These criticism has been rattling around my brain since the WTO in Seattle, however Nathan makes his case more articulately then I could. I think that proseltyzing may be a more efficient means of persuading people in this arena. Protests are media events that get a minute in broadcast news at the most, which is far to small a window to make a compelling argument. Factor in that most of that minute is going to focus on somebody with giant puppets and Houston, we have a credibility problem.

Okay, so rallies aren't the most effect use of our time and energy. They're sort of the live-action version of collecting signatures on petitions, which is also a proverbially ineffective sort of political action.

The thing about marches and rallies is that we all know how to do them: Make signs, show up, mill about half-listening to speakers, march (optionally chanting "the people united will never be defeated"), half-listen to more speakers, collapse, go home, soak feet, take two ibuprofen; and so early to bed.

The other thing we know about rallying and marching is that it's more or less the right thing to do. If we do anything else, political-action-wise, it's a matter of mere moments before some other activist pops up to tell us we're doing it wrong, or wrong to be doing it, or something else along those lines. Which is discouraging. So we march instead.

We all know why our representatives pretty much ignore emails to thier offices, and why they pay more attention to carefully written and mailed letters.

It's the effort. It takes mere moments to dash off an email, but more time to write, print, fold, stuff, address and stamp a letter -- never mind paper and mailing costs. It's that extra effort that makes it noticible.

So, when 100,000 people take a whole day (or more) and travel a great distance to say the same thing, it does make a message.

And don't think that message wasn't noticed. Notice how, now that there have been dozens of major protests, suddenly polls are showing the country increasingly against the war -- and those polls are getting media attention.

This is the key. You get the media reporting those facts, and things will change.

That's what protests do -- they can get the eye of the nation looking at you, not them. Use that moment wisely, and you can, and will, change the world.

"I have a dream..." Enough said.

Plus, and I think this is vital, protests like those last weekend are *not* insular. Our local paper's coverage (important in itself in a market with not 1 but 2 FOX-affiliate 'news' teams) quoted attendees from this area saying, "I had felt alone, and had no idea how many other people nationwide were opposed to this war." Phone banks are also crucial organizing tools, but not so great for visibility, for firing the imagination or seizing some space on the national stage.

Not to mention that even Michelle Goldberg from Salon.com has conceded that this particular protest was remarkable for its 'mainstream' feel. Which again shows something important: namely, that this was *not* the usual suspects. Getting the demographic breadth of the anti-war folks (and the sheer 'Cleaverness' of so many) on camera is a great way to defuse the easily dismissed stereotypes.

Of course! What brilliance! All those stupid people who marched for civil rights, those fools who make public anti-war statements when Americans should just sit home like good little sheep and let their betters do their thinking for them. People power has toppled dictatorships. The idea of democracy is that citizens can speak out and should be heard.

Mike, the people who marched for civil rights did so as part of a co-ordinated strategy. A lot of them were putting their lives on the line. Without organization and strategy their efforts would have been far less effective.

I agree with Kos; I have for several years. It is much easier to just turn up and march than to sit down and do the serious work of organizing for political change, especially since much of current US mass culture tells us that it is unnecessary--individuals without organization somehow are supposed to have vast political power, though how they exercise it is unclear.

How about noisy (but peaceful) march on congressional home-district offices? _All_ of them*, as simultaneously as time zone differences allow?

This would be harder for individual representatives (and senators) to ignore, even if they're back in D.C. Imagine the Capital Hill switchboard lighting up with calls not from citizens, but from the staff back home.

A simultaneous, targeted march would also be a more impressive feat of organization, something that is itself harder to ignore.

* OK, all of the ones in districts with people interested in marching.

Speaking as someone who didn't go to the local march (for a variety of reasons, most of them personal, and yes, I am cynical, and also bitter, thanks), all I can say is Ampersand said it quite well, so I'll point you over to this old post where he comments on other people commenting on a study that found going to protests to be healthy and rejuvenating for those who went to protest. It's a way of connecting, after all, with everybody else who agrees with you on a Hot Button topic; it's a visceral sign that you are not after all a lone voice crying out in the wilderness, and people need that. Even now. Protests even in this day and age (and I'm speaking as one who finds the chant "The People! United! Provide a bigger target!" an endless source of wry belly laughs) are still useful, I think; whether as part of a coordinated plan to get people revved up to do the serious work, or (even) not.

--But again, I didn't go. (A lot of friends did, though. Some good photos and even some good art.) So what do I know?

(And you'll note I made it to the end without a requisite comment on the utility of time spent online commenting on and discussing whether marching through downtown in large groups is a waste of time or not. Don't march, organize?)

Randolph said

I agree with Kos; I have for several years. It is much easier to just turn up and march than to sit down and do the serious work of organizing for political change

Maybe, just maybe, we need people to do both. Protests and demonstrations catch the public eye, establish personal bonds, and reinforce one's commitment. Maybe a couple of days to attend and demonstrate is all I can do. Maybe I don't have the time or resources or abilities to organize, but this is something I can do. I think it helps, all of it. People aren't just watching an impersonal media report. They're seeing friends and neighbors and relatives standing up and being counted.

MKK

The thing about marches--it is a good thing for folks who might not be able to otherwise articulate (beyond bumper stickers and sound bytes) why they are against or for something. They let their bodies do the speaking. (And no, PHN, I am not pointing the finger at you. You are, as always, an Other.)

Can you imagine the majority of the folks on any march (I have been on a number) knocking on doors and being able to really engage the homeowner or door-answerer in a polite, personal, and persuasive argument for their cause? I include myself here as a bad-knocker, and I am reasonably intelligent , reasonably articulate, and reasonally informed.

Jane

I think that Erik and --k have it right between them: politicians are probably more impressed than they would like to admit, especially when people who actually go home and take ibuprofen show up, not just the ones with sleeping bags, there for the good weed and folk singing, and not just the ones who are just one step away from marching and yelling for the cause of Free Zeepnortz on Planet Spung (and yelling to air, and thin Terrestrial air at that!).

And it seems as if marches fulfill part of the same need for meatspace reinforcement as conventions. It's not necessarily exclusive of getting down to the serious work of organizing for political change, whatever that is. If it's anything like pubbing your ish, then going to marches and demonstrations ought to be good for it.

A good chance to toss around some ideas for what to do next, politically, if nothing else. Or at least enjoy some beer and music and listen to other people toss ideas.

--k.: Sorry I misspelt your name before.

I really agree with Nathan's comments. I think the autonomic turn to rallies as the preferred central tool or tactic in political activism is reflective of the larger dependency of US progressives on the script of the 1960s. To some extent, left politics from the late 1970s till now has involved a re-enactment of 60s narratives, with very little thought about what goals rallies (and other tactics) are meant to achieve.

When David got of the train in Pleasantville Friday night, there was a family of antiwar protesters in the MetroNorth train station. I didn't see what their signs said, but there were grown-ups and small people holding signs. I think they were making a difference and I also think, even in this very republican upper middle-class place, that there is a fair amount of anti-war sentiment to be ignited.

Jane Yolen talks sense.

It isn't a matter of marching being an alternative to phone banking and door knocking. It's an alternative to doing nothing.

Nathan's hypothetical activism just won't happen. It's too hard to organize. It's too hard to get people to do, at least in the numbers a march can draw.

But you can put out the word and gather thousands for a march. And it has an effect.

I would contend it DRIVES polls, as people see on the evening news that they're not alone in their doubts about the razor-thin justification for this war. It becomes an acceptable position to hold.

Sheer numbers of bodies are convincing evidence that support for the war is anything but solid.

March on, people. It's having an effect.

Hey, Jane Yolen:
Terrific point. I suspect that an awful lot of anti-war folks, maybe a majority, couldn't really explain why they oppose the war in a concise, cohesive, convincing manner. That's not to insult them, by any means - I think most people across the political spectrum come to their political positions intuitively.
As to the effect of marches on the broader electorate, though, count me as a skeptic (with reservations) - if the Eric Altermans of the world are unimpressed, and even turned off by the rhetoric, what hope do marchers have of getting through to your ordinary apathetic Reagan Democrat?
People here have made excellent pro-march points - marches let people know they're not alone, they tell politicians the opposition is willing to march for hours on a cold day. But perhaps any such benefits are cancelled out by the negatives? Protests, in any form, remind many onlookers of the hippie radicals they've always hated. I once offered a guy a leaflet on East Timor, in the most friendly, polite, non-aggressive manner possible, only to have him tell me that tactics like mine where what got people angry.
This is compounded when you can't have a single stinkin' anti-war-in-Iraq rally without speakers shouting that Israel is racist, Bush is Hitler, the U.S. is a terrorist police state, free Vieques, U.S. out of Colombia, etc. etc. ad nauseum.
I know some people say Saturday's DC ralliers were predominantly normal-looking types ("Norms"), but the speakers I heard on C-span weren't, and I worry that most in-depth crowd analysis has been peacebloggers reassuring one another, not mainstream undecideds contemplating the movement.

If it were me running an organization which typically holds rallies/ protests for some political cause or another, I'd divide up my people-resources and have half of them do proselytizing and the other half do the demonstration/ rally. Isn't that what the civil rights movement did? And it was very effective, wasn't it?

Mary Kay--"Maybe, just maybe, we need people to do both."

That was in my first sentence. Yes, public protest can be an effective part of a strategy for political change. But only a part, and a smaller part than many US citizens think. We tend also to forget that the most effective public protests have been those when the protesters have something on the line; think of the freedom rides.

Jane Yolen--"The thing about marches--it is a good thing for folks who might not be able to otherwise articulate (beyond bumper stickers and sound bytes) why they are against or for something."

Sure. But if they want to win their fight they need to do something else as well.

I am coming to believe also that the lack of effective political representation of minority political viewpoints is part of why we have so much futile political activity in the USA. Seriously, in a parliamentary system some representative would have gotten up and spoken against war. As it is, there is no manuevering room for US legislators to take such positions--they will answer for any steps out of the majority line at the next election.

Getting time as speakers would be really great for "Norms," but the only way to get there is to keep showing up and doing work. Even if the Stalinist hierarchy doing the gruntwork of logistics won't let you up on the podium, you might get a few minutes on NPR or C-SPAN sounding rational, articulate, and plausible.

As to reasons for lack of support for this war, I think many Americans were cooling from their initial outrage and desire to employ massive force in a way that could bother their consciences later (e.g. flinching from images of the ground-level consequences of what they'd seen from the air on CNN during Operation Desert Storm, something we'll see repeated with ground-level images of civilians in Afghanistan, eventually) when the W administration started pushing for war on Iraq. For most Americans, grief over 9/11 is finite and the understanding that only by getting on with our lives do we thwart the intentions of the terrorists settles in. The issue isn't completely settled, though: folks just want to know that Osama bin Laden is dead, and that no other competent, rich, Saudi engineers have taken over his job.

So any basic drive to strike out in anger as part of national grief has pretty much petered out. Now we're down to issues of justice and punishment with a small number of people who apparently do not have the support of a national government. We expect that if ObL is still alive and writing letters, evidence of his continued life or death by some means other than deep cave collapse will be found.

What we are getting instead is this Iraq thing, and the only reason we are given to believe that there is a real issue there is that officials of the administration tell us that there is. They won't disclose anything about their sources of information, and that makes us deeply uneasy. We remember that even if we agreed with George W.'s expression of the National will in late 2001 and 2002, he's still a politician. Every time he does something about national policy he reminds us that he's a politician, and the tenor of his policy makes it clear that he's not our politician. Why should we trust him just on his word?

I believe that if verifiable details were released, if the US led UN inspection teams to the evidence that the current administration claims exist, most, if not all, serious domestic opposition to an invasion of Iraq would evapourate. (I'd still be against it, but I'm a pacifist.) I can understand that there are reasons to keep sources secret for as long as possible, but this particular secret seems liable to be a casualty of the war for hearts and minds on the homeland front.

Anyway, bottom line: anger for 9/11 is mostly aimed at ObL and his crew, along with anybody who knew about it ahead of time. Without anger for 9/11, enough Americans see Bush as a politician not to take his word for the existence of successful WMD programs in Iraq. Most are willing to postpone shooting Saddam Hussein until he actually draws, knowing that the USA could drop a few Neutron Bombs in Baghdad any time it really needed to.

Or maybe one level down from the bottom line: we don't like to see cops shooting people without a trial.

A slightly different take on what people should spend their time on when they don't go to rallies: talking one-on-one with their friends and relatives who disagree with them. I agree that letter-writing and telephone banks aren't that effective. But many of us have friends and relatives who support the WoT because, well, because. Spending just an hour with them can make them question that support and maybe even talk to their friends.

A lot of media (ie CNN) seem to be treating the war as inevitable and trying to minimize opposition -- perhaps because it brings better ratings?

As I see it, the (best? most efficient? most Machiavellian?) means of changing that coverage is to play on the media's terms. "Talking heads" is not an impressive photo op; a huge group of passionate bodies can be.

(add various caveats about yes, marching should not be the sole means of lobbying for change -- but it does serve a purpose.)

What cause--right, left, and none of the above--can't muster 30,000 people on the Mall with a bit of effort? Maybe NAMBLA or the Posse Comitatus would have a bit of trouble, but just about any other coherent social movement or group of activists could get that many passionate bodies out there and onto C-SPAN.

Which means that in some sense rallies have almost zero persuasive impact, which is one of Nathan Newman's key points. The only justification for them as persuasion would be to demonstrate the existence of a particular cause or movement against a persistent refusal by the mass media to represent the existence of a movement.

But much as anti-war crusaders of the moment like to moan about how the US media is deliberately suppressing evidence of their existence, in fact, the question of whether there is an anti-war movement and what that movement is or might become actually gets a lot of play in major media outlets and has for months. It certainly gets a lot of play in the blogosphere: people like Andrew Sullivan would rather rant about committed anti-war activists than deal with the objections of moderate securocrat pragmatists.

So the notion that rallies make press, and press intrinsically makes persuasive possibilities, unless the media "distorts" the rallies, is just more of the usual kind of alibi that activists right and left reach for when they find themselves in a distinct minority. "Almost everyone would agree with us except for the fact that our message is not allowed to reach them. If only we could communicate with everyone on our own terms, they would agree with us."

That's the problem in a nutshell. Persuasion is not about reaching people in your terms: it's about reaching people in THEIR terms. You want to make an anti-war movement bigger? Then you can't communicate in the privileged language of the sectarian left (old, new, post-Marxist, pomo, what have you).

You have to figure out where the trigger points for a wider American unease about the war are and find a way to speak about them that's intelligible--which also means suppressing a shitload of baggage that the left habitually carries into such an effort, baggage that come-one, come-all rallies typically spew all over the sidewalks and prop up for the cameras. It means leaving aside security blankets like raving about American imperialism and globalization and freeing Mumia and overthrowing heteronormativity, etc. Persuasion means embracing the legitimacy of the worldview and daily habitus of the people you hope to persuade, and speaking their language not out of vanguardist contempt but out of authentic belief that the way they live and think is legitimate in its own right. It might be that Ma and Pa Kettle aren't happy about a war that casts America as the aggressor, but they also believe that military responses to terrorism are legitimate. If you can't learn to go along with that distinction in order to make common cause with them, then don't dream that you're going to get them on your side. And a rally isn't going to be the vehicle by which you reach Ma and Pa Kettle.

There is one more purpose to rallies, implied by the name, and that's for groups who know they're not going to get any bigger or more persuasive or more important to get together for mutual comfort, to renew their spirit, knowing that they are a tiny minority who also believe in the rightness of their beliefs. If the antiwar movement can accept that, then rally cheerfully away.

Mike writes: The idea of democracy is that citizens can speak out and should be heard.

Two points:

1) What makes you think we live in a democracy?

2) It's easy to speak out. It's the "being heard" part which is hard. When someone doesn't want to listen, how do you make them hear you? A march isn't so effective when your targets leave town before you arrive.

Timothy, I think that Ma and Pa Kettle are too busy trying to survive living in the Home of the Future to be a significant demographic these days. And that's a rather insulting tag for average Americans, kind of a technocratic equivalent to lumpenproletariat.

Your last paragraph is also kind of insulting. Although the Right would like to keep people afraid and isolated and cowering by their televisions, getting out and seeing people with compatible mindsets is energizing, and the energy started at a march carries over into people's daily lives thereafter, if they have a good experience at the rally.

Marching, physical exercise together, both improves one's interpersonal persuasiveness later and improves mental state and "psychic energy," whatever that is. It's a lot softer than a weekend retreat with morning Tai Chi (or other mindful exercise) and policy workshops, but it works along similar lines.

If mass demonstrations are so passé, why do US political parties continue to hold rallies in the form of party conventions?

Mass gatherings aren't passe. And neither is Tai Chi in public spaces, which I hadn't realized the evil right wing is keep us away from. The reference to political conventions only confirms my point: conventions are valued as ritual and performance. Only in unusual circumstances do modern party conventions also serve as a possible vehicle for real politcal transformation.

Rallies and protests as the primary vehicle through which one pursues social change aren't passe either. They're just not effective at achieving social change unless the historical conjuncture is highly particular. They don't persuade anyone but the already persuaded.

I don't doubt that people come back from rallies feeling much better about themselves. I've felt the same after those I've attended. If that's the point, great. I hadn't noticed that most US progressives seem to be lacking in self-esteem or self-righteousness.

But the justification for political rallies usually is given as working towards social and political change. Achieving such change either involves mobilizing the largest possible coalition you can to demonstrate possible political power (either electoral or otherwise) or persuading many people to change their views. In either case, the hard labor involved is incremental. Rallies don't have much to do with it, and more often than not (as in the case of this last week's antiwar rallies) probably do more harm than good in pursuing either of those ends. The 1963 March on Washington didn't have a thousand circus-freak sideshows: it had a broad, inclusive message that was part of a focused political campaign with discrete goals.

I'm certainly not opposed to rallies. I mean how better to make your opponents take you seriously than to put a veritable army of folks on the front lawn?

The rallies would make a great first blow, but movements of this sort need an active political arm that works to affect changes in policy. Register voters! Print up voter guides! Vote! Vote! Vote! Prancing around on stilts with thousands of likeminded folks sure can be a pleasant way to pass the time, but it counts for naught if you didn't vote and you didn't try to get some of the fence sitters to vote, too.

Party conventions are a kind of political croney reward system. But they most resemble Amway events, only no-one is selling you the soap you'd need to wash away the dirty dirty bad bad feeling afterwards.

Someone very clever said that legislation and sausage are two things you never want to see made first hand, but I'd have to offer electoral politics as a nauseating third. It's one thing to be disappointed with the timbre and tone of it, but the maddening thing is the new depths plumbed every election cycle. Oog.

In summary, DIRECT POLITICAL ACTION should take precedent over RALLIES.

cheers,
Scott

Timothy, every political change starts at a small scale from people of like mind getting together and talking and, generally, marching. As far as I am concerned, the Nielsen Haydens and their sputniki are, as so many before them, their own small-scale political movement. By going to demos with fellow bloggers and other friends, they go through the kind of experience in which the seeds of new political thought takes root. Such experiences are far more meaningful to real political change than the same number of hours of working a phone bank for an existing, privileged party with which you have deep-rooted disagreements.

It might be that over time the folks who turned up in DC recently will decide that it was a mistake, that there energies really are better channelled by national-level party leadership. But insurgency turns up in the flesh and leaves footprints.

Some other parts of your comment seem a bit confused as to my intent. Sorry if my sloppy writing led you astray, but I meant to say several distinct things: that it is particularly in the interest of the Right to keep the citizenry from making a bigger target trusting each other, as they might then feel less need for policing; that marching and talking can work like Tai Chi sessions and structured discussions in a more fully developed political movement; and that political change at conventions happens at all is a sign that mass meetings can be useful in achieving political change not desired by party leadership.

I did NOT write that the political Right was either evil or out to ban Tai Chi in public spaces.

That you are only thinking of rallies in terms of their large scale manifestations, and only when they are successful, while I'm trying to discuss issues of the usefulness of rallies at everly level, seems like an honest disagreement, and I hope that you will accept my points.

You seem to have a lot of desire to believe that this recent rally was a failure, though, perhaps associated with your distaste for "US progressives." I'm a bit confused about why the lack of relevance you attribute to that rally under what you characterize as the "usual justifications" for rallies should be part of a response to my specific, and apparently unusual, justifications for attending a rally.

I also think that you somewhat miss my point about energy and attitude after a march or rally, too. Good old Ma and Pa Kettle probably want to hear about what the experience was like, since it's not the same old neighbourhood gossip. And they're actually canny enough to figure out that if they're only seeing the "freaks" on TV, somebody's choosing not show that their neighbours were there.

To the list of reasons to have attended the recent DC march I'd add, by the way, gaining experience in organizing people for and at rallies. If the Blogocratic Party is ever going to have any real meaning, it's going to need operatives who understand that stuff.

You have to be willing to go in and show your face if you're going to riot and disrupt lawful vote counting get anywhere in politics, and everybody starts somewhere.

It occurred to me this afternoon, that one thing desperately needed is an answer to ANSWER, which seems to me noxious. I don't know about you-folk, but I wouldn't want to be following them for an instant more than necessary. So that would be something worth doing that doesn't involve going door to door.

It is interesting that I don't even think seriously about organizing opposition to the Bushies in the framework of the US Democratic party; I'm not sure if that's just ignorance on my part, or valid intuition. Could an anti-war movement be organized as a wing of the current Democratic Party? What do more practical-minded sorts think?

One practical reason for attempting to pursue anti-war activism within the framework of the Democratic Party is because there aren't a whole lot of third party members of Congress, and flawed though our "representative" system may be, it still comes down to the fact that we are compelled to live by what those elected officials choose to do.

I was disappointed that the current administration seemed to hijack the issues of the most recent electoral season (you either wanted to bomb Saddam, or you were anti-American) and, as a whole, the Democratic party didn't seem to offer much of an alternative. Funny, I used to think that healthcare, education and unemployment rates were worthy of mention, but I guess not.

One tack is to try to convince Democratic leaders that invading Iraq is COUNTER to American interests, and that they should also start waving the flag of patriotism, since that seems to be the message envelope du jour.

Having said that, I think one would be more likely to succeed by initiating an anti-war movement from a coalition of external, non-party groups, then start lobbying the Dems to get on the wagon before it leaves without them.