 Now this might be a controversial topic, but if you look at the data, at least in recent US history, protests haven't worked. In this video, we're going to be looking at why that is and what we can do differently to affect greater change. A copy of the script, including all sources, will be linked in the description. Be sure to make your voice heard down in the comments section below and let's jump in. A problem with assessing how successful a protest is is that the effects can take time and can only really be assessed retroactively. But the news doesn't like to revisit topics a year or two after the fact. They like to strike while the so-called iron is hot. And so they often equate huge protests with huge successes. But size is nowhere close to an indicator of success. The largest protests in modern American history, the 2017 Women's March, garnered the support of an estimated 4 million participants across the country. But just two days after the protests ended, the president signed an executive order, stripping USAID to many institutions that offered abortion services, even if that was only a small part of all the services they provided. And in the next election, despite the millions who protested, the total number of women in Congress increased from 105 to 110, an increase of only 5 percent, meaning women soon only made up about a fifth of Congress. In the states with the largest participation, D.C., California, New York, Illinois, Colorado and Massachusetts actually saw their combined total number of women representatives go down. The next biggest protest, the March for Our Lives in 2018, drew over a million participants, advocating for legislation to prevent gun violence in the United States. While some individual states pass new gun laws, studies show that gun control measures in individual states aren't nearly as effective as national laws, since arms can still flow from less regulated states to more regulated ones. For example, three-quarters of guns used in crimes in New York come from states with weaker gun laws. The year after these protests, of 110 bills, including the word gun, to come across the congressional floor, only one passed, and it wasn't even focused on the gun debate. It was the spending bill that ended the partial government shutdown in January of 2019. The next biggest march, the March for Science, took place in 2017, with about one million people in attendance. According to organizers, the goal of the march was to call for evidence-based policy in the public's best interest. Yes, so in the U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, it says, shall promote the progress of science in useful arts. But after that march, public policy wasn't any more governed by science than before. And when those protesters could have made their voices heard in 2018's November elections, they sent only six new scientists and engineers to join the eight already in Congress, bringing their representation to just under 3% of Congress. So why have recent protests not resulted in the change they set out to? A Princeton study found that public opinion hardly comes to bear on legislation, and the results of most protests confirmed this. The anti-war movement against U.S. military involvement in Vietnam in 1965 had no effect on war activities, which were actually ramped up until the war's end in 1973. We can see why most protests don't affect change by listening to the first-hand account from a reporter who joined the protests against the war in Iraq. She says she realized the protests wouldn't prevent the war, because the protest leadership wasn't telling us what to do next. The leadership didn't offer us a campaign. That's one of the biggest drawbacks from protests in modern times. Because of the internet and platforms like Facebook and Twitter, it's now easier than ever to get the word out to millions of people. Because amassing large numbers of protesters is easier than ever, protests have grown tremendously. The country's largest protests have more than tripled in size today, compared to the 1960s. But because protests are now more spur of the moment, they lack the necessary long-term plans to be effective. That 2017 Women's March is the perfect example of the contrast between organizing a protest and mobilizing a movement. In January 2017, activists using social media produced in just weeks the largest protest in U.S. history. But when the protesters took to the streets, participants noted that the organizers didn't have a plan laid out. And not until the next morning was a 10-point plan for defeating Trump released. And it wasn't even the national organizers who made it. So they quickly adopted an indoor step. Modern political protests, especially for more liberal ideas, are often sparked as emotional reactions to recent events. The 2017 Women's March was planned for the day after the inauguration of President Trump. The March for Our Lives protest was incited after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting a month earlier. And now the current protests have been ignited by recent acts of police brutality. But spur of the moment, emotionally-based protests don't lend themselves to its long-term change. Because protesting just isn't enough. Protesters need to be organized in a way that lets them keep pushing for the movement's goals, long after the protest has ended. This is why most recent protests haven't had much of an effect on the politics they tried to influence. The Tea Party made significant political gains, in large part because, after the first Tax Day protests in April of 2009, local groups stayed involved and frequent grassroots meetings funded by organizations like the Coke Run Americans for Prosperity helped the Tea Partyers push the Republican further to the right. So for one, protests need to lay forward specific plans for long-term change. Otherwise, come election time, their passion will have died down. And this is a problem we're seeing right now with the Black Lives Matter protests. The protests are arguing for equality and change, but not offering much in the way of concrete plans, apart from the punishment of a few select police officers, and they're not laying out a political agenda for 2020. Another thing they have to do is avoid violent behavior and punish it where it exists. Studies show the more extreme protest tactics, actions like blocking traffic and damaging property are effective at gaining publicity. But despite gaining publicity, these acts actually reduced popular support for a given cause, because they reduced the broader public's ability to personally identify with the movement. And the findings echo the results of another recent study by Princeton that found that despite perhaps helping to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1968, the violent protests that occurred after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. increased support for Republicans and might have even tipped the 1968 election for Richard Nixon. Historically, when protesters remained peaceful, particularly in the face of aggression and violence, the resulting images tended to shock a more complacent nation into action. But when the protesters themselves turned violent, even in self-defense, the media's message was shifted from a framing around civil rights to one around the need for controlling this situation. And the University of Denver backs this up, finding that across the world, nonviolent movements tend to be about twice as effective as violent ones. Most importantly, it doesn't really matter if the violent acts are being done by the protesters themselves or by completely separate groups, since the media will often show them side by side. This coverage is serving to unify the images of the Black Lives Matter protests with those of the looters, even though they're completely separate. So to maintain public perception, protesters should actively try to discourage violent behaviors, helping to protect stores from looting, and hand those perpetrators over to the police, something that's actually happening in small part. And protesters need to play the political game. Currently, millions of dollars are flowing into groups, like the NAACP, to fight individual court battles over injustices. But we don't see super PACs forming, with lobbies to put pressure on lawmakers. This is like fighting the symptoms, rather than the disease itself. An example of protests being run more efficiently is the recent creation of an informal coalition of influential conservative leaders and political groups that have been nurturing protests and applying political and legal pressure to overturn state and local said home orders. The groups have tapped their networks to drive up turnout at recent rallies, dispatched their lawyers to file lawsuits across the country, and paid for polling and research data to undercut the arguments behind the restrictions that have kept businesses closed. This is the kind of organized support and political focus that protests need to be effective, because the real battle isn't today, but in November. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Everything Science. If you did, be sure to check out some of our other uploads here. Have a great day. And remember, there's always more to learn.