• nednobbins@lemm.ee
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    10 days ago

    Maybe the point of the protest is to bring awareness to the public?

    Maybe. How useful is “awareness”?

    When I look at the biggest protests in the US there’s plenty of awareness about around all the biggest protests. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_protests_and_demonstrations_in_the_United_States_by_size

    Going down that list, it’s hard to find evidence that the awareness got us anywhere.

    1. George Floyd - We keep saying his name. Has there been any change in police violence or accountability?
    2. Earth day - We’ve been talking about this forever and we keep breaking records on extreme weather events.
    3. 2017 Women’s March - We just elected the chief pussy grabber.
    4. March for Our Lives - Guns are still everywhere.
    5. 2018 Women’s March - See number 3.
    6. RickyRenunicia - I have to pass on this one. I have no idea what the state of corruption in PR is.
    7. Great American Boycott - Democrats switched to agreeing with Republicans on immigration.
    8. LGB - You can reasonably argue that sexuality related rights have improved. It’s not clear that this protest was a particular catalyst for that. If we want to pin things on a single event, Stonewall probably had a bigger impact.
    9. Anti Nuclear - More countries than ever believe they need nukes to survive. We’re now unironically talking about the use of tactical nuclear weapons.
    10. Million Man March - See number 1

    I could go on, but the track record for the 10 biggest protests isn’t great.

      • nednobbins@lemm.ee
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        10 days ago

        It’s cute that you can call me names.

        Can you also articulate positive changes that have resulted from the 10 biggest protest?

        • capital_sniff@lemmy.world
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          10 days ago

          Women’s Suffrage was fairly significant and the Civil Rights movement also used protests. Then in the 2000s people rose up against the canceling of Firefly and demanded a movie as compensation. Serenity was that movie and it was awesome and it remains amazing.

          Finally, internationally one man named Gandhi used nonviolence to defeat the British empire.

          • the_crotch
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            9 days ago

            Then in the 2000s people rose up against the canceling of Firefly and demanded a movie as compensation

            lmao

          • nednobbins@lemm.ee
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            10 days ago

            Women’s Suffrage (and additional rights) and the Civil Rights movement both had many successes. They also used many tactics and strategies besides protests and that makes it hard to attribute their success to protests. That’s why I looked at the 10 largest protests in the US on Wikipedia. There’s obviously some subjectivity to which protests are the most salient but it’s fair to assume that a large number of those should actually be the most important protests. The fact that we didn’t see progress as a response to any of the biggest protests suggests that they don’t have much of an impact.

            I view the Firefly situation a bit differently too. We actually wanted them to bring Firefly back as a show. As near as I can tell Joss made the movie (which I agree was and still is awesome) because he loved the story and wanted to finish it. He may have been uplifted by the support of the fans but he didn’t give in to anyone’s demands. Fans kept badgering him to pick the series up after the movie and argued that the success of the movie proved that the series would make money but he told us that wasn’t possible because too many of the actors where on other projects. I have to admit that Summer Glau made a pretty good terminator.

            Ghandi is an interesting case. He also used many tactics and strategies beyond protest and he was dealing with a very different situation. Their oppressor was thousands of miles away and got a bit tied up with bigger problems. There is also a strong academic consensus that he likely delayed Indian independence.

        • LustyArgonian@lemmy.world
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          10 days ago

          It’s not me that needs to write that history essay, it’s you. I’m not doing your work for you. Try reading a book.