Do Protests Work?

In the run-up to Saturday’s “No Kings Day,” there were several comments to this platform and to my Facebook feed to the effect that protests “don’t work.” (I think some of those commenters are folks making excuses for their non-participation, but a couple came from people I think of as activists, people I know to be deeply concerned about where we Americans find ourselves today.) I’ve previously shared my belief that these protests–when peaceful and large-scale–can be enormously consequential mechanisms for change, and in the run-up to the most recent demonstrations, I took a look at the academic literature, to see whether the evidence supported or rebutted my conviction.

As always, it depends.

The scholarship confirmed the effectiveness of protests that are large-scale, sustained and nonviolent. Broad-based, diverse demonstrations have been shown to bring pressure on government–one study documented instances in which sustained protests over three years accomplished desired changes. Others traced historical examples; in the U.S., there was the civil rights movement, in India, Gandhi’s nonviolent movement.  In the Philippines, protests toppled Marcos, and in several Eastern European countries, anti-communist demonstrations contributed to the weakening of the USSR.

Reading the academic literature is one thing. Personal experience is another–and as I read through some of these articles, I couldn’t help comparing today’s political protests with a not-altogether-different type of demonstration–Gay Pride.

Speaking of Pride, in Indianapolis, No Kings Day coincided with the city’s annual Gay Pride parade. This elderly blogger joined with Indivisible of Central Indiana this year, before departing to join the No Kings protest at the Indiana Statehouse. (A busy day for an old lady…)

Pride celebrations began as protest demonstrations. They are now common, but I still remember when they began, and I think there is a real parallel to be drawn between the protests now erupting nationwide and the expressive effects of those early Pride parades. Like today’s protests, they sent a message. Over time, as those celebrations have grown to include many thousands of participants and onlookers, that message has been culturally adopted by a majority of Americans, although there is still a minority frantically trying to reverse that acceptance. (I was happy to see that the Indianapolis event was once again enormous–if there was fall-off in participation from corporations or institutions intimidated by the Trump administration, or by our stae-level Trumpers like Attorney General Todd Rokita, it sure wasn’t evident.)

As JVL wrote in The Bulwark,

There are two ways protest movements break through. The first is when they create violence. The second is when they become stunningly large.

Violence can cut both ways. If protestors are violent, the violence hurts their cause. But when peaceful protests provoke the state into violence, it can help.

Size, by contrast, has no valence: Mass is power. Full-stop.

Size is persuasion. It creates bandwagon effects. It sows doubt in the minds of the opposition. It opens new avenues of resistance.

Massive, sustained nonviolent expressive activities matter politically. As JVL noted, they essentially act as a holding action. “They cannot themselves achieve tangible objectives. But they can slow the authoritarian project’s advance.”

Such events have another, underappreciated positive effect: they give encouragement to the participants, who see evidence that they are most definitely not alone–that many other people share their goals and aspirations (not to mention their anger and/or anguish.) That recognition stiffens spines and encourages additional activism.

The academic research I consulted suggested that large-scale demonstrations increase democratic attitudes–and longer-range, increase voter participation.

Given the current state of insanity in Trump’s America, it’s also worth noting that massive decentralized protests make it harder for our would-be dictator to focus on individual locations to which he can send the National Guard or the Marines.

With that generalized background, what can I say about Saturday’s No Kings Day? First and foremost, turnout nationwide was enormous. Demonstrations involved millions of people in some 200 cities and towns across the country. Despite the fact that it rained in many cities, including mine, thousands of angry Americans ignored the downpours and took their signs and tee-shirt slogans to the streets. During the day, media from cities large and small featured videos of huge and animated crowds.

If they were paying attention, the composition of the enormous crowd in the protest I attended should have frightened  elected Republicans. Although they were far more diverse than the town halls I’ve previously attended, a significant percentage of the participants were middle-aged and older White folks who in other times might have been expected to vote Republican. These angry citizens can’t be dismissed as wild leftists–they were pissed off Americans, many of whom had never previously joined a protest.

It was great!

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An Action Plan

I’ve been getting the same anguished question from friends and family members who feel helpless in the face of the sustained assault on everything that makes America, America. Other than participating in protests, what can one person do? What can I do? Goodness knows, I don’t have an answer to that question. But I recently received an “action plan” from a local reader that lays out steps that she has taken–steps that have “activated” her friends and neighbors–and I think it is valuable. I’m sharing it, below.

_________

Organizing for a Better Future

For those of us who are devasted by the re-election of Trump and are watching news reports, reading newspapers and on-line communication which indicates that America is headed down the path to authoritarianism, here is an idea that may be helpful to many who want to save our democracy, but are not sure what to do.

Find your peeps

If you belong to a book club, exercise group, play bridge, mahjong or pickle ball, have neighbors or other groups of friends, you can begin to form an affinity group based on your interests, values and available time.  These are people that likely know how you think, share your frustrations and want to make a difference.  It can start with just you and one other person.

Find a political activity that interests you and invite a friend or two to go with you

Find an event, a rally, a protest, a town hall, a Democratic club that interests you and make plans to attend. After attending, talk with your friend about how you felt and create a list of others who might want to join you to attend a future event.  Go on-line to find webinars, meetings, activities that appeal to you. Invite your friend to do the same and decide together what you want to do.  Gather all the information you need and each of you then contact others who might be interested.  Organize a carpool or two if necessary. 

Recap, review, recall your experience in a relaxed social setting

Make plans to meet with this small group for coffee or a drink a few days after your first event. At this first gathering let everyone talk about their feelings and how they best cope with the overload of bad news.  Encourage participants to share their meditation, exercise, relaxation tips with others.  Ask them to talk about their current volunteer activities such as food banks, soup kitchens, classroom volunteering, environmental cleanup, working with teens who need support, etc. Ask what they think might be the most effective thing to do next and get each to commit to researching and organizing a next step. Talk about who else could be in this group and invite each one to invite one or two others to join.  Decide if you need to meet again or if you just want to “get in action.” Record what you talked about and send the notes to the group with details about the first activity this larger group will do.

Focus

While it may be difficult to affect what’s going on at the national level, you can make a huge difference by learning from and supporting your local candidates. Go to their town halls, send a donation or two to candidates (even a small donation gets you on their communication list), write a letter to your local newspaper, host a fundraiser for them.  Share what you learn with others. Always be on the lookout for new people to join your efforts.

Educate

Educate yourselves and get involved as a precinct chairperson or vice chairperson, volunteer to knock on doors or work on a campaign to really learn how “the sausage is made.”  Did you know that if the Marion County November, 2024 voter turnout had been 68% instead of 54%, Indiana quite likely would have had Jennifer McCormick as our governor and Destiny Wells as our Attorney General.  Marion County is a huge factor in Indiana elections and we need to participate in the current structure and make it better.

Communicate

Ask each person in your group to send you (the leader of this effort and the monthly email communicator) information about activities that someone or all the group may want to participate in.  Try not to overload the group with too many emails – send something about once a month unless you need to finalize details about an activity.  Some folks will decide not to participate – always ask if they still want to be on the mailing list or opt out. 

Keep communication simple

Encourage participants to share activities and ideas with their families and friends outside of the group.  Have them forward your emails, but don’t get bogged down by adding random people that you don’t know personally to your email list.

Grow

Hopefully your group will grow – if it does, ask 3-4 of the most active people to be on the “Lead Team.”  These are the ones to call on to get a read on what to do next or to help solve an issue.  Plan purely fun social events to build relationships.  Continue to add new people.  Create mutual support among the members – people have illnesses and surgeries, jobs and travel, loved ones need their time and attention, some just get burned out.  Always have a Plan B if someone doesn’t come through.

Author’s Notes

This plan is written by a retired senior and indicates how her peers might be most comfortable with emails and in-person meetings.  A younger group could take some of the ideas and use social media to organize activities.  Our group consists of about 20-25 neighbors in our condominium community making it easy for social events, carpooling to various venues, getting together to make rally signs, etc.  We originally met in early 2017 to plan our participation in the Women’s March and kept in touch loosely as we worked on campaigns for Carey Hamilton (IN State Representative), Dee Thornton (5th District Congressional District), and Valerie McCray (U.S. Senate).

For more information or if you have questions or ideas to share, please contact Jayne Thorne at 317/694-5615 or [email protected].

Here are additional suggestions provided by ChatGPT:

Additional Ideas to Build and Expand Affinity Groups

1. Skill-Sharing Circles

Host monthly “skill nights” where members teach each other something useful—letter writing, public speaking, using Canva for activism, or calling legislators.
These gatherings build confidence and deepen the group’s leadership bench.
2. Affinity Pods for Action

Break your larger group into smaller “pods” based on interests (climate, education, voting rights, etc.).
Each pod meets independently and commits to one collective action a month—attending a meeting, writing op-eds, organizing phone banks, etc.
3. Storytelling Gatherings

Host small storytelling events where participants share how political decisions have affected them personally.
These emotional connections build solidarity and provide content for persuasive outreach and social media.
4. Intergenerational Exchanges

Pair retirees or older adults with younger activists for skill swaps and dialogue.
Older adults bring lived experience and institutional memory, while younger members may offer tech skills or social media fluency.

5. “Bring a Friend” Month

Designate a month when each member is encouraged to bring a new person to a meeting or event.
Offer low-barrier, friendly events like potlucks, coffee meetups, or sign-making parties to ease people in.
6. Group Texts or Chat Threads

For groups more comfortable with digital tools, use WhatsApp, Signal, or GroupMe to share updates and keep momentum between meetings.
These platforms help maintain urgency and build an informal community.
7. Create an Affinity Group Toolkit

Offer a starter pack PDF or printout with tips on forming a new group, sample invitation messages, and a calendar of upcoming events.
Empower members to become “mini organizers” in their own networks.
8. Monthly Themes

Choose a theme for each month (e.g., Voting Rights in April, Climate Justice in May, Reproductive Rights in June) and plan one activity around it.
This keeps engagement fresh and education ongoing.
9. Partner with Local Institutions

Collaborate with churches, libraries, or community centers to host public forums, movie nights, or civic teach-ins.
This helps normalize political dialogue in shared spaces.
10. Wellness and Resilience Focus

Regularly include activities for emotional well-being, such as group walks, mindfulness exercises, mental health check-ins, or laughter yoga.

Political work is exhausting—resilience practices keep people engaged long term.
 

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Disturbing…

When the candidate they supported loses, some percentage of that candidate’s most avid supporters will suspect–or even allege–a conspiracy to “steal” the election. Before Trump, those allegations used to be limited to fringe folks and sore losers. (They’re still voiced by sore losers…Trump being a prime example.) Most of us properly consider these recurring accusations of electoral impropriety as one common type of conspiracy theory. Eminently dismissable.

So I was stunned to read about a lawsuit in New York, where “electoral impropriety” would be a kind word, at least if the facts are as the local news media have reported.

A seminal case questioning the accuracy of the 2024 Presidential and Senate election results in Rockland County, New York, is moving forward. In open court last Thursday, Judge Rachel Tanguay of the New York Supreme Court, ruled that discovery must proceed, pushing the lawsuit brought by SMART Legislation into the evidence-gathering stage. The lawsuit seeks a full hand recount of the Presidential and U.S. Senate races in Rockland County.

The Court has now ordered that hand count, in an effort to explain the statistical anomalies.

As stated in the complaint, more voters have sworn they voted for independent U.S. Senate candidate Diane Sare than the Rockland County Board of Elections counted and certified, directly contradicting those results. Additionally, the presidential election results exhibit numerous statistical anomalies. The anomalies in the presidential race include multiple districts where hundreds of voters chose the Democratic candidate Kirsten Gillibrand for Senate, but where zero voters selected the Democratic Presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

Additionally, a statistician determined that the 2024 presidential election results were statistically highly unlikely in four of the five towns in Rockland County when compared with 2020 results.

It certainly appears that Rockland County experienced “irregularities,. Granted, it is highly improbable that those same irregularities were widespread enough to throw the national election to Trump (although a finding that he did, in fact, “steal” the election would certainly improve my opinion of the electorate…) While it might be technically possible to interfere with a presidential election, successfully altering the national outcome would require the thief to overcome overwhelming legal, logistical, and security barriers. The states, after all, are in charge of administering these elections–the decentralized nature of the nation’s federal elections would make large-scale manipulation incredibly difficult.

Would it be impossible?

At risk of descending into a Pillow Man degree of insanity, I keep thinking about Elon Musk’s complaint that Trump is insufficiently grateful to him for Musk’s help in getting him elected. The media (undoubtedly correctly) attributed that help to the many millions of dollars Musk donated to Trump’s campaign. But what if Musk’s techie bros figured out a way to overcome those legal, logistical and security barriers?

What if some proportion of that huge number of “no shows”–the millions of missing voters– actually did cast ballots, but those ballots disappeared?

What if it turned out that the madman currently desecrating the Oval Office stole the election?

Let me be clear: much as I’d like to believe that, I don’t. But just by indulging in that bit of conspiratorial daydreaming, we can see how much damage such suspicions can do to the civic trust that democracy demands. Trump’s accusations–and his cult’s acceptance of them–didn’t just trigger the insurrection on January 6th. It poisoned large parts of the body politic, sowing a distrust that has affected and damaged virtually every aspect of American political life.

If and when the U.S. emerges from its current downward spiral, restoring that trust–in democracy, in science, in education, in accurate history–should be the first order of business. But restoration of trust won’t come from the sorts of people who currently occupy America’s public offices. And while I’d love to believe that We the People didn’t really elect some of these sleazy lunatics, we probably did.

Just not, apparently, in Rockland County…

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That “Big Beautiful Bill”

Ever since Trump’s abominable “Big Beautiful Bill” emerged from the House, we’ve been buried in analyses of what it will do–essentially, rob the poor to further enrich the obscenely wealthy. But I continue to think about the initial reaction of Paul Krugman. What did this Nobel-prize-winning economist think in the immediate aftermath of the House passage?

Krugman began by noting that he’d expected House Republicans to pass this “surpassingly cruel, utterly irresponsible budget” in the dead of night, in an effort to escape notice. And as he said, “they tried! Debate began at 1 A.M., and if you think that bizarre timing reflected real urgency, I have some $Melania coins you might want to buy.”

The House has now passed what must surely be the worst piece of legislation in modern U.S. history. Millions of Americans are about to see crucial government support snatched away. A significant number will die prematurely due to lack of adequate medical care or nutrition. Yet all this suffering won’t come close to offsetting the giant hole in the budget created by huge tax cuts for the rich. Long-term interest rates have already soared as America loses the last vestiges of its former reputation for fiscal responsibility.

What struck me most about Krugman’s reaction to this massively irresponsible–indeed, evil–budget was his enumeration of what that budget ought to look like. Krugman isn’t one of the “fiscal scolds” who want to eliminate all deficit spending, but he is worried that the U.S. is on an unsustainable fiscal path–a path that this horrific bill will worsen. He acknowledges that the path to fiscal sanity will require some hard choices and tradeoffs. But he also insists that we could immensely improve our current situation with a series of easy choices, “actions that would mainly spare the middle class and only hurt people most Americans probably believe deserve to feel a bit of pain.” He proceeds to list four of them.

First, get Americans — mainly wealthy Americans — to pay the taxes they owe. The net tax gap — taxes Americans are legally obliged to pay but don’t — is simply huge, on the order of $600 billion a year. We can never get all of that money back, but giving the IRS enough resources to crack down on wealthy tax cheats would be both fiscally and morally responsible, since letting people get away with cheating on their taxes rewards bad behavior and makes law-abiding taxpayers look and feel like chumps.

As he notes, Republicans are doing the opposite, by starving the IRS of resources and trying to make tax evasion great again.

Second, we could crack down on Medicare Advantage overpayments. The insurance companies running Medicare Advantage game the system and get overpaid; one recent estimate found that Medicare is at risk of overpaying Medicare Advantage plans between $1.3 trillion and $2 trillion over the next decade.

Third, Krugman advises going after corporate tax avoidance, especially by multinational firms using strategies to make profits that are earned in the United States look as though they were earned in low-tax nations like Ireland. “Such maneuvers cost the Treasury around $70 billion annually.

And finally,

We should just get rid of Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cut. That tax cut wasn’t a response to any economic needs, and there’s not a shred of evidence that it did the economy any good. All it did was transfer a lot of money to corporations and the wealthy. Let’s end those giveaways.

Would doing all these things be enough to put America on a sustainable fiscal path? Honestly, I don’t know. But they would make a good start toward putting our fiscal house in order. And none of them would involve the “hard choices” fiscal scolds tell us we need to make.

As Krugman concludes, the politicians who aren’t even willing to do these things have no business lecturing anyone about fiscal responsibility.

Krugman doesn’t speculate about why we don’t do the “easy” things, but I will. We don’t do them because we have elected people who don’t consider themselves representatives of the people who voted for them, but obedient servants of the plutocrats who funded them. And nothing will change until enough of those voters send an unmistakable message to the cowards and quislings that “time’s up.”

I’ve previously quoted a scholar whose research suggests that peaceful protests by 3% of a population are enough to send that message. That translates to something like ten million people. Our next chance to achieve that goal is No Kings Day, tomorrow.

Please participate. Time is running out to save the America we thought we inhabited….

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The Greeks Were Right

The early Greeks are said to have invented the idea of democracy, but that wasn’t their only contribution to the philosophy of governance. They also pioneered the importance of the “golden mean,” the mean between extremes. 

Right now, we are experiencing an assault on both of those critically important concepts.

The assault on democracy is well-understood; indeed, it preoccupies the political discourse. The importance of the “Golden Mean” is less understood. The Golden Mean was a core concept in Aristotelian ethics; Aristotle argued that virtue consists of finding the right balance in our behaviors and emotions.  (For example, courage is a virtue that lies between the extremes of recklessness and cowardice. Generosity is a virtue that lies between stinginess and prodigality.)  

American politics constantly wrestles with the proper balance between individualism and communitarianism. The country was founded on the principle that individuals are entitled to a generous zone of liberty–a zone that government should not invade until or unless that individual is harming the person or property of another, That principle gave rise to a very American, almost religious belief in individualism, and a corresponding suspicion of social programs and laws for the common good, which are inevitably opposed as unAmerican “socialism” or “communism.”

In the real world, of course, we are faced with finding a proper balance: what sorts of things really must be done communally, and when do government programs unnecessarily breach individual liberties? (I will ignore, for purposes of this discussion, the hypocrisy of MAGA folks who disdain “socialism” only when it benefits poor folks, and who have no problem with a corporatism that translates into socialism for the rich and a brutal capitalism for everyone else…)

What triggered the foregoing discussion was an article from the Guardian about–of all things–diet and exercise and long life. The article noted a decline in public health and life expectancies in rich countries, and posed the obvious question: what explains the gap between the public’s growing knowledge about living longer and its collective health going backwards?

The author of the essay is a public health scientist in Great Britain, whose job is looking into the factors that affect how long we will live. As she wrote, 

Most of these are out of individual control and have to do with the country and community we live in. The truth is, this “self-help” narrative doesn’t reflect the reality of how health works. In fact, the focus on personal responsibility and self-improvement has distracted us from the real issue –the impact that public policy, infrastructure and community make in affecting our health chances and longevity.

After citing the far better health and longevity outcomes in places like Japan, she writes that “What stands out about these places is that the people living there don’t just make individual choices that lead to better health – they live in places where healthy lives are normalised by government and culture.”

As I talk about in my new book, if I’m going to live to 100, I need more than fastidiously counting my calories and posting pictures of myself exercising on Instagram (which I am guilty of). I need to live in a world where health is a collective responsibility, not an individual one. This means supporting policies that make us all healthier – and politicians who prioritise the conditions for good health such as nutritious food especially for children, active cities, clean air policies, preventive healthcare and public provision of water, which should be at the core of what a government provides its citizens. There are lessons in how to improve life in all of these areas across the world: these are places where good health is built into daily life.

I confess that I have a strong libertarian streak, and a corresponding belief in the importance of the individual values of diligence, honesty, and hard work. But common sense requires recognition of the importance of the communities in which we live–the societies within which we are, in communitarian jargon–“embedded.” People cannot pull themselves up by their bootstraps if they don’t have boots. They cannot simply choose to breathe clean air and drink uncontaminated water. Poor people without health insurance cannot simply decide not to need medical care.

Whether politicians want to acknowledge it or not, there are major elements of our lives that can only be addressed communally, and most of those can only be accomplished through government. Our job is to craft a social infrastructure that is adequate, that supports without intruding–to find that elusive “Golden Mean.”

I don’t think MAGA is interested…..

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