A look at protesting - what does it achieve?

I'm sick of protesting. Isn't there something more we can do?
What does protesting achieve? If you really think about it, it honestly doesn't achieve much.

Not even when 2 million people march through London on 15th February, 2003, protesting the Iraq War. 2 million people is quite a lot in a city of 7 million and a state population of about 60 million. But what happened? Britain went to war anyway.

What does protesting at demonstrations achieve? I've been to quite a few over this past year. I went to many in NYC over the summer when Lebanon was being bombed. What did that achieve? Well at least we got our voices out. But we only managed to get 2,000 at most. In New York City. While cities (like London) got 100,000 to protest. But what was achieved? Not even an immediate ceasefire. Not even in Israel being condemned by cutting off trade, sanctions, anything - nothing. And no one even talks about it anymore, just 3 months after it ended. That's what protesting achieved.

I went to a protest with 60,000 other people in Manchester in September. It was put on by the Stop the War coalition. What did it achieve? We shouted for Blair to get out, for the troops to get out. What did it achieve? Did we come together and come up with real solutions, real ways to implement peace? 60,000 people? No, we just shouted our voices out and went home.

I went to protest for Gaza outside 10 Downing Street. This was the tipping point for me with my unsatisfaction with protesting at demonstrations. There were probably about 100-200 of us. We couldn't even chant because if we did we would be given noise violations. So what did we do? We stood in a part of London, that isn't even busy, not even chanting, for a couple of hours, holding signs, and talking to each other. What did we achieve? I think its pretty obvious we didn't achieve much. It's not as if Blair was watching us. Even if he did see us - so? Is the sight of a few dozen protestors going to break his nerve? Or anyone else's?

My point is that we MUST move beyond merely demonstrating. We can demonstrate all we want. Yes, demonstrating is good for visibility, for bringing people out. But that's all it achieves. It doesn't create real change. It doesn't help to solve the problems we're protesting about. We MUST come up with real solutions, and ways to implement those solutions. I'm talking in regards to countless issues here. Is standing on the street with other people, holding signs and chanting, really going to achieve anything?

Protestors don't even get a lot of press. Why is that? Because the press is bored by it. I'm bored by it.

I want some real action that will strive for real change. We're stuck in a rut. We're in a protesting bubble. A protesting - leafletting - marching bubble. Its exactly what they want - to keep us in a bubble. And what's scary is that many in that bubble don't even realize it.