How Much Do Protests Matter? A Freakonomics Quorum
by Stephen J. Dubner
freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com
August 20, 2009
Iran”™s citizens take to the streets en masse after a disputed election. Gay men in Salt Lake City hold a kissing protest. Members of the Westboro Baptist Church voice their anti-just-about-everything views to military funerals and elsewhere.
Beyond the media attention they inevitably garner, what do protests actually accomplish?
We rounded up a few people who have thought a lot about this topic “” Chester Crocker, Bernardine Dohrn, Donna Lieberman, Juan E. Méndez, David S. Meyer, and Howard Zinn “” and asked them how much protest matters in this day and age, and why.
Here are their answers. Continue reading “How Much Does Protest Matter?”