Who Do Protesters Keep Undermining The Cause?

[kpominville]

I admire and applaud all the people who protested Bush at Monticello, but the one image that undermined the whole thing and that I keep seeing the media and critics on the right pointing to is the one guy who was dressed like Uncle Sam reminiscent of Carl Weathers in Rocky.

Why do people keep doing that at protests? Who thought that was a good idea?

In David Sirota's new book, The Uprising, he makes a very good point about the public protest movement and some of the things they do that hurt their message and their causes. He talks about the WTO protests in 1999 and the antiwar protests before and after the Iraq invasion and how fringe elements were used by the media to frame the entire story to the public. He also talks about the use of protest as an instrument of power and how it can be used most effectively. Yes, protest is mostly theater, but the point of that particular theater is to make the audience empathize with the protesters and I am sorry but nobody is going to empathize with a guy dressed in a gaudy Uncle Sam costume. Quite the opposite. It made many in the audience empathize with the people in the audience who yelled back at the guy to shut up and sit down.

The most effective protests in modern times have been the civil rights protests and if you watch films of those you will notice something about them... all the protesters are dressed in normal clothes. Many of them are even dressed up in suits, like Dr. King usually was. You don't see anybody on stilts. You don't see anybody naked and you don't see anybody dressed up as a gaudy clown version of Uncle Sam.

The leaders of the public protest movement would do themselves a favor by distancing themselves from the most fringe elements that only tarnish their credibility and by adopting a much more mainstream look. The Average American is going to have an easier time identifying with protesters yelling "War Criminal" and "Impeach" when they look like the average American than when they look like performers in costumes.

[aspergris]

1. GREAT point

"The most effective protests in modern times have been the civil rights protests and if you watch films of those you will notice something about them... all the protesters are dressed in normal clothes. Many of them are even dressed up in suits, like Dr. King usually was. You don't see anybody on stilts. You don't see anybody naked and you don't see anybody dressed up as a gaudy clown version of Uncle Sam. "

This is so true. There is such a thing a dignity, decorum, etc.

Compare the dignity of King et al. to the (to a large extent) MORONS I saw at WTO protests in Seattle. Besides the vandalism aspects, it was all about vanity (look at me ! look at me!!), and not about the issues.

I don't recall seeing ANY protestors in a suit. I realize that in Seattle, wearing socks is considered 'dressing up'... but still

[cliffordu]

6. Fashion police right here on DU.

Whattaya know.

I wore my combat fatigues when I went to the barracades in 1970 and 71.

I guess my lack of decorum would merit your comment, eh?

[John Q. Citizen]

2. Actually, the Act up protests of the late 80's early 90's were, pound for pound, probably the most

effective protests I've ever seen.

One prop that did help the civil rights protesters were the police dogs ripping on human flesh and the cops beating brains in.
Now they have tear gas and tazers.

I won't say your analysis is wrong, but I will say, if you can do it better, then please get up and out and do it better.

[kpominville]

3. Homosexuals still can't serve openly in the Military

So how were the Act Up protests more successful than the civil rights protests?

"Don't ask, don't tell" doesn't strike me as a huge victory for equal rights. That's right up there with "Seperate but equal" as far as I'm concerned.

[John Q. Citizen]

4. Well for one thing their issue was AIDS awareness, education, and action.

They were a very small group of dedicated activists who moved mountains to mobilize the country to take action.

I'm a straight man, and so is my father. But he was the person who pointed this out to me, that Act Up was a major force for such a numerically small group of people.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. Part of the problem is news coverage

I wasn't at the 1999 WTO protests, but I know people who were.

We all remember the pictures of the black-hooded "anarchists" smashing windows in downtown Seattle.

What we did NOT see, for the most part, was the entirely PEACEFUL parade of 15,000 people, including unionists, religious activists, and students, just a few blocks away.

I had a personal experience with biased news coverage during that period. I attended a protest in Portland to coincide with the WTO talks in Quebec, and another middle-aged woman came up to me and said, "Look, they're photographing the kids with the green hair."

Sure enough, reporters from a local TV station were interviewing the most outlandish-looking young people they could find to represent the protesters.

We walked up to the reporters and confronted them, pointing out that the punk-looking kids were no more than a tiny percentage of the protesters and that most were just ordinary people.

One of the reporters agreed to interview us and ask why we were there. I made a point of saying that the age of the protesters ranged from children to eighty-year-olds, and that we thought that the WTO was more concerned about the corporations than about ordinary people The other woman said that she was a teacher and that may of her students were affected by their parents' losing their jobs.