One of the definitions of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and continually expecting a different result.
So, if 47 years of protests hasn't changed something, ... odds are that more protests are going to be just as ineffectual.
Let's face it: Mass-murdering, anti-democratic goons aren't going to tremble in their booties if you tell them that you'll stand with a few thousand other people and yell about them for an afternoon.
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It's true. They figured out years ago that all you really have to do with protesters is ignore them. Also, people like Bush can point to them and say stuff like, "See? That's free expression, and aren't we wonderful and enlightened for permitting it," thus co-opting the protest into their own legitimacy.
Oh yeah. And you know who gave us those freedoms right? Soldiers! Soldiers have always advanced the cause of human freedom, never blocked it. So keep your opinions about war to yourself.
I think you need a little more nuance than that. I agree that protests can easily be ritualized silliness with no particular purpose, but that's far from always true...it depends what larger organizing process they are a part of. Sometimes ritualized, focused togetherness in a large group can be really important to overcoming a sense of political isolation, however little it can accomplish in objective (used in the Marxist sense) terms. Or protest could conceivably be a really useful part of public pedagogy sorts of campaigns. It was a great loss to Ontario that the Days of Action events were not seen this way by people with the power to make it happen...it was mostly just gather, yell, go home, rather than seeing these large gatherings of angry, motivated people as an opportunity to facilitate them finding tools for further, less centralized action in their own communities.
See, protest hasn't always been ritualized, and I don't think all of that is because of elites learning that they don't have to be scared of it. I think it is because the context in which it happens has changed, so it used to make sense for elites to be scared of it, but it makes less sense for them to be scared now. I think the problem is that in the '70s and '80s the social democratic left got used to the ritual of assembling some followers in non-threatening ways and getting some modest concessions, and since that stopped working most people in that part of the political spectrum have given up on protest (understood generally) in its entirety rather than recognizing that it is not necessarily specific kinds of events that are the problem but the overall vision and process for organizing...when the large group of people carrying signs and yelling is the alpha and omega of your strategy, you're in trouble, but if it is just one piece with a specific purpose, that's entirely different.
Well, that's essentially what I'm trying to say. You have to attach your protests to part of a larger strategy, and realize that they're a step in a particular direction.
I'd go back further though, in pointing out where protests became ritualized silliness. There's a great over-estimation of the effectiveness of anti-Vietnam War protests in the 1960s.
Re. timing...yeah, that's kind of what I meant as well...though I think they were still somewhat effective in the '60s, but (as I'm sure you'll agree) the problem is people interpreting them as if that was all that was happening...we have been taught to forget about the incredibly successful (and tragic) resistance by the Vietnamese people, the massive resistance within the U.S. armed forces, and the fact that there were elements not just of polite protest but generalized uprising in the U.S. homeland. That was, as I think your comment intends, the context that made even garden variety protests a lot more meaningful than the ritualized protests of today.
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