How Big, Peaceful Protests Work

Looking Toward the Protests Honoring John Lewis on July 17

Tomorrow, or maybe today when you read this, Thursday, July 17th will be another day of big protests against the Trump regime and a celebration of the legacy of civil rights leader John Lewis. I hope it will be a big one again. It’s a vital moment to show our opposition to the fascist assault on our democracy, and we need our voices to be heard.

I've also been hearing from a lot of people that they're tired, they're frustrated and they wonder what's the point in marching, when it doesn't change what Trump does or whether the Republicans support him? The passage of the Bloated Awful Bill was especially hard for many people to take. After all of our organizing, this horrible, unpopular bill still squeaked by. What's the use?

Frustration is a powerful driver of conflict. In this moment when we feel such urgency to end the many abuses of the Trump regime, when every morsel of food we eat reminds us of the starving people of Gaza, when the bombs continue to fall and the masked bands continue to abduct anyone with brown skin, and we feel so little power to stop them, it’s easy to turn our anger on each other. When the frustration is so high, and the guilt is making you crazy, it's instinctual to berate your fellow activists for not doing enough, or to castigate them for doing something you think is either useless or counterproductive.

Take a deep breath, and resist that urge. Our task right now is to build a movement broad enough and powerful enough to end the fascist takeover of the U.S. and make real, progressive change. To do that, we must create an ecosystem with many niches. Instead of saying ‘Your tactics are bullshit—adopt mine!’ we should be saying, ‘How can our varied tactics reinforce one another?” How can we work together, at varied levels of risk and involvement, to draw in as many people as possible?

For those who say that the big, peaceful protests don’t work, I would say that they do, but not in the way we’d like them to. Politicians rarely if ever look at all the people in the street and immediately say, “There’s so many of them, they must be right!” Protest works over time, and more subtly.

What actually happens is this: powerful, visible opposition, especially when it is repeated and grows, gradually erodes support for the oppressors. You could say it shifts the Overton window, or that it makes opposition the norm and gives heart and encouragement to all those who are standing for justice.

Secondly, it puts the oppressors on notice that they do not have support for their policies, that they risk the country becoming ungovernable if they push too far, and that their tenancy in power may be short lived. This tends to exacerbate the tensions and divisions already present among their ranks, as we are seeing happen now with their reaction to Trump and friends gaslighting about the Epstein files.

Peaceful protests also create a place where those who are becoming disaffected with the current regime can go. If the movement can open its arms in welcome to defectors, we have a better chance at this moment than perhaps ever before of making some deep inroads into Trump's base of support. As his policies take shape, as people see the reality of the brutality and cruelty they represent, as the lies and prevarications become more and more evident and the Epstein scandal refuses to die, some of his supporters are beginning to fall away. As tempting as it is to scream “I told you so!” we would do far better to say “Welcome to the resistance!” and swell our ranks. Many of the grievances that led people to support the MAGA movement are, by rights, progressive issues: income inequality, anger at the elites, support for working people. If we can mobilize some of the energy that has been channeled into anti-woke venom and address the underlying discontent, we can mobilize that energy toward progressive change.

Mass protests that create a new norm of opposition and disaffection make it harder for the regime to recruit good people to serve it. You might say that they haven't been looking very hard, and given Trump's appointments, they don’t seem to care about competence, intelligence, or integrity. But ultimately, large systems don’t work without people of intelligence and integrity, and as the incompetence becomes more and more evident, and the harm it causes hits people where it hurts, they get mad! We’ve seen this happen with the floods in Texas, the delayed response from FEMA and the speculation that cuts in NOAA and the weather services may have delayed warnings. That anger is a resource we can channel into action.

That broad base of protest also undermines the will of the enforcers. The National Guard and the military are reputedly very unhappy about being given illegal orders or used against civilians. The police are not happy to see their authority overrun by federal forces, and even some agents of ICE are, we hear, demoralized by the arrest quotas, sick of arresting day laborers and asylum seekers instead of actually going after criminals. Thousands of people in the streets say, “The community stands against these brutal actions. We will despise you if you carry them out, but if you refuse illegal orders and stand with us, we will support you!”

We do need to take strong and courageous actions that go beyond peaceful marches. Many people are. Communities step up to defend their members from ICE raids, lawsuits that force the release of some who have been unjustly imprisoned, organizers mount strikes, boycotts, and sit-ins at Representatives’ offices, accompany immigrants to court cases, block ICE vehicles and operations, and mount targeted campaigns against companies that support MAGA, like Tesla and Palantir. We will need far more such actions before this is over. Large, relatively safe protests can be a first step into activism for many people. Very few people go directly from yelling at their YouTube feed and bitching to their neighbors to standing between armed, masked ICE agents and their victims. They need a way in, a welcome, and the support that can encourage them to gradually take larger risks. Attending a march is immediately satisfying—you feel a. warm sense of community, see crowds of others who feel as you do, and get that inner sense of having done something virtuous. Once someone takes that first step, it can be easier to persuade them to take additional forms of action.

I hope the July 17 protests will be big and powerful, and that we will continue to march and mobilize, growing ever broader and stronger. I hope that these protests will inspire even more courageous resistance, at every level, while providing a safe, welcoming first step for people to get involved. This is a dire and dangerous moment, and people are suffering in ways that can never be justified. But if we stay committed, determined and strategic, we can reignite a diverse yet unified movement for true progressive change.

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