The Right to Protest Protects Democracy
Make use of it before it's gone!
Protests are annoying.
That’s just the truth. They’re loud, they get in the way, and they disrupt daily life. I’m sure in recent years, everybody has gotten tired of seeing endless marches, picket lines, and signs held on high with megaphones blasting.
I’m sure we all want to be able to go downtown and get a cup of coffee without having political slogans blasted into our ears and eyes by a raging crowd. We’re tired of it, and we’d just like to go back to business as usual.
Here’s the thing though— if you love democracy, you have to accept protests. Yes, even the ones you don’t agree with.
You don’t have to silently go along with them, but you do have to accept that the right to assembly exists for a very good reason—both in Canada and the United States.
See, protests and public activism are some of the most effective ways to enact social change and give voice to your demands. In a democratic system, the people on the street are supposed to be in charge. Lawmakers and politicians aren’t your kings— you’re their boss, and you’ve hired them to do a job.
It’s up to the citizens to let them know if they’re doing it properly or not.
And you’re probably thinking “But Sam, you’ve ripped into protests before that you didn’t like!”
You’re correct, hypothetical reader, I have done that. And I will continue to do so.
It’s fine to have an opinion on the reasons behind a public demonstration, just like it’s fine to have personal beliefs on any topic. I’ll roll my eyes and sneer at rallies for bigotry all day every day, and denounce it every chance I get. We all should if we want a free and open society.
I’ll say that seeing self-proclaimed Neo-Nazi groups and white supremacists beating the metaphorical drum in the streets is a really bad sign, and we should make sure our voices are loud enough to counter theirs.
If they cross the line into illegal discrimination or violence, I’ll hope the police will intervene…although honestly, I won’t be holding my breath. Usually, the cops show up on their side.
Otherwise, while their views are invalid and unacceptable, the action of protest is not. I will not advocate for any laws against the right to protest. Freedom of assembly needs to be treated as a sacred, fundamental bedrock of democracy.
We may not always like how it’s being used, but we have to protect that right.
It’s one of the few shields we have. And if I know my history—which I do—it won’t be long before it’s ripped out of American hands.
Look at who is running the show in the United States.
They’d love to have an excuse to shut down dissent.
We’re watching the United States descend into fascism. I’m not being hyperbolic; that is what’s happening.
Fascist governments don’t like it when people hit the streets to criticize them. They don’t like protests, they don’t like dissent. They want an excuse to silence detractors and make it look like there’s no objection to what they’re doing.
The thing is, when you make peaceful protest illegal, you guarantee that the next dissenting action is going to be violent.
If you don’t let people speak their minds, they’re going to escalate. They’ll make their point any way they can. That’s the whole point of a protest.
When they’re quiet and out of the way, non-disruptive and polite, they accomplish nothing. Some of the most effective protest movements in history involved making life difficult for other people.
Blocking traffic, blocking railway lines, sitting on the steps of town halls so the representatives have to see you as they go in and out of work— the point is to make yourself impossible to ignore.
You might roll your eyes at the climate activists gluing themselves to picture frames, but you’ve seen them in the news an awful lot, haven’t you?
The goal is to get attention. Public protest is a successful tactic because it makes a splash. It’s an incredibly useful tool, and we need it to stay effective.
So when it comes to hateful protests and rallies—which we’re going to see more of over the next few years—the worst thing you can do is panic and demand for the cops to come in and bust it up. First of all, the cops won’t do shit. A lot of them are on the Nazi side anyway, like I said.
But more to the point, it gets them attention, which is the whole point. They want that.
It makes them feel validated. It makes them feel like they’re accomplishing something. That just adds more fuel to the fire and builds up their morale. They’re looking to ‘own the libs’, remember? They’re doing it to get attention and pull a rise out of you.
They don’t want to change what Trump’s doing; they want to egg him on. Attacking them outright just adds gasoline to an already blazing fire. And as things stand, attacking them gives the Trump administration a reason to crack down.
We don’t need more ‘Antifa’ panic for the Faux News nightly Two Minutes Hate.
So, if we can’t stop them from protesting and we have to respect their right to speak, how are we supposed to push that Overton Window?
Well, it’s pretty simple actually.
This is a situation where ‘ignore them and they’ll go away’ actually hits closer to the mark. If you want to stop them, there’s a better solution.
Hype up the thing they’re protesting against.
Assholes want to hold a Neo-Nazi rally? Counter it by flooding social media with the voices of minority communities. Amplify the voices of marginalized people, and share the channels of creators and activists.
Heck, if they try to do it at a private venue, you can blast the owner of that venue and make them think twice about letting Nazis use it. Make it a career-ending move.
Drown out hatred with support for the people they want to victimize. Highlight the fact that their incandescent rage is just plain stupid.
Humanize the figures they’re trying to Other.
Create counter-protests—not to physically attack them, but to show them how little support they truly have in the communities they march in. Show them how outnumbered and pitiful their movement is.
You’ve got the right to do that. So long as protest remains legal, you can hit the streets every goddamn day if you want to.
Do what Governor Tim Walz told you to do: Call them fucking weird! Make sure they know that most people do not agree with them, they’re outliers, and they aren’t going to change anyone’s mind.
Donate to the charities that work to benefit people in need; signal-boost people who are struggling under the current instability, and make yourself a common and irritating visitor to your representative’s offices.
Write them. Call them. Show up to city council meetings and talk.
Make yourself impossible to ignore.
Nazis want to feel powerful? Let them wave their dicks around online and in the streets while you organize real, lasting efforts that’ll make real headway. They’ve been emboldened and validated because Trump won; they think they have overwhelming support across the country.
They don’t.
Smother the embers of their protests, suck the oxygen out of their movements.
Feed the flames of progress instead.
There are far more of us than there are of them, even now. Remember, Trump didn’t get that many votes. He only won because so many people stayed home.
So, stop staying home.
If you’re worried about them getting violent, I get that.
But the thing is, some of them already are. How many protests have we had against police brutality in the last decade? How many times have we seen angry bigots drive cars into peaceful marches? How many people have been murdered just for being LGBTQ+?
They attempted a coup for fucksakes.
Those people are already violent, and they will be no matter what we do. They’ve built up the rage inside of their heads to the point where we’re not going to be able to talk them down.
They don’t hate what we’re doing, they hate what we are.
They hate people who are different from them. They hate the LGBTQ+ community. They hate the disabled. A lot of them hate women in general. They hate people of colour.
They want us to suffer. They’re cheering for it.
Most of them are loud about it and beat their chests in public—especially now, when literal Nazi salutes are all over social media, as Elongated Muskrat ‘sends his heart to the crowd’ to ‘own the libs.’
As long as we want to use protest as a means of fighting back against what the government is doing, we have to be able to swallow the fact that the other side can do it too. It might suck, but it’s true.
If I want to take to the streets and beg for climate action, I need to accept that people will be out there talking about how it’s a hoax. If I’m going to publicly demand that the Canadian government recognize Residential Schools as genocide, I have to accept that there’ll be jerks out there counter-protesting that.
I have to accept it because allowing them to speak protects my right to keep talking, too.
I very badly want them to shut up, but that’s the annoying part about living in a democracy; everyone’s voice is equal as long as they aren’t breaking the law.
As long as they’re trying to make their bullshit points with words on a sign— as infuriating and intimidating as that might be—then we can counter them the same way.
When we lose that equality, we lose an avenue of protection and we’ve taken another step down the road to authoritarianism.
Under a democracy, everyone’s voice is equal. Under authoritarianism, protesting the government is a criminal offence.
I know which system I’d prefer to live under.
Now, to be clear, this is not me advocating for free speech absolutism. There have to be limits on speech; we can’t tolerate intolerance. You can’t incite violence, you can’t spread hate speech, you can’t send death threats.
There’s a reason anti-discrimination laws exist, and there’s a reason Trump is taking those laws apart.
It’s also important to note that the rallying cry of ‘free speech’ as the right-wing uses it is complete bullshit. They think free speech means freedom from consequence.
That’s not the case, especially not on a privately owned platform like social media sites.
Private companies have the right to enforce their terms of service, and if you break those terms of service and get banned, that’s not an attack on free speech.
Free speech guarantees you the ability to speak out against the government without being arrested. It doesn’t protect you from getting kicked out of Walmart or fired for saying the N-word.
If you have the right to be a bigot in public because of free speech, I have the right to call you a piece of shit because of free speech. See how that works? Cancel culture is free speech, dipshit.
The point I’m trying to make is that there is no way to legally limit the free speech of the people we disagree with, without also limiting our free speech. If you strip bigots of the right to criticize the government, you lose the same right yourself.
If we want to keep protest as a viable, legal tool in our kit, then we have to protect it across the board. Conservative, Progressive, bigot, activist. We all have the freedom to speak our minds and engage in politics.
The second that stops being true is the second democracy dies. And unfortunately, it probably won’t be long before that freedom is stripped away.
I give it a few weeks at the rate Trump is going. I hope I’m wrong.
If we start narrowing the parameters of who gets to talk, who do you think is going to lose first? With Trump in office? With the Republican party making the rules?
Canada might be safer right now, but Trump’s coming for us, too.
If you haven’t noticed, America is going down a very dark road. Marginalized people are being targeted and scapegoated, and it’s going to get worse from here. They need help.
So, as long as you have the right to protest, you should use it. If you know of a march that’s currently happening, please post about it in the comments so we can spread awareness. If you know of a boycott we can take part in, post that too.
If you know of a cause that needs support, let’s hear about it.
We need to show our numbers, show where the majority of citizens in America—and Canada, we’re under threat too—stand. We outnumber them, which gives us leverage. Democracy is a fragile, easily-destroyed creature. It needs active support and nurture to stay alive.
Every citizen of the United States has the right to protest and speak out against the government’s actions. Make use of that right before it’s gone.
Solidarity wins.