I have nothing against political protests. They are a great American tradition, enshrined in the First Amendment.
Opinion
Filling the streets with like-minded folks, shouting slogans and carrying signs is great political theater. It draws a crowd and creates headlines in a brief news cycle. It encourages community, and signals the virtue of one ideology or another. But it doesn’t move the needle.
While a political protest might provide some emotional catharsis, and let off some steam, it won’t change things. It emphasizes symbolism over substance.
Think about it for a moment. All the folks that you see protesting on sidewalks in front of the capitol in Cheyenne, or in parks around the nation, are there for one reason only — they got outvoted in the last election. They are protesting because Trump won, or the Wyoming Freedom Caucus won, and those election victories have put a burr under their collective saddle.
I think protesters have lost sight of the fact that elections are not won by counting the number of people in the street, but by counting votes. Some 10,000 people rallying and toting signs won’t change a single vote in the last election. Protesters don’t realize that their real job is to win the next election by using the ballot to seize the reins of political power.
If they can do the grunt work of democracy, and win the next election, then they’ll instead force their political opponents to march around carrying signs and whining about losing political power. That sounds pretty satisfying to me.
Let’s look at some numbers.
In the last election, despite claims of a record voter turnout, roughly 40% of voting-eligible Wyomingites didn’t even bother to register. That represents around 150,000 votes that were never cast, a number large enough to swing any election in the Cowboy State. The same ratio holds for the national election as well, and is roughly consistent across gender and racial demographics.
We personally know these people who don’t participate in our elections. They are our family, friends, neighbors, the guy on the next barstool and the woman in the checkout line at the grocery store. They share our “blessings of liberty,” but do nothing to help secure it. To put it harshly, they are the dead weight of democracy.
And there are enough of them to truly change things.
I would argue that convincing these folks to register and vote is much more important than standing around with a protest sign, and screaming outrage into the wind. And that, friends and neighbors, is the only thing that will truly move the needle.
We will get better results by putting down our signs and getting our hands dirty by dialing phones and knocking on doors to reach these non-voters. We might ask ourselves, if I protest with one hand, and organize with the other, which hand will get the best results?
So I challenge all the “Hands Off” or “No Kings” protesters to spend 10 hours recruiting new voters for every hour they spend protesting. The work will be harder and more frustrating than attending a rally, but it’s the right tool for the job.
Don’t rely on anyone else to do this task, it’s up to us as citizens. The political parties won’t do it. The government won’t do it. It must be done citizen to citizen, neighbor to neighbor. It’s simply too important a chore to leave to anyone else.
Based on my personal experience, you’ll encounter a lot of excuses from the unregistered when you try to convince them to carry their weight. You’ll hear stuff like, “There’s too much dark money in politics,” or “The Freedom Caucus is making it too hard to vote,” or “The Russians manipulate our elections,” or “My voice won’t matter anyway.”
Horseshit! That is nothing more than a weak cop-out. Citizens should be prepared to crawl on their bellies over broken whiskey bottles to exercise the right to vote.
We enjoy the right to self-government through voting because 56 patriots signed the Declaration of Independence, providing us that opportunity. The last sentence before these 56 signatures reads, “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”
Compared to our Founders’ commitment of their lives, fortunes and honor, shirking one’s responsibility to vote seems to be a piss-ant move, to me. And protesting just because your side gets out-voted is simply choosing the wrong tool for the job.
One of the most beneficial aspects of protest is to let people know they are not alone in their thinking. This in itself could make someone vote that might otherwise think it was a futile effort.
But protest can and has been absolutely influential in causing change. Some protests that have done this come to mind. The Boston Tea Party paved the way for the American Revolution. The suffragette movement with its often confrontational protests was the driving force behind women gaining the right to vote. The Bonus Army protests in 1932 were instrumental in Hoover’s defeat and in paving the way for the GI Bill. The Birmingham bus boycott, the Selma marches and the March on Washington all were major factors in the passing of the Civil Rights act. The Vietnam war protests were absolutely instrumental in ending the Vietnam War. The Stonewall riots was the beginning of gaining gay rights. Internationally the Solidarity Movement and anti apartheid movements gained freedoms for millions. To say protests do not move the needle is just wrong.
Protests and grass roots activism are not mutually exclusive. They are both important tools in the bag. Dave Gustafson
An addendum to my previous comment. We have recent proof of protest moving the needle. The consensus is that the workers protest last March toward the end of the legislative session absolutely changed the outcome of two bills being debated in the house. Protest does in fact move the needle Rod. Dave Gustafson
The “tools” that we were gifted with in this last election cycle have all turned out to be 5 and dime store quality monkey wrenches. Can’t mend broken fences and burned bridges with those things. Another oft underappreciated tool in the tool belt is taking your future campaign donations and giving those dollars to the local library, your favorite news source, volunteer fire department and etc… and etc… Making a point to drop a note to both the recipient and the underperforming incumbent stating exactly where and why you chose to make your generous investment the way you did.
Rod, error in the premise–75% voter reg in Wyoming is Republican w/a sliver of Libertarian and or Independent–just try overcoming that enormous gap between
true believer MAGA folks, the sadly misinformed, nice regular died-in-the-wool Republicans who vote the party line no matter what! It would be beyond a Herculean task, plus the great geographic distances between outpost to outpost. Maybe Martin Luther King Jr. or Saul Alinsky or Lech Walesa could organize a group actual patriots to go grass-roots and stir up enough interest to persuade open, free-thinking individuals to participate, but otherwise it’s a futile exercise when the sheer numbers and the stupidity is stacked against you. Flaubert’s
‘the whole dream of democracy is to raise the prolatarian to the level of idiocy achieved by the bourgeois’ does come to mind.
People vote based on what’s happening to their pocketbooks. They have very short term memories and will only consider how their life has either been enriched or deteriorated. People don’t care about what’s happening in the world until it affects them. I believe that protests can be beneficial because maybe that one person that was apathetic about voting in the past sees neighbors, friends, colleagues standing up and speaking out and maybe, just maybe it starts a thought process about change.
I read a lot of really well informed and thoughtful comments here on Wyofile. But, let’s face it…..the people that we need to reach out to about voter participation do not read WyoFile.
I think Rod is conflating two separate issues here. There’s no world where all the folks protesting are also not voting. It’s highly unlikely for someone to be politically aware enough to seek out and participate in a protest and not also cast their ballots. I agree voting turnout could be a hell of a lot better overall in the US and especially in Wyoming, but blaming folks who are already organizing within their communities is not the answer.
Certainly it would be great if everyone voted whether they are the ones paying for all of the handouts and spending or those getting the benefits. The fact is however, voting is a right, not a demand, and the nonvoters are the ones missing out…..and that too is a right in this great country we live in.
I agree that we need to do more (much more actually) to encourage more people to vote. And that includes resisting all of the voter suppression bills that Chuck Gray proposes.
But it is not a binary choice, as the headline suggests. We can, and should do both things: protest loudly while working to get more people to vote. The two activities are complementary.
This isn’t a dichotomy: everyone is fully able to recruit voter registrations, regardless of how they spend the rest of their days.
“I challenge all the “Hands Off” or “No Kings” protesters to spend 10 hours recruiting new voters for every hour they spend protesting.”
Mr. Miller,
As a person that has participated in both the protest at the state capitol I will agree and disagree with you.
We have to get people out to vote and you’re right that’s what’s gonna change the needle.
But I’m not sure how to do that. I would be more than willing to go door-to-door, but just getting people‘s commitment to vote won’t do much. How do I get them to commit
I don’t know much about politics and you know much more than I do so how do I get people to register to vote. I just feel that asking them won’t do much. I guess what I’m saying is I need more information if you have the time. At the protest, could we have someone there registering people to vote if they aren’t registered.
I want to do more but I’m just lost at how to do it. All of my friends vote, but I don’t know about my neighbors.
So if you have time and can do it through wyo file, can you give us some better ideas on how to get people to vote.
So right.
In the article you say, “All the folks that you see protesting on sidewalks in front of the capitol in Cheyenne, or in parks around the nation, are there for one reason only — they got outvoted in the last election.” I believe many of the protestors voted for Trump not realizing what he was going to do, and are now expressing their displeasure.
Excellent point! You have my word…I will continue to encourage my non-voting friends, family members and neighbors to register to vote and to exercise their right to vote. Thank you for a great reminder.
In the current Wyoming political climate, working for a non-maga Republican candidate and expecting a win in the next election, has become nothing more than an exercise in futility, not much different than protesting in the streets. Like it or not, Trumpism is the controlling foundation of the Wyoming vote these days. No matter what you may think of Liz Cheney, her final result has illustrated just that, which is why we have Harriet Hageman. Trumpism has been sold like a 50’s Eureka vacuum cleaner by a fork-tongued traveling salesman, to the politically isolated majority of voting Wyomingites. Through his own lies he has been propagandized by right wing media into a “savior clone”. A chosen mortal, blessed by the deity of a far right bourgeois christian caucus who quote from a bible they choose to interpret for their own non-charitable ends — while he grifts his faithful, by selling copies of a bible of his own making. Anyone who has ever gone door to door on a Sunday afternoon and faced off with brainwashed maga voters through the screen door will tell you, some of the hatred and vitriol is so intense, you often leave wishing you had worn a bullet proof vest. That isn’t to say you will get threatened with firearms, but rather metaphorically speaking, some bullets do not come from guns, but from propaganda. Their idea of freedom of speech, is not to listen to you at all, by spewing whataboutisms and right-wing media talking points. Until we can destroy that propaganda machine, until we can get the whole truth out there, nothing will change. As long as TV, newspapers, podcasts or door to door sales pitches cannot infiltrate and change the division that has already been ingrained in their maga minds, most of these people will continue to be our politically “walking dead”. I’m not convinced electoral change can or ever will come about, unless by the law of entropy, such a mendacious movement crumbles and collapses under the sheer weight of their own chaotic ignorance. Despite the horrendous cleanup that will follow, maybe I’m too hopeful, but I think we’re beginning to see a few cracks. Courage is strength. Solidarity is power. Remember, Rise, Resist!
“they are the dead weight of democracy.” Well stated, Rod. Those without an orange smudge on their chin are the remnant hope of this crumbling democracy, but we need to decide where we stand. Simply “we are against fascism” isn’t going to bring people out to vote. We learned to reject 95% of the maga agenda in pre-K, Bible school and Catechism classes. Nothing really new there.
Although mocking WhiskeyLeaks Pete or the couch guy who killed a Pope is a fun stress relief in dark times, we still need a platform for America going forward. Supporting only niche issues and identity politics is no different than the alt-right supporting only White Nationalist faux-Christian grifters.
Democracy’s litmus test needs to be one of values. Not party, but values.
Start to repair the damage from the leaking orange sewer with a core group of values-based Americans. Full stop. Not LGBT American. Just American. Not White American. Just American. Not Black American. Just American. Not Irish American, Latino American, trade union American, clean energy American, XYZ American… simply a democratic values imbued American. Hang together, or El Salvador will hang us separately.
All true! But there are also many people these days that must work two and sometimes three jobs just to make it through. These people find it very difficult to get to a poll and stand in line. Our favorite party is making it more difficult to employ the alternative methods. Why isn’t election day a national holiday!
I think both are very important. Charles Levendovsky, writer and editor, encouraged us to write both letters to the editor and op eds regularly. He firmly believed in the power of the Press. The visuals of demonstrations and good press will create an emotional impetus to go to the polls.
I have been an active democrat from the cradle. My Dad was a union man. He preached politics. In the 80’s Democrats and Republicans alike had people actively working in their local party. Now, both struggle to get people to run for precinct positions. It is not for lack of effort. I have begged and pleaded in recent years to change that dynamic. Apathy has ruled. I think the protests and press are chasing apathy away. I see folks fired up that have never been involved. We are not entitled to our freedoms. They have to be earned. Recently, I saw a video made by Obama that chastised people that expect others to protect them. He lectured kindly, but firmly. It is up to each and everyone of us.
Totally agree, too many ‘by standers’ and they are the ones complaining. Great article.
Thank you, Mr Miller.