this is one of those drafts that i've been sitting on for potentially actually years, but tonight i had the conversation that feels like it added enough to make it interesting, or perhaps just approaching some level of high-school-reading-comprehension-essay-style balance. i'm very left leaning and fairly politically active, but the way that protests have gone in australia have always prickled me. the vast, vast majority of protests i've been to in my city (read: all of them, bar one even more embarrassing example) have gone like so: gather out the front of a political building on a weekend when the building is empty. repeat some chants that everyone knows by heart. listen to between four and six speakers vocalise talking points that everyone in the area already agrees with. stand in a cordoned area with police keeping the protesters from blocking traffic or being a nuisance to anyone. get sore legs from standing stationary for an hour and a half and convince nor even educate any members of the public

some of the protests i've attended have felt truly useless. there was some for russia's invasion of ukraine, and some for the changes to american abortion laws. while i think it's good to make it clear to your elected officials that these problems are close to you heart and that you want them to do everything that's in their power to oppose the issue / not allow it to happen in australia, it does feel ineffectual to protest a political move by a group that wouldnt give a shit about you even if you were one of their constituents. in all likelihood you werent even the smallest blip on their radar. for the problems that your government might actually have some say in, theyre 1. not going to see you because theyre home for the weekend and 2. are going to treat you as a bunch of fringe loonies who dont represent the average citizen. basically, a lot of protesting here feels like virtue signalling by leftists making themselves feel better by feeling active while actually not doing much of value to anything but their egos

this is kinda where my draft of this post had sat for months, besides a bit of whinging about how having a "real" job makes protesting feel a bit more scary, and how some of my friends that want to get into politics feel pressured to not because it could impact their futures. lame! but i was kicked back into gear by the conversation i referred to earlier. i mentioned how i wish that we had a protesting model that was closer to what we see in france aka something happens that the populace dislikes and they start breaking windows and bringing cities to a standstill. or heaven forbid, the kind of political pride in a place like the netherlands where a case of political corruption is uncovered and the entire parliament resigns out of a sense of duty. imagine! my friend brought up that there have been cases where committed protesting has worked to bring the people together and consistently show that the voting public are unhappy with the way things are - two classics in the western sphere being the vietnam war protests and the civil rights movement. i desperately hope that that kind of action is possible again in the future

i also noted black lives matter, and how it resulted in absolute pandemonium in the streets but didnt seem to cause any long term concrete change. this friend of mine (who is markedly more engaged in how the machine of politics works) reminded me of the state of the social zeitgeist at the time in terms of how the average joe thought of racial discrimination, and how even this apparently useful action helped to both bring in some less informed but still well meaning leftists, and to move the overton window in general. it's more like that you won't convince everyone, but you might convince the people who are close enough to a change in opinion that just need a little nudge.

don't get me wrong, i'm still a bit skeptical of how useful a lot of protesting is, but at the very least i would rather live in a world where it happens than a world where it doesn't