complain about it but I mean we have a lot of history showing it does actually help. The same complaints of "This will only turn people against you" literally was what we heard during the women's suffrage and the civil rights eras.

I've heard this from a few different people all at once, recently. Who started this? I would consider boycotts a form of protest, and those can be effective. But otherwise, this just makes protesting sound counterproductive and petty.

This is not universally true, especially if the destruction of property ends up circling back to the protesters.

Protests can have a variety of reasons for taking place and they definitely can be very organized. They generally don't have the same intent as the ones you're describing though. You did a good job of explaining one type, but you can't just pretend that things like organized union based protest don't exist. Those are also things.

The public sometimes confuses them for having the same purpose, which seems to be the issue you're getting at here.

I feel like boycotts usually are more tightly organized and coordinated though. They are kind of their own beast. Sometimes they can't be effective, just structurally. Like, the whole boycott Israel movement can't really be effective because every company has more to lose in business from the United States (Especially in stuff like security contracts, the exact sort of thing the movement wants to stop) than they have to gain from the protestors who are a part of that movement, and there can never be enough protestors to balance that out.

Boycotts do exist in that same space though as being an outlet besides voting or violence to try to display anger on an issue.

Yeah, I like that explanation for it too, as a fair notice.

Its more that I'm just speaking specifically about the kind of protests we've been discussing on the board. Like, yes, labor protests are their own thing. They also are much rarer in the US as the labor movement in the US is very weak right now, especially compared to how it was historically. Another thing I'm not really talking about is outright riots, like the January 6th riots.

J6 is its own thing, much closer to the Beer Hall Putsch than to any kind of legitimate protest.

Undirected riots that aren't protests any more would be things like the LA riots after the Rodney King verdict.

People have ideas about what protests work and don't work and these people are often wrong. Yeah, stuff like vandalism piss people off but it does get media attention and that actually helps. You can complain about it but I mean we have a lot of history showing it does actually help. The same complaints of "This will only turn people against you" literally was what we heard during the women's suffrage and the civil rights eras.

Do you really think current climate protesters are not getting anybody hopping onto their side?

That is absolutely not what I said.

To answer your question, yes I do. Climate change isn't even a debate at this point. You've either accepted the fact its real or you're denying reality.

"I literally know nothing about America" the post.

Raising awareness via protests is key.

It can let those in power be shamed for their actions. This is key to moving forward