Liese Schneider

Marches for change or good way to get rid of poster board?

Protests are meant to engage a larger, and maybe more complacent, part of a community in a cause. It's the simplest form of grassroots organizing. You're pissed off about something so you get a bunch of other people who are pissed off and you go to where the powers-that-be are, and you let them know y'all are pissed off. This is has been happening at NYU over the last couple of weeks.

I attended my share of protests in college, mostly in my enviro-defender suit, and they never left me satisfied. In fact, they made me feel isolated from the general public --and they definitely didn't stop the rollbacks. If we were lucky, we got a shout-out in the college paper. It felt like our protests were not accomplishing a large programmatic mission but served merely to flip the bird in the general direction of 'the man'.

My participation in the RNC protests and the UFPJ protests in February felt more like participating in my progressive civic duty rather then creating change. I was carrying on the mission my parents started in the 60's and I wouldn't let them down. But after my experiences in college, I became an only-big-and-important protest go-er.

In no way do I mean to liken my 12 person protest at the local gas station to the very real and important alliance these grad students are fighting to uphold. But, as a wise person once said, questioning tactics is always good. As a true believer in grassroots activism, I still have questions about their usefulness in modern day political action.

I think most would argue that protests have larger affects on smaller communities, i.e. students protesting bad university policy. But where do they fit in in the national debate? There was a surge of protests as the war started to escalate and in some of the country's liberal bastions you can still find that 7 person protest which makes you feel equally guilty and sympathetic. But the protests around the world have done little to reverse the policy of the Bush Administration to go into Iraq, not to mention, woman across the country are still in jeopardy of loosing the right to choose (maybe).

I wish the NYU grad students all the best but I wonder how else we (or they) could be organizing to enact some real change?

Liese Schneider: Author Bio | Other Posts
Posted at 7:00 AM, Dec 06, 2005 in Progressives
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