Why we protest—and why it’s working
As I write this, it has been eleven months since October 7, 2023. The specter of the one-year anniversary of genocide looms near.
In my mind, I see the past year in layers, like rings on a tree. The early weeks of living every second on Twitter, writing excessively long tweets in an obsessive attempt to refute the false propaganda, waking up in the middle of the night and checking my phone in a panic to see if anything new had happened while I slept. The weeks when I would be washing the dishes or doing laundry and break down in sudden tears at the thought of this old Palestinian woman I once saw in a video, crying by the rubble. “I just want to go home.” She reminded me of my grandmother. Of all the videos I have seen this past year, all the indescribable pain, the blood, the wails, it was her who stayed with me. My grandmother; lost, thirsty, frail and covered in dust, crying for her old chair and her blanket.
I see week after week of rallies and protests, conferences and benefits. I see the weekend in January when I couldn’t sleep following the suspension of funds to UNRWA.
I see the time when I gradually stopped posting on Twitter.
In a way, it is like the stages of grief. Except in this case there is no room for acceptance.
At our highest point on November 11, there were an estimated million people on the streets of London marching for Palestine. A long time has passed since. In London, marches are still taking place every few weeks, and while they are still going strong, with at least a hundred thousand showing up every time, the numbers are dwindling.
My friends are tired and disheartened. Like the rings on a tree, the layers dry out and harden with time. On marches, someone or other would ask the inevitable question. “Do you think we’re making a difference?” Or, “What’s the point anymore?”
Palestinians are still being murdered in their hundreds and thousands every day. Most of Gaza is now destroyed, and Israel is now attacking the West Bank in a so-called ‘Gaza-style’ operation. Outside Palestine, governments and people continue to condone this crime. The UK is still arming Israel, the recent decision by the Labour government to suspend a small percentage of arms licenses notwithstanding. And while the Palestinian cause is making big wins worldwide, public opinion has not yet firmly shifted for Palestine in the US or Europe.
But to that inevitable question, I have one irrevocable answer. The protests are working.
There are two key points that we need to consider in order to fully understand just how successful the Palestine protests have been, and continue to be.
First, the aim of protest is not to have a million people out on the streets every time. The aim is not to win over the majority of the public either. We don’t simply protest in order to change the public opinion or endear the cause to people’s hearts. PR may be an important part of any protest movement, and a pro-Palestine voting majority would be an incredible advantage to have, but these things are not goals in and of themselves. In fact, most real change takes effect at the hands of a critical mass of people – a small but persistent section of society – without the need to mobilize the majority or appeal to their sensibilities. Issues of justice do not need to be popular or agreeable or easily-digestible. And victims of injustice do not need to be perfect or win the hearts of the masses.
The aim of protest is to create enough disruption for a long enough time and with enough consistency as to make it impossible for things to go on the way they are. We don’t protest to change the minds or the consciences of politicians—we protest until they see no other way but to change course, until changing course becomes the easier path for them, until they finally decide they need to make concessions.
These concessions will more often than not be small and seem inconsequential. They will rarely be the solution we are looking for. But what they will be is a point of origin to a ripple effect. They create small dents in the system. Systems of injustice don’t collapse overnight. Even the most radical revolutionary changes in history have had precursors that spanned several years before the critical event. The Russian revolution of 1905 may not have brought about the intended social and economic change. But its legacy of radical ideas and weakening the tsarist rule was what was needed to set the stage for the revolutions of 1917.
We want these concessions, no matter how large or small, not as a way of settling for less, but because they are the little fractures that compromise the structures of oppression, so that we can continue to deal bigger and bigger blows to them.
And these concessions will continue to happen, so long as we continue to protest. Protests are inconvenient and costly. By April 2024, Palestine protests in the UK had cost the government over £32 million. This was causing so much pain to the Tory government and strain on the police that government advisers suggested that the activists should cover the cost. (So much for free speech—I guess for some causes, the price of speech is £32 million.) But the point is that consistent disruption has given us the right to vote, the 8-hour workday, and the weekend, and it will continue to work as long as we continue to do it.
The Palestine movement has, in fact, had real success in changing in government and international policies. Today, 146 of the 193 UN member states recognize Palestine. Palestine now has a seat in the UN General Assembly. These are still concessions, not radical solutions. But they are large ones. Fractures of the more serious kind.
The second point to consider is the crucial importance of protest as a way for activists to meet and for activist groups to coalesce. On the streets, we get to know the people who care about the same things we do. And in that process, we learn from each other, we exchange ideas, we form groups, we learn to organize, we grow in our journey as activists. Listening to a speaker in a rally or a convention, you may learn something you didn’t know before, perhaps about a cause or struggle related to yours. I have learned so much from Black liberation movements and the advocacy of many Black thinkers for Palestine, from Angela Davis to Assata Shakur to James Baldwin. But I have also learned a lot from the Black struggle in and of itself. It has shaped a large part of my political education. Similarly, I like to think that the current Palestine movement is introducing many pro-Palestine activists to socialist ideas for the first time, expanding their political interests to include issues like capitalism, class, or climate change.
Protests also allow us to create networks of friendship. On the streets, I made more Palestinian and Jewish friends than I ever had before the war. When you have practicing Muslims, the Jewish bloc, Queers for Palestine, Marxists, trade unionists, and students marching together, many walls of prejudice and discomfort are broken and people are able to understand and appreciate rather than fear their differences.
Networks of influence are also forged. You may meet an activist who has a certain level of influence in a specific area that you don’t. And you may be able to offer help in a small but significant way to others.
The truth is, there are byproducts of protest that are as important as protest itself.
Protests that do not directly result in change create activists. And activists create change.
It is hard to overstate the sheer success of the Palestine movement in ways beyond simply influencing government policies. The Palestine movement is successful simply because it now exists in a specific manner and scale in which it didn’t before. It has shape, a vocabulary, a language of chants, faces, names, well-defined symbols. Colors, flags, fruits and fishnet patterns. It has etched itself into the public mind. These are incredible gains.
The anti-war movements of Vietnam and Iraq are the main arteries of the Palestine movement today. Without their legacy, it is hard to imagine the Palestine movement having the traction or influence it does now. In the same way, the Palestine movement today will create a generation of activists and political thinkers who will fuel and support movements to come.
I didn’t stop posting about Palestine because I’ve given up, or because I’m less determined. I stopped because we have reached the point where the most effective channels to talk about Palestine are now in real life. So much has been done to refute false information online. The truth is readily available. All that is left in that regard is to appeal to people’s conscience to find it. In the meantime, we do what we do best: we protest.
As I write this, it is September 2024. The next national march in London is taking place in a couple of weeks. I am not concerned about the number of people who will show up. I know it will be in the tens of thousands. I know it will be disruptive. And I know it will give birth to the people, the circumstances, the political thought, the final event that will liberate Palestine.
