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WHY PROTESTS WORK  
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Mark Engler and Paul Engler
August 14, 2024
The Forge
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_ Even When Not Everybody Likes Them _

Woolsworth Lunch Counter Sit-in, State Archives of North Carolina

 

First in a two-part series explaining protests and polarization. This
first part breaks down why protests can be polarizing and how
movements can win in moments of polarization, the second part covers
what factors determine if a polarizing action will be successful.

Originally Published in Waging Nonviolence
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This spring, student encampments protesting Israel’s war on Gaza
spread across colleges throughout the United States, resulting in
campus lockdowns, occupied administrative buildings, canceled
graduation ceremonies and scores of arrests. But even before this
latest wave of action, we have witnessed in recent years a
proliferation of disruptive protest, spanning a wide range of social
movements.

A small sampling of activity since the start of 2023 could note that
animal rights advocates have disrupted the UK’s Grand National horse
race
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and Victoria Beckham’s fashion show
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abortion rights protesters have been sentenced for impeding the
proceedings of the U.S. Supreme Court
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striking dockworkers
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"upended operations at two of Canada's three busiest ports;" and
climate protesters have blocked access to oil and gas terminals
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chained themselves to aircraft gangways to prevent
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private jet sales, and spoken out forcefully at corporate shareholders
meetings
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Given the urgency of the challenges in our world, this wave of
disobedient and determined action should generally be regarded as a
positive development. Because it breaks the rhythms of orderly
business in society, forcing both the public and those in positions of
power to pay attention to issues of great importance that might
otherwise be downplayed or ignored, disruption is a vital tool of
civil resistance.

However, not all disruptive protests are created equal — and not all
are equally beneficial in advancing a cause. Some actions can win
popular support and lead to a snowball of escalating energy within a
movement. Others can drive away potential participants, repel
sympathizers and invite state repression. Put another way, some
actions lead to victory, while others trap activists into a cycle of
self-isolation and alienation from the wider public.

To be clear, in the face of injustice, action is preferable to
silence. At the same time, studying the dynamics of polarization can
help movement participants maximize their impact and prevent occasions
when protests backfire.

But before they can work on the skills needed to harness the power of
polarizing action, organizers must engage with more basic questions:
Why is polarization around specific issues even necessary? And how can
movements know when they are using it effectively

UNDERSTANDING HOW PROTESTS POLARIZE

The idea of an issue being polarized is most commonly talked about in
negative terms. But to the extent that polarization around an issue is
not present at a given time, it is not because difficult underlying
tensions do not exist, but rather because politicians sweep them under
the rug. They avoid them for fear of generating controversy that could
fracture the political coalitions that keep them in power. In an
interview discussing his 2020 book, “Why We're Polarized,” author
and _New York Times_ columnist Ezra Klein explained
[[link removed]] “the
alternative to polarization in political systems often isn’t
agreement or compromise or civility — it’s suppression. It’s
suppression of the things the political system doesn’t want to
face[.]”

Protest actions are polarizing. This means that they force people to
take sides on an issue. And, contrary to what some may think, that is
not a bad thing when it is used for progressive ends.

To take just one example, the civil rights movement was certainly
polarizing. But were we really better off living with widespread and
often bipartisan acceptance of Jim Crow segregation and the racist
terror used to enforce it? Likewise, defying prevalent homophobia and
affording equal marriage rights for LGBTQ couples involved
considerable controversy and required politicians to take stands that
most had long preferred to avoid — until social movements forced
them to change course.

Polarizing protest takes a suppressed and simmering issue and brings
it to a boil, moving it to the fore of public discussion and, at least
temporarily, placing its consideration above other disputes and
ordinary deliberations. As famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass
contended
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earnest struggle for progress is “exciting, agitating,
all-absorbing, and for the time being, [puts] all other tumults to
silence. It must do this or it does nothing.”

The polarization of an issue, in this respect, is both an inevitable
and necessary part of the process of social change. In the words
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of sociologist Frances Fox Piven, a preeminent theorist of disruptive
power, “[A]ll of our past experience argues that the mobilization of
collective defiance and the disruption it causes have always been
essential to the preservation of democracy.”

The point here is not that polarization is good in itself. In the
wrong hands, it can do great harm. For example, conservatives can
generate polarization in ways that set back social justice — like
when they employ racist and xenophobic tropes to effectively turn up
public anger against immigrants. But it is essential for progressive
movements to recognize that polarization is a force they can use as a
tool, rather than something that simply must be avoided.

Yet even once organizers grow comfortable with the idea that their
actions will be polarizing, crucial unanswered questions linger.
Making people take sides on an issue is one thing. Making sure they
take _your_ side — crafting protests that compel members of the
public to sympathize with and support a group’s cause, rather than
driving them into the arms of the disapproving opposition — is
another. So how, then, can movements do that?

Too often, observers and participants alike consider the success or
failure of protests to be mostly a matter of luck, resulting just from
historical conditions. Or, they look at protests only through a moral
lens, at which point the imperative to just “do something” or
“speak truth to power” replaces hard-headed analysis of the impact
of one’s actions. Yet those who wish to act more strategically can
find a large and growing pool of resources to help.

Social movement theorists and scholars of disruptive power, Piven
prominent
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among them, have analyzed how groups who may possess few conventional
resources and enjoy little influence in mainstream politics can
nevertheless leverage change through withdrawal of cooperation in
status quo systems. An entire field of “civil resistance
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in recent decades that employs both careful study of historical cases
and practical experimentation in dissent to discern key principles
that can be used by organizers. Still others have focused on
developing theories of narrative change
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story-based strategy [[link removed]], providing
insights and best practices related to the communicative properties of
protests.

FROM RADICAL FLANKS TO A BIRMINGHAM JAIL

The combined message of this varied collection of thinkers is that
there is a method to the apparent madness of collective mobilization.
Both through examining this scholarship and drawing from the wealth of
lived experience passed forward by on-the-ground activists, interested
practitioners can learn a lot about what tends to work when it comes
to polarizing protest, what tends not to, and why.

But the truth is, it’s complicated.

A safe rule of thumb for protesters is that, if they are acting
nonviolently in pursuit of a just goal, taking a stand is far better
than passivity or complacency. At the same time, in managing
polarization, there is always room for organizers to improve their
skills and refine their feel for shaping protest outcomes.

The dynamics of polarization remain complex for a variety of reasons.
For one, polarization works differently in the context of a short-term
electoral contest than in longer-term activist campaigns, the contours
of which we are focusing on here. Second, the good and bad effects of
controversial protest do not come as an either/or proposition.
Instead, positive and negative polarization occur at the same time.
Highly visible protests that draw in new sympathizers will
simultaneously drive away other people who are turned off by activist
tactics and demands. Thus, the White Citizens' Councils grew in the
South when the civil rights movement launched its most high-profile
campaigns, such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Because organizers cannot avoid polarization, both good and bad, their
goal must be to ensure that the positive results outweigh the
negative. They must use good judgment as they engage in a cost-benefit
analysis of any potential action.

One concept related to the positive and negative sides of polarization
is what social movement theorists call the “radical flank effect
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The idea here is that sometimes the presence of a more militant
faction within a movement — made of activists who deploy more
controversial, outsider tactics — can make the demands of mainstream
reformers appear more reasonable. Such radicals can advance the
ability of insiders to extract concessions from people in power, who
grow willing to negotiate with the “respectable” face of dissent
when confronted with the threat of a more impolite and uncompromising
alternative.

These outcomes are examples of positive
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those who study
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radical flanks point out
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behavior of a militant fringe is a double-edged sword. Negative
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effects occur when extreme actions undertaken by a group on a
movement’s margins—particularly actions that the public perceives
as violent—end up inviting overwhelming backlash, discrediting the
cause as a whole, and providing justification for the harsh repression
of even modest dissent. Like with polarization more generally, the
goal therefore must be to maximize positive flanks effects while
minimizing negative ones. And once again, this requires rejecting an
“anything goes” mentality and instead exercising both judgment and
discipline.

Another reason that polarization is complicated is that protests
prompt members of the public to polarize around several different
things at the same time. Distinct responses can be measured with
regard to how observers feel about the issue at hand, what they think
about the methods used by those carrying out the action, and how they
view the target of a protest. For example, it is possible that people
will say that they dislike a protest, but that the action will
nevertheless be successful in making them view the target of the
actions less favorably.

Another very common result is that, when asked about a demonstration
that makes news headlines, respondents will report sympathy for the
protesters’ demands, but they will express distaste for the tactics
deployed. They will see the activists themselves as too noisy,
impatient, and discourteous. This is an age-old dynamic, and one
addressed eloquently by Martin Luther King Jr. in his renowned 1963
“Letter from a Birmingham Jail
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This letter was written not as a response to racist opponents of the
movement, but rather to people who professed support for the cause
while criticizing demonstrations as "untimely” and deriding direct
action methods. “Frankly I have yet to engage in a direct action
campaign that was ‘well timed’ in the view of those who have not
suffered unduly from the disease of segregation,” King quipped. But
confronting these criticisms, he made the case for why the
movement’s campaigns were both necessary and effective.

For social movements, it is acceptable if mainstream observers dislike
the disruption and tension caused by protest, so long as support for
the underlying issue grows. When it comes to nonviolent resistance,
this is the case more often than not, which is why the taking of
collective action should be widely encouraged. That said, there are
times when a movement’s chosen tactics are so controversial and
despised that they overshadow any discussion of the cause itself.
Therefore, with all actions, organizers must weigh the relative
benefits of the polarization created against potential downsides.
Organizers must use any and all means at their disposal to measure
this response — whether formal polling data and focus groups, or
simple conversations that pay attention to the responses from
different groups of people, especially those outside their most
immediate circles.

THE SPECTRUM OF SUPPORT

Overall, the goal of the movement is to shift the “spectrum of
support” in its favor.

Many different organizing traditions have recognized that victory does
not come from total conversion of all constituencies, but rather
through making more qualified progress. In the labor movement it is
common to place workers in a given shop on a one-to-five scale, based
on their level of commitment to the union. “Ones” are strong
leaders who will convince other co-workers to vote yes for the union.
On the other side of the scale, “fives” are employees who are
resolutely anti-union and actively side with the boss. Everyone else
in the shop falls somewhere on the continuum between these extremes.

An organizer would not expect to win over everyone. But their job is
to at least partially move those who can be persuaded, and to minimize
the zeal and influence of those who cannot be swayed. The union must
work diligently to make indifferent “threes” into more supportive
“twos.” It must motivate existing “twos” to step up and become
more active leaders. And, finally, it must aim to dampen the negative
attitudes circulating among “fours,” convincing members of this
group to abstain from actively supporting the opposition if they
cannot be moved to defect entirely.

Coming from a different tradition, the spectrum of support —
sometimes called
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“spectrum of allies” and credited to Quaker organizer and activist
trainer George Lakey
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— provides a visual representation of the same principle. The
Momentum
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training community presents it this way:

For movements to win, they do not need to convince their worst enemies
to change. Instead, they win by turning neutrals into passive
supporters and turning passive sympathizers into active allies and
movement participants. Meanwhile, they should aim to whittle away at
ranks of the opposition — making them less resolute, active, and
committed, even if these people never move beyond being neutral at
best.

As 350.org [[link removed]] puts it
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news is that “in most social-change campaigns it is not necessary to
win over the opponent to your point of view. It is only necessary to
move the central pie wedges one step in your direction…. That means
our goal is not to convince the fossil fuel industry to end
themselves. Instead, it is moving the rest of the society to shut them
down.”

In the diagram above, the arrow shows the direction in which
organizers want people to move. In practice, however, they must accept
that there will be some motion each way. In the wake of polarizing
actions, it is not unusual for both the movement and the opposition to
grow: opponents may be able to rally die-hards to their side who feel
threatened by the issue at hand, as did the White Citizens’
Councils. Yet if, on the whole, organizers are moving greater numbers
toward their side, they can count themselves as making headway.

In short, polarization is a multifaceted equation — and only by
working hard to do the math can those who seek to use it get
continually better at improving their results.

AGAINST PROTEST SHAMING

In recent years, there has been considerable research published which
attempts to measure radical flank effects and track
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effects of movements. While there are limits to how much protest
impacts can be precisely quantified, the cumulative result of such
research, in the words of one literature review
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is to point to “strong evidence that protests or protest movements
can be effective in achieving their desired outcomes,” and that they
can produce “positive effects on public opinion, public discourse
and voting behavior.” Both the historical experience of organizers
and recent studies also provide backing
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for the idea that support for a movement’s issue can grow, even when
a majority of people do not particularly like the tactics being used.

Nevertheless, with each new wave of protest, there is inevitably a
rash of mainstream commentary about how protesters are naive and
likely to harm their cause. Certainly this is the case with this
spring’s pro-Palestinian student encampments, which elicited a raft
of “protest shaming” articles claiming
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that the occupations were counterproductive
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Often, those making such admonitions invoke an earlier age — such as
the 1960s civil rights movement — when protest was ostensibly more
dignified and effective. These overlook polls
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that showed
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how wide swaths of the public saw lunch counter sit-ins, “Freedom
Rides” to desegregate buses, and even the March on Washington as
being harmful to the winning of civil rights. Of course, all of these
actions are now considered hallowed landmarks in the struggle for
progress in the United States.

Because they appeal to public cynicism
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which remains very widespread, about the ability of protests to make a
difference at all, protest-shaming pundits can find fertile ground for
their arguments. However, their perspective is rarely based on a hard
evaluation of contemporary research or deep engagement with the
history of social movements. Most often, it results in bad advice:
Activists are told to work within establishment channels to pursue
change, to avoid controversy, and to be more patient with the system
— the same counsel King wrote of having received from erstwhile
allies many decades ago.

Instead of conforming to critics’ preferences and seeking to avoid
polarization altogether, movements do better to carefully study how
they can use it to their advantage. Understanding that both positive
and negative polarization occur at the same time means that protesters
can win, even when there is backlash. Understanding that a
movement’s cause may benefit, even when there is negative perception
of the tactics deployed, offers a critical distinction in measuring
success. And understanding the spectrum of support allows protesters
to gauge when, on balance, they are advancing and when they need to
reevaluate their actions.

Protest movements take a gamble when they unsettle the status quo. But
it is a risk worth taking. For it is only when movements appreciate
how polarization can be used as a tool that they are poised to make
their greatest gains.

Mark Engler is a writer based in Philadelphia and an editorial board
member at Dissent. He is the co-author, along with his brother, Paul
Engler, of This Is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the
Twenty-First Century (Nation Books)

Paul Engler is founding director of the Center for the Working Poor,
in Los Angeles, and a co-founder of the Momentum Training. He is the
co-author, along with his brother, Mark Engler, of This Is an
Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century

The mission of _The Forge _is to elevate the strategy and practice of
organizing through the sharing of ideas, methods, history, and
inspiration, and by building connection and community among organizers
and between sectors of the progressive movement.

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