Why Showing Up Matters
I’ve participated in large protests and been annoyed by the ensuing coverage so many times I’ve had to get a mouthguard to stop me from grinding my teeth. In January of 2017, on the bus ride home from the D.C. Women’s March, I decided to cruise my phone for news. Sean Spicer’s epic hissy fit about Trump’s Inauguration Day crowd size stole a lot of our thunder, and most reports on the Woman’s March were ho-hum at best. It was pointless, some said. Sour grapes, many proclaimed. I soon found myself rolling my eyes as pundit after pundit asked, “What now?”
The critiques of last weekend’s Hands Off! protests are now pouring in, and I’m drinking from the same bitter cup of exhaustion, annoyance, and defensiveness once again.
Can we please, just for a moment, acknowledge what happened on Saturday? More than 1,400 rallies occurred across all fifty states protesting Trump’s executive overreach and tariffs, GOP policies aimed at gutting Medicaid and SNAP, and Elon Musk’s ubiquitous chainsaw. Early estimates put rally attendance in the millions. Like bigger than the Women’s March millions.
Let’s also take a hot second to appreciate the work of the thousands of organizers—folks from labor unions and the NAACP and MoveOn and 50501 and Indivisible—who devoted weeks of their blood, sweat, and tears to pull this off. And let’s also acknowledge the millions of citizens who hit the streets to make their dissent known, protestors who didn’t spread their feces inside the Capitol or beat police officers with an American flag or bring bear spray and zip ties just for funsies. These ordinary people simply showed up with handmade signs and peacefully assembled to exercise their first amendment rights, some for the very first time.
Okay. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s examine three main criticisms that have bubbled up to the surface in the past few days.
#1) Where were all these people in November?
I love John Pavlovitz. As a former youth pastor, he was an initial critic of the first Trump administration and the disgusting rise of Christian nationalism that rode on its coattails. Initially a lone spiritual voice in the wilderness, he’s since put himself out there in ways many Americans would find uncomfortable. That’s why his post, Protests Won’t Save America, elicited some heavy sighs from me this morning. He writes:
“As I saw the video and photo updates roll in, I admit that the cynic in me wondered if all these people had shown up to the polls a few months ago where we might be—and where they might be a few days from now.”
I don’t know the number of Hands Off! protestors who didn’t vote. In fact, the people in my Philadelphia crowd were a politically active bunch. And while I share Pavlovitz’s lament about how we got here in the first place, I wonder, would we rather they had stayed home? If 1,000 non-voters showed up to a rally, what is more important at this moment? To tell them it’s all their fault or to get them registered to vote, engage with them on the issues, and welcome them into our tent?
Pavlovitz then posed the burning question, the same question asked after the Women’s March, the March for Our Lives, and countless others.
“Will they be found in the painful trenches of transformation or will they have felt they checked activism off of their lists?”
In other words, is this a movement or only a moment?
If my experience in organizing is any indication, the answer is no. Many will not join us in the painful trenches of transformation. Some will fall away once they’ve vented their frustration. Some will peel off after they experience a few frustrating attempts to find a like-minded activist community. Some will leave because they didn’t realize they’d have to give up their time and energy. Some will trip over their own egos.
The late activist and talk radio legend Joe Madison would often say, “The difference between a moment and a movement is sacrifice. Some of us aren't willing to sacrifice, so we rely on others to do so.”
Some people will not be willing or able to make the sacrifices that change requires. Others will discover that they are warriors. Treasure these new people. We need every warrior we can get right now.
#2) Protests accomplish nothing and certainly won’t save us
In the forty-eight hours since the Hands Off! Rallies, I’ve heard this uttered too many times to count. To which I reply: Of course protests alone won’t save America, but there is also compelling evidence from Harvard researcher Erica Chenoweth that nonviolent protests are twice as successful as violent ones, and if the nonviolent protests achieve a 3.5% engagement rate from the general population, they often achieve real transformative change.
Surprising, isn’t it? I was surprised, too.
There are also other benefits to mass protests:
Protests get people activated and build momentum. While some rallygoers attend simply to vent their frustration, a percentage of those protesters do stay engaged and become involved in their community.
Protests generate media images and coverage that spread the message and spark further actions. A 2020 study by Stephanie Geise, Diana Panke, and Axel Heck found that “media images are efficient carriers of political content that can motivate citizens.”
Protests demonstrate to public officials what their constituents are thinking and feeling, and according to a study by the American Sociological Association, can have a real effect on their opinions. Yes, there’s evidence that protests can indeed sway our elected officials.
Will one day of action save us? No. Will it plant a thousand seeds for change? Perhaps.
#3) Don’t expect bouncy houses at your anti-fascism rally
The most searing criticism I’ve read about the nationwide protests comes from activist and author Ally Henny. In a Facebook post, she writes:
“Black kids were out here marching in the 1960s and getting water hoses turned on them, but Becky from the suburbs wants bouncy houses at her local anti-fascism protest. This is why Black folk don’t take y’all (people of pallor) seriously, and why a lot of us kept our Black behinds in the house this weekend. Because when the chips are down, a lot of y’all want comfort and convenience and don’t want to show up when the going gets tough.”
Ms. Henny is 100% on point. And before you start arguing #NotAllWhiteWomen or #NotABecky, please just sit with her message and meditate on it for a while.
Here’s a bit of unsolicited advice for members of my own demographic, white women: Ladies, we must learn to leave our comfort and convenience behind, whether that involves hopping on public transportation to attend a rally, hitting the streets despite fears for our personal safety, doing our homework instead of asking to be spoon-fed information, or refusing to retreat to the safety of suburban enclaves when things get dicey. It also means not expecting applause for doing the work.
The work of real change is messy, scary, exhausting, and frustrating, and none of us know if our efforts will succeed. Let’s keep showing up anyway. Despite the cynicism and criticism and failure to meet every shining ideal, let’s keep fighting for something better while we still can.