I used to diss protests that accomplish nothing but then I realized what their real use was: to connect people into doing actual stuff. To open a place for discussion on a specific issue, sometimes in the media, but at least in the street, for few hours, with like-minded people.
If you are rich serious people concerned over an issue, you create a forum or gather a summit. If you are poor, or rather, let's be realistic, middle-class, then you do a protest. It's rent-free, it filters out people who can't be bothered to move from the couch and the nay-sayers, it shows a wide range of groups with varied interests.
Protests are the first step in making policy change, but it takes several bounces before it affects people in DC.
The biggest counter example I can think of was Occupy Wall Street. AFAIK nothing ever came out of it, not even a small organised group.
Most protests I've seen have actually been the other way around. They were organised by pressure groups or unions and the protesters were already members of those groups. They existed primarily as a chest-beating exercise to show politicians their power. A few protests are more spontaneous especially the sort when democracies get overthrown or established. But in the west protests don't ever seem to create new organised movements.
That's how it worked for me (privacy advocacy protests in France). But now that I think about it, it makes sense that big protests are actually more of a recruiting tool for already established organization than a way to know each others. My example may be marginal in that it was on a small subject that did not bring a lot of big names.
If you are rich serious people concerned over an issue, you create a forum or gather a summit. If you are poor, or rather, let's be realistic, middle-class, then you do a protest. It's rent-free, it filters out people who can't be bothered to move from the couch and the nay-sayers, it shows a wide range of groups with varied interests.
Protests are the first step in making policy change, but it takes several bounces before it affects people in DC.