At the New York Times researcher Zeynep Tufekci makes an interesting point: social media make large demonstrations much easier to organize than used to be the case. That in turn suggests that large demonstrations are not particularly good indicators of a movement’s strength and furthermore comparisons with past demonstrations are unreliable:
After studying protests over the last two decades, I have to deliver some bad news: In the digital age, the size of a protest is no longer a reliable indicator of a movement’s strength. Comparisons to the number of people in previous marches are especially misleading.
A protest does not have power just because many people get together in one place. Rather, a protest has power insofar as it signals the underlying capacity of the forces it represents.
Consider an analogy from the natural world: A gazelle will sometimes jump high in the air while grazing, apparently to no end — but it is actually signaling strength. “If I can jump this high,†it communicates to would-be predators, “I can also run very fast. Don’t bother with the chase.â€
Protesters are saying, in effect, “If we can pull this off, imagine what else we can do.â€
But it is much easier to pull off a large protest than it used to be. In the past, a big demonstration required months, if not years, of preparation. The planning for the March on Washington in August 1963, for example, started nine months earlier, in December 1962. The march drew a quarter of a million people, but it represented much more effort, commitment and preparation than would a protest of similar size today. Without Facebook, without Twitter, without email, without cellphones, without crowdfunding, the ability to organize such a march was a fair proxy for the strength and sophistication of the civil rights movement.
I’ve never thought particularly highly of demonstrations. They’re certainly no substitute for political organization. Maybe they’re useful in terms of blowing off steam but if your objective is to promote change you’ll need more than demonstrations.
Given that the protests were largely in big cities in blue states, it seems to me that the technology played a more defined role. The March on Washington involved bringing people, including celebrities, from across the country for a planned event. Larger numbers this month are from aggregating protests in cities across the country, with NY and LA having approximately the same number of protesters as DC. So technology has a specific role in allowing local protests to be arranged through local organizers with little national coordination. The lack of national though leaves the protests ill-defined, vulnerable to media coverage of the worst aspects and without strategy.
Nate Silver suggested that the geographic distribution was less than ideal; almost half of Clinton voters came from states Trump won, but 80% of the protests took place in states Clinton won. There were fewer protests in the Midwest than any other region.
Which tells us that people in California, New York, and DC are very, very opposed to Trump. I think we knew that
There were protests in small towns all across the United States. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/01/22/it-wasnt-just-liberal-enclaves-womens-marches-drew-surprising-numbers-in-red-states-and-small-towns-too/?utm_term=.f466c46a7444
In many cases the percentage of people marching approached fifty percent of the population. Obviously LA and NYC, having much larger populations provide the largest numbers, but pooh-poohing this as a coastal elite thing is simply not true.
Birmingham, Alabama (not exactly Berkeley or Madison) had 5000 people in the streets (according to their PD) out of a population of 200,000. The equivalent number for NYC (population 8.4 million) would be 210,000 protesters.
There are 20,000 students at UAB.
Or how about Longville, MN? Population 200. Marchers? 66. That’d be 2.7 million in New York.
Fargo, North Dakota, population 116,000, marchers, 3,000. The NYC equivalent would be over 200,000. And it’s cold in Fargo.
I could go on all day with these. Let’s not move to ‘alternative fact’ land. This was a huge series of marches. No, I don’t think it is a poll, just as I didn’t think Trump’s rallies were polls, but to dismiss this, when it started purely from the grassroots just the day after the election, and became a worldwide phenomenon involving millions, is wrong.
PD:
I’m sorry, do students not count? We should subtract them from all equations? How about coal miners, can we subtract them? How about the neo-Nazis and Klansmen who added to Trump’s turnout, can we dismiss them? Or are they real people as opposed to mere students.
No, michael you don’t count. I’m sick and tired of your vile commentary and resume to not reading any.
PD:
I’m sorry, did reality upset you? You want to rig the facts by dismissing students and then blow up when I point out the absurdity of writing off the people who will be living in this country long after you and I are dead?
1) The Women’s March was YUGE.
2) If The size of a demo doesn’t matter, I wonder why the Man-Baby won’t stop obsessing?
3) If it’s so easy to get people to come out, why couldn’t Trump get anyone to show up for his inauguration?
Michael,
Not speaking for PD, but my own view is that I don’t think his comment had anything to do with “facts” but with your combative and often insulting attitude. As a practical matter your debating method, which escalated significantly (in a bad way) in the last few months, diminishes the logic and seriousness of your arguments and positions.
It’s frankly a mental chore to disaggregate a valid point from the ugly packaging – online debate is difficult enough but it’s a chore when the other person acts like an asshole and surrounds otherwise cogent arguments with angry sarcasm and hyperbole. YMMV.