Lifelong activist Emily Levy made a short video outlining 10 reasons why protests matter. In less than 15 minutes, she explores these benefits of participating in protests. Protests:

  1. Raise the cost to politicians of doing the wrong thing
  2. Heighten awareness both of the issue and that the issue has a constituency of people who care about it enough to take time out of their day
  3. Build momentum toward change, even systemic change (she notes Erica Chenoweth’s research that shows that a government will crumble if just 3-1/2 percent of the population engages in nonviolent resistance)
  4. Help participants feel less isolated
  5. Inspire others to show up, especially if you carry signs about why you’re marching
  6. Provide cathartic release: what she calls “a national scream”
  7. Create opportunities to get involved with organizations working on causes that matter to you
  8. Offers a voice to oppressed and powerless groups that would risk to much if they were actively protesting
  9. Allow even very small numbers to bear witness (I personally have conducted some one-person protests, so this resonates deeply with me)
  10. Facilitate ways to harness your skills, beliefs, and connections to make bigger and more lasting change

It’s a great list, but it’s only the beginning. Here are ten more that I came up with very quickly. I’d love you to add to the list as well:

1) Sometimes, demonstrations and protests actually change things. A few among many examples:
• The 1963 civil rights March on Washington (the “I Have a Dream” march, which my late mother attended)
• 1977’s occupation of the Seabrook nuclear plant construction site, which birthed the modern US safe energy movement. I participated, and I wrote extensively about HOW this action changed the world (that link takes you to part 1 of a 5-part series I wrote about it, and each one links to the next installment at the end)
• Arab Spring brought down multiple repressive governments within just a few months
• The Save the Mountain movement I co-founded resulted in thirteen months of continuous public opposition to a development project–and succeeded! I expected to win, but even I thought it would take five years.
2) Not only do protests show the demonstrators we are not alone, but it emboldens sympathizers who have not taken action before to do so.
3) We don’t always know the effects of our actions in influencing others until afterwards–but later we may have found that we created a shift in public opinion and in willingness to take action.
4) Demonstrations offer chances to learn about not-very-visible parts of your own community–some disenfranchised and needing to tell their stories, others doing great work but out of the limelight.
5) Protests reinforce the idea that powerful, well-thought-out nonviolent action can create sustained change.
6) Sometimes, amazing performers and speakers participate. I have heard John Lennon and Yoko Ono Lennon (several times), Paul Winter, Stevie Wonder, Holly Near, Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul & Mary, Orleans, Jackson Browne, and many others. I learned news and ideas from speakers that changed my way of thinking. In fact, at my very first peace demonstration on October 15, 1969, 12-year-old me heard a speaker say that the Vietnam war was undeclared. When I discovered he was correct, it changed my whole way of looking at the world and turned me into an activist–because everything I’d been led to believe about the US system of checks and balances came crashing down around me.
7) Participation is empowering! You know you’re working for peace, justice, a green planet, etc.–and you feel ready to take on the world.
8 ) You get to enjoy the creativity of signs, puppet shows, songs and chants, etc. that spotlight the issue of the day.
9) It’s a way to build your personal community. If you’ve been doing this a while, you get to catch up with your friends. If you’re new to protesting, you can make new friends.
10) More often than not, participating in a protest is actually fun.

While Emily wrote her list back in 2019, it’s all still not only true but relevant. A few things have changed, though–some good, some bad:

  • Dozens of new ways of protesting were invented or popularized during the pandemic, adding to more than 200 we already had
  • Repressive right-wing governments have been forced from power in countries such as the US and Brazil–but took or consolidated power in Israel, Hungary, Turkey, and India
  • Putin has started a criminal and brutal war against Ukraine
  • In the US, the ultra-right has taken over the Supreme Court and several state legislatures, catalyzing a whole new generation of activists–and in election after election, progressives are winning big in places they weren’t expected to
  • Black Lives Matter and reproductive rights protests reached critical mass
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Ten years ago, the United States began its illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq: an operation based on numerous lies, no real evidence, and a lot of testosterone.

Iraq, as we know now and strongly suspected then, had no connection with Al Quaida, nor did it have “Weapons of Mass Destruction.” It had a stable, if nasty, government. And it had the bad judgment to have a little war with the U.S. over Kuwait during the first Bush administration.

So George W. Bush and his minders decided to get even. And the United States became the “rouge state” that the Bush administration accused Iraq of being.

What did we accomplish with this shameful chapter in our history? Hundreds of thousands dead and injured and homeless, vicious acts by US troops and Blackwater mercenaries at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, and widespread enmity throughout the Arab world. Oh yes, and the worst kinds of extremist terrorists established a beachhead in places where they had never had strength before, including Iraq itself. And Iraq’s economy shattered. And the US economy—let’s remember that GW Bush inherited a SURPLUS from Bill Clinton—badly damaged.

A weak President Obama has brought us back into the company of nations, and partially rebuilt the US economy but has failed to reverse so many of the wretched Bush policies and has allowed the right-wing extremist fringe to frame and control the discourse.

To commemorate these ten years, MoveOn.org asked people to share one memory. Rather than focus on the negative, I wrote:

I remember the amazing demonstration in NYC just before the invasion that filled at least four wide avenues on the east side of Midtown Manhattan. I am guessing there were about two million of us, and the police wouldn’t even let people down to the low-number avenue (I think it was 1st Ave, near the UN) where the “official” rally was—so we spilled over and filled up 2nd, 3rd, and Lexington. The media only counted people on the official avenue, but those of us who were there know it was enormous–possibly the largest US peace demonstration in history.

Of course, it should not be a surprise that the mainstream media severely undercounted us. After all, Judith Miller of the New York Times and many other supposedly skilled journalists were cheerleading the run up to the war, neglecting their journalistic due diligence, and even firing those among them who dared to speak out (including Bill Moyers and Phil Donahue).

No more illegal, immoral wars!

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