this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2024
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Politicians just ignore protests, especially if they're peaceful, so they don't directly cause change.
The purpose of a protest is to get media coverage for an issue, because that may convince viewers to vote a certain way. Those votes - or at least the threat of voting someone out of office - is what actually causes change.
Revolutions are a different story. They can change things much faster than voting, but they're volatile and can easily end up worse than before. The people leading a revolution are usually not the people you want to lead a revolution (e.g. the Jan 6 insurrection in the US).
Protests are don't do much if they don't carry revolutionary threat. The Civil Rights Movement only worked because there was genuine revolutionary pressure.
The civil rights movement worked, because the did "non violence" and got a bunch of pictures into the news, of them getting beaten. This lead to empathy and votes.
The revolution and violence part was something completely separate and on the whole mostly counterproductive/irrelevant.
This is ahistorical. The civil disobediance was extremely disruptive and errupted in riots regularly. This is coupled with the Black Panther Party practicing open millitancy. There was genuine threat to the status quo, and this forced concessions. It isn't a coincidence that the US state has attempted to whitewash MLK Jr.'s historical legacy.
The state did not bend merely because it was the right thing to do, they bent because if they did not, they standed to lose more.