Response to “Do Big Marches Still Matter?”

I read an interesting post on PostBourgie called “Do Big Marches Still Matter” responding to some of the interesting conversation emerging around the National March for Equality (a GLBT rights march that occured in DC this past weekend) and Barney Frank’s response that “the only thing that march will pressure is grass.” PostBourgie concludes:

“… Isn’t Frank essentially correct in saying that big rallies like the NEM have little influence on policymakers … There are undoubtedly tons of ancillary organizational benefits that come with big demonstrations. They allow advocacy groups with similar objectives to coordinate and network, to say nothing of the catharsis and goodwill that comes with rubbing shoulders with like-minded people. But to say they have a direct affect on policy seems like a stretch.”

I wanted to respond: Marches don’t matter. Organizing does.

The marches of the 60’s didn’t matter (as marches alone). Policy makers didn’t sign civil rights legislation, or switch positions on the war because of a single march. They passed the legislation because of 100s of marches (in towns across the country, as well as in DC, and major urban areas), as well as sit-ins, walkouts, strikes, and tons of other nonviolent methods that together constitute a real social movement. Legislators respond to these things because they disrupt the business-as-usual operations of politics and society (shutting down workplaces, schools, occupying draft boards, etc) and wind up raising a dilemma: meet our demands or face losing more and more legitimacy.

The movements also radicalized as time went on, moving from simple opposition to the war to opposition to all American foreign aggression to fundamental elements of American society and calling for out-and-out revolution. Nothing lights a fire under legislators asses to act like 100,000 American youth calling for revolution outside your office (in 1968 a New York Times poll estimated one-in-five college students believed a revolution was necessary in the United States).

The historical mythology of the 60s seems to go like this: “Black people were getting messed with, then there was a war and nobody liked either of those things and there were huge protests with some really great speeches and everything changed.”

But the real story is a lot longer, and frankly more boring (but truthful) and goes something like: “Some people started staying up all night to write leaflets, speeches, pamphlets, letters. They made tons of copies on the mimeograph machines, passed out tons of educational materials, had thousands of conversations, organized small little protests down quiet streets, studied politics, made more leaflets, had more conversations, planned tiny little rallies and, then went out and people started having more conversations, and more people started doing more planning and started studying politics on their own, and after more and more people did this for 5 – 10 years, the marches started getting really really big, and more people started having more conversations and started to teach more and more people.”

The marches and rally’s, protests, walkouts, sit-ins and so on, are the results of tons of organizing and education. It wasn’t that policy-makers were, are, or ever will be afraid or influenced by a single march that lasts for a day, two days, or three. What they are influenced by is a long-haul, ever growing, ever escalating political movement that represents a real contestant for power and legitimacy.

I believe this is one of the most fundamental lessons of the 60s and the most difficult to extract.

PS. And we have more opportunity and potential to build that kind of movement today than folks could ever dream of in the 1960s. Back then, if you wanted to mobilize people to a rally or protest you actually had to go to a landline and call people. Today we have text messaging, Twitface, blogs, instant messaging, cell-phones (shit, I’m getting a Google Wave invite as we speak).

Two friends of mine, both veteran organizers of the 1960s once told me “If we had the internet there would’ve been no stopping us. There would’ve been a total revolution.”