Do Protests Matter?

In his New York Times article “How Much Do Protests Matter? A Freakonomics Quorum,” Stephen J. Dubner asks “beyond the media attention they inevitably garner, what do protests actually accomplish?”  Six experts whose work is related to the issue of protests responded to Dubner’s question. Howard Zinn writes that “testing is always a gamble, but one worth taking, because if you don’t take the risk, you will be stuck with the status quo.”  One of the powers demonstrators have, David S. Meyer adds, is to “signal to other citizens who might share their views that they are not alone, that things could be otherwise, and that they might be able to do something about it.”  According to Juan E. Méndez, “for the billions of powerless in today’s world, protest is the only way to have their voices heard.”  Méndez believes protests, when they “intelligently combine speech with action and a genuine attempt to persuade rather than simply antagonize . . . will continue to be a viable, indispensable ingredient of democracy for generations to come.”  Donna Lieberman goes even further, stating that “peacefully gathering to speak out for change is one of the most patriotic things we can do.”  The article ends with Lieberman’s response to Dubner’s question: “So does protest matter?  Few things matter more.”