If you have ideas for effective civic engagement, lead with that, by all means, but there’s no reason to make your first foot forward out of the gate be a crapping on what someone else is trying.
A lot of groups and individuals used the No Kings protest to make connections with people. What better way of recruitment into your advocacy than having a bunch of at least semi-engaged people all gathered in one place at one time. And so if you think any other form of civic engagement is worthwhile, you have to admit, protests are good for this. I would argue, also for visibility and drawing in more engagement generally. But whatever. The fact is, people have a right to protest, this is an essential right in America, and that’s what they did.
My point here isn’t even to advocate for public gathering demonstrations, it’s not my niche to be honest, I prioritize birddogging and pestering representatives as an effective activity. Though I think the recent demonstrations are going in the right direction rather than making just some central march in DC, to make demonstrations in people’s own communities, much like the first Earth Day movement which was small gatherings across the country that added up to a lot. That’s much better than just one event attended by people close enough to DC and people of means who can travel there. I’m all for getting more local. But again, I’m by far not saying protests are the end all be all, because I say all the time: don’t wait for everybody. You often don’t even need 7 thousand people never mind 7 million people to make real impactful changes.
And I’m also the first person to speak up when something is actually ineffective or insufficient or worse: activism placebos wasting people’s precious time, or what I call busy work activism. Obviously there are saboteurs in many a milieu or advocate circle, so yes there are people actively and purposely trying to dissuade others from doing civic engagement of any type and especially effective actions, maybe by shaming people or diverting people into pointless activities or never actually doing anything. But often I see people doing just really severely poor communication on this stuff out of (understandable) frustration, along the lines of leading with the lie.
Instead of leading with “protests alone won’t work” or further mish-mashing Erica Chenoweth numbers that people confuse or use in ways that even Chenoweth says not to use them. Avoid all that jibber jabber and parsing of arguments, noise and distraction, and just speak plainly. Because once you say “protests won’t work” most of the people reading that sentence immediately check out because they read it as you telling them to “do nothing at all” instead. And then what point is there for reading anything else you have to say?? They’ll never even look at post 3/6 in your thread. Most people won’t get beyond that first sentence simply because people are scrolling on autopilot. So instead of that gaffe, lead with the most important thing you wish to communicate – what you believe will work for example. Maybe lead with “we need to do all the things” or “we need broad civic engagement including X, Y, Z…” etc. There are people getting this right, so there’s really no excuse to get this wrong now that you know.
Just don’t do accidental civic engagement suppression is all I’m saying. People are going to do what makes sense for them, and nobody needs to do it all, nobody can, some people just won’t do some things. People need options not dictates from what one person with a niche expertise is doing. If someone’s doing something actually counterproductive, by all means point that out. But protests are not counterproductive so The Future Of The Republic does not hinge upon you pooh-poohing the people who turned out for the No Kings demonstrations across the country.
Disclosure: I did not myself attend any No Kings protests. I have disabilities and have concerns with gatherings like that, but unlike Donald Trump, I’m not here to crap on fellow Americans exercising their first amendment rights.