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What changed mind about the vietamn war were not the protests but the body bags arriving home. Funerals have a way of sharpening minds.
cycleclinic-
Have you actually been to London and seen what's happening, spoken to the activists?
In a few weeks this movement has grown and is remarkably well organised. It has very succinct messages.
It has brought together thousands maybe millions of people, many who have felt as though they were pissing in the wind for the last 30 years.
It has put the climate in the news and it has done it with some class.
Good luck doing any of that with a recommendation to change the building regs. -
I agree that protest barely registers these days. I think that’s why XR are trying some polite civil disobedience. So far so good.
adroit
miro_o
I think it’s unfair to just flame the cynicism of @cycleclinic ... actual empirical evidence of protest having changes things would be better.
To bite... I think the use of the Suffrage movements are oversimplification - from History classes in school we learned the violent protests were considered a setback, but the non-violent protesting and awareness-raising actually rallied support from some males of the time. If it weren’t for their protests then a way couldn’t have been paved toward the eventual “look what we did in men’s absence” argument when the law needed changing post-ww1 due to voters having been out of the country for too long to vote.
Similarly my tongue-in-cheek use of Vietnam, those protests informed a generation both politically and if nothing else, musically. An entire counter culture formed through it, and some of the most appreciated art (musical/pictorial/etc) of the 20th century owes a debt to that movement.