When I shared my prior thoughts with a group of smart, hyper-involved activists and advocates I got some feedback that expressed concern that folks would see attending a protest as the end goal, not a first step. The worry was that people coming out to protest would check the box, feel that sense of accomplishment, and not pursue the other necessary steps to accomplishing change. I tend to agree, I think having a whole pipeline of activities and actions is important, every action should contain a hook to hand the person off to the next one. 

But that wasn't the outcome or even the population that I was thinking that encouraging protest would affect. I think it's a very real problem that folks don't understand what drives the system to change and therefore could be lulled into thinking that simply showing up, milling about or marching, and then heading home accomplishes all the goals of the protest organizers. In reality protest is one of a multitude of ways to exert pressure on policy makers and the society at large. I think it's a very real risk that people who are only starting to become involved in social campaigns, activism, or advocacy would see the protest as the culmination of the work, not the beginning. 

However, what I had in mind was not the impact or affect on those attending a protest, even for the first time. Rather what I was identifying was the change that protest creates in the surrounding community. My theory of change is that seeing protest on their TV, in their news consumption, in their social feed, and, maybe most importantly, on their own street corner drives a change in perception, engagement, conversation, and ultimately participation in the wave of social change that the protest is drawing attention to. For me it's not the first order effects of the protests — solidarity, the coming together of different communities and groups, the emotional and intellectual expression as individuals come together as part of a larger whole. Instead it's the secondary ramifications of expression. The conversations happening in private in small groups in people’s homes or or offices, in text threads, DMs, are ultimately the change that is driven by protest on the street.

That's not to say it's not important to bring people out to the protest. The numbers of people at any given protest are likely to drive its visibility locally, on social media, and in news coverage, but there's a level of awareness that goes beyond the actual physical event. That awareness is partially driven through social media as people see flyers advertising protests, pictures of their friends at protests, and maybe most importantly, pictures from protests they would have never otherwise seen as friends of friends of friends share them. But ultimately whether or not a protest achieves its desired outcome, I believe, has far more to do with the private conversations those protests spark than those riveting, emotional, inspiring speeches given by megaphone as the first degree crowd looks on.

As Anat Shenker-Osorio notes on the Volts podcast:

"Social proof is real."
"What moves white people in Midwestern diners is actually seeing other white people out protesting."
"...people who look like me think this, I guess I think this"

Anat is much smarter than I, and does this for a living, so it was nice to see her expressing what I think is a very similar idea to what I was trying to convey. The protests and uprisings that occurred after George Floyd was murdered tugged at the societal fabric. Unfortunately I don’t think they fundamentally changed that fabric, but it did create new contours. Ultimately it is ongoing protest, ongoing rallies, that have the power to call white attention to the issues that affect our Black and brown neighbors, co-workers and friends in wholly inequitable ways. That ongoing attention is what can change the fabric of our communities and our country. A pew poll from June 2020, highlights this effect.1 In the wake of the George Floyd uprisings, 70% of white Americans reported having a conversation with friends or family about race or racial equity in the preceding month. Think about that again, 70% of all Americans. What other topic would 70% of people have talked about in June 2020?

While that top-line number is great, 63% of Republicans reported having conversations as well. Of course this doesn’t say they had conversations about how Chauvin murdered Floyd. It would be naive to think some portion of these conversations weren’t about “He shouldn’t have resisted,” “What about that criminal history,” “Blue Lives Matter,” “All Lives Matter.” But that still means those people knew that George Floyd was dead, a fact they would have never been confronted with without the ensuing protests. We can’t expect one event to change 400 years of intentionally stoked and cultivated racial grievance and animus. But some portion of those folks will decide to watch the video, some portion of that will see those hands in his fucking pockets, they’ll see people that look like them at the protests, their minds will change, at least a little, at least slowly. None of that is possible without the media coverage, without it showing up in their timeline, without protest.

However, only 5% of white respondents attended a protest or rally, and only 34% posted on social media about those same issues. That could be viewed as a problem, people were 7x more likely to post on social media than attend a protest, keyboard activism at its worst. However, we were in the midst of a (hopefully) once in a lifetime pandemic, and so people were less inclined to gather in public. I would also argue that street protest is not something most white people have ever thought about, seen, or considered participating in. Yet social media shapes many of our lives. And yes, getting even 10 more people out to a protest instead of just sharing and retweeting would be a great accomplishment for organizers. But we can’t disregard what I would argue is the full cycle of protest, social media, and conversation. If protest and posting on social media have somewhere between a 10x and 2x multiplier in driving conversation, that’s a really important thing to consider.

Now, correlation is not causation, I do not have an academically pure rationale for how protest drives those conversations. But how could it not? The murder of George Floyd drove exactly zero media coverage. The police released a statement that he had suffered a medical issue and died. The video went viral on social media, showing the police had lied, and that sparked people to take to the streets in protest. The media coverage responded to that protest by taking something that was at first only visible to a handful of blocks of Minneapolis, and a handful of people actively looking for it on social media, and exporting it to the entire country, and networks on social media that would have never seen anything about it. Once it hits a certain level of awareness in social media circles it reaches critical mass. It spreads organically, as more and more people see it directly on their timelines no longer sequestered away in chats or groups. That feels like the critical point, from that point forward people start asking, “What can we do here?” “Who’s planning a vigil?” “Where are there protests near me?” 

It’s also important because media attention is fleeting but the problems we face are not. Whether it’s rallies to take action to fight climate change (something that white people seem fine vocalizing and showing up for) or protesting police brutality (which still seems to have some taboos around white participation) continued sustained protest and public pressure is the only thing that can drive continued media coverage. We have local examples of that very effect from December of 2021 and January 1st of this year. Unfortunately, our political system is built to follow that media coverage, not constituent concerns directly. So while I show up and tell our County Commissioners what they’re doing wrong and what they should be paying attention to, 10 residents making public comments doesn’t have the same political gravity as a single reporter calling them up and asking them to comment on a controversial ordinance or issue.

There are, unfortunately, other considerations when white people join protests. White people being present tends to deescalate the police response as it is that very systemic racism and implicit bias within white people, the country, and police forces, that drives so much of the police violence. This is not to say that white people are there to protect non-white protestors, or that non-white protests deserve to be brutalized by police. Nor is it to say that white people should lead these protests, they 100% shouldn’t. We must be there to support and amplify, not drive or lead. But it is a factor so long as the primary weapon of police forces when responding to protest is to agitate and lash out with violence so that they can crack down, enforcing curfews, performing mass arrests, or just provide legal cover for their excessive use of chemical weapons and violence. 

Another factor is that white people showing up, or even holding their own supporting protests or vigils in majority white towns, attracts white media. Our social circles are not perfectly overlapping, and in many cases far from it. White reporters tend to have white friends, live in white neighborhoods, cover white stories, just like many white people in the rest of the population. Newsrooms have diversity issues, and we’ve seen several Black reporters highlight how they’ve been told they can’t cover “Black stories” because they won’t be objective, or that readers (the adjective “white” is silent) won’t read them as objective. 

It’s important to highlight again that this is not a call for white saviorism. I mention it to highlight how important it is for white people to have these conversations, share actions on social media (so their white friends will see them), and do what makes them or their social circles uncomfortable. Because that discomfort is white supremacy, it is systemic racism, it is decades of ignoring our own racist history as a country. It is only by pushing into that discomfort that we can hope to dismantle those systems, creating a path forward that is focused on racial equity and repairing historical wrongs. At the core, that discomfort is about bringing the message of racial equity and racial justice to other white people. About doing something that might cause a confrontation with a neighbor, a friend on social media, or a family member who doesn’t agree about what is right. It is our role in this work to continue to bring these issues to the forefront in our social circles, both online and offline. It’s my theory that protests, enmasse or protests of one with a Black Lives Matter sign on a street corner, are what keep these issues front of mind, driving the conversations that ultimately deliver the changes we seek.