As students return to college campuses across the United States, administrators are bracing for a resurgence in activism against the war in Gaza.
As students return to college campuses across the United States, administrators are bracing for a resurgence in activism against the war in Gaza.
This is a common idea, but its misguided. It requires that you can pressure leadership to change their behaviors by inconveniencing people and/or costing the leadership money, otherwise it has no mechanism for success. This has never really proven to be the case when they have the cheaper alternative of using the law to remove you.
What actually needs to be done is rallying support among the masses themselves for either a paralyzing general strike, or at least a show of voting force that threatens politicians with removal in the next election cycle. Neither of these goals is furthered by simple disruptive protest. A small minority cannot impose their will without first gaining a significant amount of support from the majority, so ultimately, behaviors that are sympathetic to those less politically-engaged will see better success than behaviors that are not.
Protests rally support.
They can, or they can erode it. I’ve never met a person won over by road blockade. It more like a call to rally people who already agree. If the classes you are going into debt paying for keep getting canceled or your graduation gets delayed because of protests, it’s not gonna endear you to protesters. You may agree with the message, but if you didn’t it would only further entrench you on the other end.
No, every protest does not rally support. Some do, some do not. Which is which is extremely important.