Many years ago, I formed the opinion that protests rarely accomplish anything useful. If the government has decided to pass a particular bill, build a dam, cut costs or whatever, people often respond by protesting. Usually, the bill is passed, the dam is built and costs are cut regardless. The way I see it, protesting gives people a chance to feel like they’ve done their part, while the government does what they wants anyway. From the perspective of the government, it’s useful to allow people to have a channel where they can safely vent their anger. If you make protests illegal, people will form a resistance and start a guerrilla war, and that never ends well.
There are notable exceptions too, so not all protests end up being useless. It’s just that the probabilities aren’t in our favor. You proposed other forms of political activism, and I totally agree.
To me, all of this is rather theoretical, because I’ve never actually participated in any of this. Instead, I’ve just observed these events from the outside, while you’ve seen it from the inside. I’m really curious to know if agree or disagree with these thoughts.
IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
Mass Protests in China (which were probably illegal btw) may have contributed in the CCP recinding the “Zero Covid” policy.
So maybe there were 99 other protests before that did nothing, but even if out of every 100 protests has one that did something, it’s still worth it.