I've been wondering, where *does* this idea come from that you need to show up with thousands of people for a protest to be 'meaningful' or 'effective'?
You only need a handful of people (like, under 100) to cause unrelenting havoc for a long time and force an organization's hand through direct action.
But to make a significant difference in an election, voting-wise, you need *way more* than a few thousand people, to do it reliably (and it must be reliable, because that's the threat underpinning the protest).
So then what strategy for change does this idea of "thousands of people protesting" serve, exactly?
*Does* it actually serve anyone's strategy?
@joepie91 Every time there's something to protest, there's plenty of people around who either benefit from the status quo, or don't like the idea of protests, and they will work hard if they have to to find pretexts for dismissing the protest.
"But it was such a small crowd!" is usually one of the first of these pretexts to come up. If the crowd is huge, they'll have to work harder.
@riley I can see that dynamic happening, but it seems to still leave the question of "which strategy does this serve" unanswered.
What is the value in trying to pacify these people who have already decided that they will not take the protest (or problem) seriously anyway? What is the envisioned outcome of doing so?
@joepie91 They aren't necessarily trying to pacify them. It may be the goal, but oftentimes, the dismissal is just a psychological defence mechanism, such as greedy people not wanting to admit to themselves that they have been so greedy it's kind of naughty. Unfortunately, even without active pacification, this kind of sloppy thinking can leak into deciding whether news covers a protest.
https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/download/5796/2886