Postmodern protests: why modern marches matter only to those who march

Washington Monthly, March, 2005 by Christina Larson

On a blisteringly cold Inauguration Day, an assortment of liberal women's groups gathered to stage a counter-inaugural protest in Dupont Circle, three miles out of sight and earshot from the president's swearing-in on Capitol Hill. A few hundred marchers stood in the snow to mourn the "death" of 11 civil liberties, each symbolized by a cardboard coffin draped with an American fig. Wearing what was apparently the standard uniform of protest--a North Face jacket, wool scarf, and duck boots--the protesters chanted about Social Security fraud and an unjust war in Iraq before forming a boisterous procession down an unusually deserted Connecticut Avenue. Many carried hand-painted signs, but the tiny handful of spectators--a half-dozen shopkeepers who momentarily stopped to watch--had to squint to read them; sticks to hold the signs had been defined as security threats and were prohibited along the parade mute.

The march halted in McPherson Square, a downtown park where several different counter-inaugural marches were to coalesce that afternoon for a further round of rousing speeches. While they waited for the others to arrive, one of the organizers, Sarah Long, declared the morning's "Women's March and Funeral Procession" protest a success. "I think we had a great turnout; we looked good ... the coffins were all in order ... Today is a small victory for us"

Victory might seem an odd word choice, considering that the day's counter-inaugural protests were relatively isolated events in a city celebrating the reelection of George W. Bush and larger Republican majorities in both houses of Congress. But in the self-referential world of modern protests, Long was correct. As with most demonstrations today, the march wasn't planned to accomplish a concrete result by demanding the passage of a particular piece of legislation. Instead, its organizers had focused largely on two things: affirming

Christina Larson is the managing editor of The Washington Monthly. the protesters' right to protest, and enriching their experience of the protest. While in the past a march was judged successful if it affected a political outcome, today's protests are judged on how they affect a protester's sense of self.

Petitions in boots

The first march on Washington took place in the midst of an economic depression in 1894 when populist leader Joseph Coxey led an army of 500 jobless men to the Capitol steps to demand a public works program that would provide jobs for the unemployed. (Coxey was carted off by police before finishing his speech.) Two decades later, in what must have been the first counter-inaugural protest, 28-year-old Alice Paul organized 8,000 women wearing white to march down Pennsylvania Avenue a day before Woodrow Wilson's inauguration. The women were there to lobby for women's suffrage, a demonstration that was rewarded by the passage a few years later of a constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote. In 1941, the mere threat of a public protest was enough to force political change: When A. Philip Randolph, leader of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, announced plans for a march on Washington, Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order banning discrimination in defense industry and federal jobs. And the granddaddy of all protests, the March on Washington in 1963, drew a quarter million people to the foot of the Lincoln Memorial to demand voting protections and desegregation of public spaces; shortly thereafter,

Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Protests and marches in Washington and elsewhere--including demonstrations against the Vietnam War outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago--continued throughout the 1960s and into the next few decades. But as various advocacy groups and social movements became institutionalized, setting up shop in Washington and hiring staff, the use of protest marches as a strategic tool became less common. In the new world of professional advocacy, the National Organization of Women and Greenpeace turned not to direct action but direct mail to achieve their goals. Even the biggest marches--such as those against apartheid or the Reagan administration's policies in Central America-drew relatively small crowds and scant press attention.

In 1995, the Million Man March brought marches back onto the national stage in a dramatic way. The first event of that scale organized in decades, the demonstration drew nearly one million African-American men and boys to Washington. Many federal workers stayed home in anticipation of disruptive protests. But a funny thing happened. The marchers hadn't come to demand passage of a legislative agenda or to bring pressure to bear on national politicians. Instead, they had gathered to make a promise to themselves--and to each other-to improve their lives and their families. The men crowded shoulder-to-shoulder along the Mall and recited a D-tier pledge about fatherhood and responsibility, and listened to exhortations from the likes of Maya Angelou, Jesse Jackson, Stevie Wonder, and Rosa Parks. Even a bizarre, two-hour, veering-into-numerology speech by the event's organizer Louis Farrakhan couldn't dampen the mood.