is protest dead?

a few weeks ago some friends and i quickly organized a protest and boycott-- not in response to the ocean-qway human rights violations we're usually protesting-- but because of a bread-and-butter scandal affecting our university that's gotten lots of coverage in our local press.

the day before, most of the people we handed fliers to in the breezeway were familiar with the issue.

this was a welcome change from darfur activism. it felt empowering to be part of a movement that had palpable potential to cause change. and this change could, for once, be immediate. no UN resolutions necessary.

but then...no one came to the protest, aside from the core organizers and our friends. There were more press than people, their cameras' clicks sometimes louder than our improvised chants. In stead of participating, my fellow students at my commuter school gawked at us in the hallway, framing cell phone photos, and edging by us to slip coins into the vending machines we told them them to boycott.

needless to say, this poorly attended press-spectacle was a bit of an embarassment fo me, one of its organizers. i replayed the past few days in my head looking for mistakes, but could find none: we had publicized efficiently and thoroughly; we had sent mass e-mails and made masses of photocopies; we had garnered the attention of every press outlet in the area.

and yet somehow our protest had alienated the people we had hoped most to inspire: the students of our school.

this led me to question the very nature of protests in general. Do they alienate people who aren't activists, people not used to yelling at causes?



the rebellious romantic in me mourns this. sure phonecalls can be effective but they aren't as adrenaline-rush-inspiring as picketing and marching and sitting-in. In my mind, if activism were a big university, protesting would be its football-- the thing everyone celebrates and cheers at and contests.

(no offense to any sports fans here,) but, like football, is protesting just a big fun spectacle or does it actually get stuff done? And the even more unnerving question i keep asking myself is if we are just alienating potential activists by being so..."in your face" about causes? or would we be defiling the nature and legacy of activism if we got out of everyone's face?

in short, is protest dead?