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on parades and protests

by yaman salahi

There was a time in American history when protests were not tolerated by those in power. We need only look back at the civil rights era to find the authorities violently repressing protestors calling for social equality and an end to the war in Vietnam, in the same way that similarly organic protests continue to be put down in other parts of the world today.At that time, protests were a genuine and effective way to oppose government policy because they were at once outside of the prevailing political system, and at the same time opposed to it.

This is no longer the case in America. The “protest” is more commonplace than ever, but it is rarely effective. If we have learned anything from ANSWER’s record in the last several years, it is that The Biggest And Loudest Protest In History is not the answer. The traditional protest has lots its effect and as such does not pose a threat whatsoever to the prevailing institutions we seek to replace.

The root of the problem is that our concept of the protest has shifted from one of confrontation to one of self-gratification. We kindly acquiesce to police officers who ask us to move our “protests” outside of the flow of traffic, as if we as protestors were actors on a stage, in a show that can be moved from venue to venue. In describing our protests, we say that we only want to be heard, we simply want those in charge to pay attention to us. We assume that those higher than us actually want to hear us, and that it is just a matter of connecting with them, as if we were merely having communication problems.

But that is not what the protest is for. “We want to be heard” is a justifiable sentiment, but not if it is confused as the purpose of the protest. The protest of “we want to be heard” is nothing more than an expression of an opinion, a visual and physical manifestation of the newspaper editorial. It is as easy to ignore that kind of protest as it is to throw out the papers.


If we consider the circumstances surrounding this particular sort of “protest,” it should not be so difficult to understand the weakness that has allowed government policy, from Iraq to Afghanistan, to continue unimpeded despite large and frequent “protests” throughout the country and despite polls clearly indicating that at least two-thirds of the American public favor an immediate change in policy.

the protest in politics

What kind of protests do our politicians believe in? Democratic Congressman Mark Udall’s office was occupied by a Colorado activist named Carolyn Bruinski, who was later arrested and sentenced to one month in prison.

Udall explained that the reason Bruinski was arrested was that her actions “had the effect of interfering with the daily duties of [his] staff.”

Strangely, Udall emphasized that despite supporting Bruinski’s arrest, he still believed that people had a right to “protest.”

How long will it take before protests are understood in our political parlance to be actions of interference rather than mere newspapers with legs?

In many cases, these “protests” occur only with permits from city officials. Sometimes money has been exchanged so that the city can cordon off several blocks for the demonstrators’ use. One might think, with all the collaboration that these protests require with the authorities, that we are actually preparing for the Rose Parade. But, no, these are “protests” in which we submit to the rules of the authorities, in effect allowing the very system that we presume to oppose to orchestrate them.

Protests may have the potential to force change--but parades certainly do not. How absurd it is for protestors seeking to overturn a political system to work with the approval and cooperation of that same slow, corrupt, and incapable system! And yet, this impossibility eludes us because we have forgotten the purpose of the protest in the first place, and did not notice that it stopped serving this purpose as soon as it became the parade. Even worse, in parading, we think we are protesting, while those who should be responding continue to ignore us: yet we manage to walk away with a sense of accomplishment and self-importance, when we have done nothing but reassure our own image of ourselves.

While one effect of the protest is to serve as a display of numbers, to signify a presence to the powers that be and to inspire others to become a part of that presence, it is certainly not its purpose. That task can be served by editorials. If we lived in a genuinely democratic system, we would need to look no further: but recent events should lead us to question just how effective our democracy is in carrying out the will of the people in the first place.

The defining purpose of the protest is to halt the system, however temporarily. Presuming that the law is unjust, it breaks the law for justice, forbidding the system from operating uninterrupted. This is civil disobedience, the act of breaking minor rules about law and order in order to demand that we be recognized and acknowledged and our grievances addressed: in other words, to bring the system that controls us under our control. When we protest we say: you cannot roll us up and throw us out like the opinion section.

If we wish to make our efforts effective, then we must engage in this type of non-violent civil disobedience. No doubt, this will put us at odds with the authorities: but are we not already at odds with them? Do we not already find ourselves increasingly in a position of weakness and subjugation to them, even a position wherein we feel threatened if we do not actively cooperate with them on trivial matters? What do we do when we comply with rules and orders regarding when, where, and how we are allowed to protest, besides dull the only blade we wield?

If we want to see decisive and democratic action regarding the brutal wars that our government is conducting abroad and at home, then we must act, and we must act outside of the framework that has been set up by the very same people who give the orders for bombs to be dropped in Baghdad, Kabul, Beirut, and Gaza.

In doing so we must recognize that while we are acting specifically in opposition to these reckless and corrupt military adventures, we are also acting more generally to reassert our right and duty to control the government and its behavior. Much remains to be fixed in a system that allows unrepresentative presidents to wage war, undemocratically subverting the citizens and their authority. Today the government is not of the people, but independent of them. The struggle to fix these structural flaws is inseparable from the anti-war elements of our protests.

To achieve these things we must give up the parade and revive the protest. I wrote that there was a time that protests were not tolerated in America. That is still the case. We may parade around freely, but we still cannot protest. In doing what needs to be done we may end up in handcuffs. But at least we will not end up in uniforms fighting exploitative and unjust wars, or supporting the softer side of empire from the comfort of our cubicles and living rooms.


Yaman Salahi is a third-year undergraduate student at UC Berkeley. He blogs at www.yamansalahi.com.