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Protest and Protest Movements
by David O.
Political protest, whether with an aim toward raising social
consciousness within the broad public orwith that of challenging
authority in the hopes of pressuring power to concede to demand,
sometimes
(though by no means always) occurs within the framework of a
wider protest movement. Unlike
specific protest actions, the tactics employed in their
manifestation and the strategies which underpinthe wider framework
of these tactics, protest movements, as any other social movement
are
considerably less centralized and arguably less able to be
contained or controlled. It is primarily
through the autonomy of the constituent parts of any social
movement that it takes hold in the heartsand minds of those who
identify with the movement in question. There exists in any social
movement
something of a cultural semantic dissonance on the part of the
multivariate constituents of a given
social movement at a given time. While this dissonance is
crucial to the mass appeal of a movement, it
may only facilitate the social movement toward and up until the
point where break downs occur in theperceived efficacy, commitment
and momentum of the movement in question.
Political protest is by its very definition, extra-systemic
political activity which aims to address
a social grievance through presenting a challenge to culturally
accepted forms of authority. Thischallenge may aim at raising
social awareness to a particular social issue to the end of putting
that issue
on the political agenda of the day, as James M. Jasper holds, or
it may aim toward directly challenging
political authority in a disruptive manner to the end of
pressuring political power to concede todemand, as suggests Francis
Fox Piven. In either case, political protest seeks to challenge
culturally
accepted norms as a matter of course. This is not so simple a
task as it seems, the hegemonic strains of
social pressure which bind the fabric of social norms in place
in any society are very strong. Certainly,the institutionalization
of cultural habit handed down through a culture's history manifests
itself in such
broad and pervasive social forums as politics, economics, the
military, religion, education and familial
kinship ties. What's more, those institutional forces which
acquire hegemonic force over and above all
other social forces actively seek to retain their hegemony
through the activity of those individuals andgroups within society
who actively benefit from it. Given such a social condition, the
effectiveness of
political protest can only be marginal without being engaged in
continuously and in a multitude of
ways through mass participation on the part of a wide and
diverse segment of the public.This is the Central feature of a
protest movement. A protest movement extends across a broad
spectrum of societal elements, each motivated for somewhat
different reasons. The content or cohesion
of these reasons is not immediately pertinent to the efficacy of
the movement but the perception ofefficacy certainly plays a key
role in the maintenance of the movement. The movement to
abolish
slavery in the United States, for instance, took on ethical
dimensions shaped by religion, and general
ethical politics and saw its aims ultimately accomplished due to
matters of military sensibility. The civil
rights movement of the 20th century took on many forms and many
tactical and strategicmanifestations, from those put forth by
Martin Luther King Jr. and southern black Christians to those
of
Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam, from those of black and white
northerners who mounted a
campaign to travel to the south and directly confront southern
racism through the freedom rides to themany people who participated
in the Race riots of the 1960s which lead directly to the drafting
of the
1964 Civil Rights Bill. The Second wave of the Women's
Liberation movement in the United states had
a similarly mass appeal to women pushing for changes in
political, economic, educational and familialinstitutions through a
myriad of tactical and strategic approaches. In each of these
cases, the appeals of
the movement were at no point controlled or constrained by the
ideals or ideologies of any segment of
the movement. Conversely, the efficacy of the general cause was
felt across all ideations and ideologiesof the individuals and
groups of which these movements were comprised.
A more general feature distinguishing political protests from
the broader movements which
contextualize and inspire them lay in factors of commitment and
momentum. For a movement, long
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term commitment of a mass of participants is crucial. Even if
participants come into and out of the
political fold over time, the ability for a political movement
to continually revitalize itself over time is
the key to its ability to progress against the cultural norms
which it seeks to challenge. In the context of
political protest, this becomes less immediately important.
While numbers are key to the efficacy ofcertain political tactics,
it takes considerably less personal and collective fortitude to
stay committed to
an individual protest action as it is manifest in a single
instance. A day of marching is nothing
compared to a lifetime of behavioral change. As a requirement
for success, momentum lay almostcompletely in the realm of movement
focused activism.
Ultimately, social change is a complex and often difficult game
to play. Through effort over
time, the relative powerless within any society may attempt to
do so by way of extra-systemic methods.These methods may take on
any number of tactical and strategic approaches to reach their
ends. These
tactics and strategies, however, are most effective when they
are engaged in and developed
autonomously by many different groups of individuals from
broadly diverse segments of society,
bearing broadly diverse ideas and beliefs, uniting under an
identity held together by a broad andgeneral goal. That is the
point of protest movements and their success (to what degree they
are
successful) is often determined by this fact.
