Hi Foxy,

Absolutely, protests work but not all the time. The cause has to be a just one, and enough people have to be motivated to drive the protest foreword. The majority of protest are not the big news items of the day, but small local issues, covering everything from a bad planning decision to the destruction of a local native habitat.

The 'Usual Suspects' here have never been involved in protesting, so they would have no idea what success a protests can be. In my lifetime the big protest and most successful was the Vietnam War protests which began in the mid sixties, with a small band of very unpopular protesters acting in the face of strong community opposition and majority support for the war, particularly among Liberal voters. With years of condemnation, public opinion here and in America turned the tide and the murderous war was stopped. One satisfying and successful protest I took part in was the stopping of the closure of a local post office, sounds no big deal. Australia Post had made the decision to close the outlet. For most that was of no concern, but for a group of local pensioners and old folk, most likely Liberal voter, being in a strong liberal voting area, the PO meant a lot to them. When I turned up to the protest to lend support, I was confronted with placard waving old folks "Save Our Post Office", with local media coverage AP reversed its decision. If there had been no protest the branch would have closed, and most people would not have given it a second thought.

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Many call us Greens a protest party, true we are that, but we are also a progressive party, many of the unpopular issues we support today, become the social norms of tomorrow. Take gay marriage, it first became an open "issue" in the 1970's. At that time it had virtually zero support among the straight community, you would be lucky if 5% would agree to it, by the time it was passed into law at least 65% of the community supported it. It took years of "protest", and protest includes the articulation of the issue in a reasonable manor for public opinion to be swayed into supporting an issue. There is a time for the megaphone, and there is a time for reasoned debate.

Hi Paul,

The Brookings Institution in the United States tells
us that protesting is as important as voting.
And we've seen that recently with the stir that the
"Black Lives Matter" movement which took place as
a result of police action against black Americans
and resulted in "defund the police" as a rallying cry
demanding systemic reform.

Those demands have generated substantive policy change.
Both Democrats and Republicans have offered federal
legislation on police reform and across the nation local
municipal leaders are cutting bloated police budgets
and insisting on better training for police officers.

I've taken part in quite a few rallies in Melbourne
regarding independence for Lithuania. They were all
small and peaceful rallies that did not cause much of
a stir. However I remember the excitement when we
saw the "chain" of Baltic people with linked hands
across their countries protesting the Soviet occupation
"Ruskie Go Home!" And as history has shown - look at what
they achieved.

Protests aren't working in Palestine, most likely because they don't want a solution & Peace !

There are circumstances in which protests work. The thing governments are usually most concerned about is winning elections, so protests are effective if they can convince the government that a backflip is in its political interest.

Most corporations like to avoid bad publicity, so protests can be effective in getting them to do what needs to be done to avoid, or at least minimise, bad publicity.

A third way protests can work is by raising public awareness of issues. especially ones that are underreported.

However the majority of protests don't work.

Individual,

There are currently so many pro Palestinian
protests around the world, including here in
Australia - even people carrying signs like:
"Jews For Palestine", and -
"You don't need to be Muslim to stand up for Gaza.
You just need to be human."

Hi Aidan,

There are numerous examples of protests that have
(and do) work. Protests that have affected
substantive policy changes.