Why We March

It isn't because we think the demonstration is going to accomplish anything. It's because it enables folks of like mind to organize.

No organizers worth their mettle believe that getting people to march together and chant will immediately lead the powers that be to meet all their demands. Rather, the goal is to create an event in which people who are outraged can gather together. Within that space, connections are made, new ideas are tested, and the infrastructure for political action gets built. The street doesn’t always have to be a place to list demands for instant change. The Floyd protests, for example, led to a boost in voter registration for Democrats. The point is the people.

.If you want another example of what long-term activism can yield, consider that the fight to overturn Roe v. Wade took 50 years of dedicated organizing. 

[ed. just like the original fight for abortion rights did. And perhaps the next fight will.]

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, for example, didn’t ascend the ranks of the conservative judiciary through the traditional pathway of Ivy League schools. Instead, according to Margaret Talbot’s profile in The New Yorker, Barrett’s nomination can be attributed to the way she appealed to religious activists who had expanded their power in the conservative legal movement.

I have reported on protests from Ferguson to Standing Rock to the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye of South Korea. I have attended small conservative meet-ups, sat with anti-affirmative-action legal activists and met with private citizens who round up large sums of money for right-wing causes. All this has convinced me of one thing: Those on the right are better at organizing than the left. They seem to believe much more in its power than their counterparts on the other side.

This doesn’t mean the left doesn’t have organizational might. The millions who showed up for the Floyd protests are testament to that. What progressives lack is institutional support and elected officials who turn that energy into policy.

When faced with mass demonstrations from progressives, they pass anti-protest laws to suppress the right to organize. This shows an abiding belief in the potential power of public dissent; you don’t make it harder for people to protest in the streets because you think the whole thing is silly and pointless. You make it harder because you actually respect its power.

The Democratic establishment’s response to progressive demonstrations, in contrast, is to pat the protesters on the head and then, when the streets have cleared, blame them for the party’s failures. This week, Tim Ryan, the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate seat in Ohio, released an ad. He opens by saying, “Defunding the police is way off the mark” — choosing to define himself by disparaging activists who have barely been seen by a television camera since the end of 2020. In these moments, it feels as if nobody in America hates the idea of protest more than establishment liberal politicians.

And yet the future of reproductive rights will likely rely on the willingness of those liberal politicians to stand with the thousands, likely millions, who will head to the barricades. It will be on them to find a solution that represents the 62 percent of Americans who do not want to see Roe overturned.

The answers will likely be found at demonstrations and in organizing meetings. There is no clear path toward a legislative restoration of abortion rights, no politician who can be the white knight, and solutions like court packing and abolishing the filibuster seem impossible. That’s precisely why people need to take to the streets.

It is no small thing for people to leave their homes to protest an injustice. The thousands who show up to these protests should be applauded for what is fundamentally a patriotic and hallowed act. Now is not the time to worry about the expected value one expects to receive in return for a day spent at the barricades.

they should echo the sentiment of something I heard an organizer in Oakland, Calif., say once, something I’ve written about before and a refrain that plays in my head on repeat every time I see people on a picket line: “There is no such thing as a good protester or a bad protester. The good protester is the one who shows up.”