We’re wasting a lot of time debating tactics on the left, and by debating, I mean increasingly burning bridges and fighting each other for no good reason. Let’s clear some shit up.

Different Forms of Protest are Valid

There isn’t a correct way to protest. Some folks decry safer protests as pointless or even stifling dissent. Other folks put down more aggressive actions as doing more harm than good. Different sorts of actions have different value and purpose.

Actual change, short of a revolution, generally requires action on many fronts: different forms of protest and direct action, communication and education, networking, and as much as many of us hate it, legislative and legal action.

In any case, having more agressive forces on your left makes it more likely the mainstream will compromise with your position, because they are even more scared of the harsher alternative.

Family Friendly Protests

We avoid saying “peaceful” protests, because it tends to create the implication that tamer protests are “good” and more aggressive protests are “bad”. “Family friendly” or “lower risk” protests are intended to accomplish some action and get people out without harm or arrest.

One of the core purposes of these protests is movement building. These actions are an opportunity to educate people, get people involved, and keep people engaged. A large portion of long term activists started by attending a protest.

Lower risk protests have a lower barrier of entry for new activists and allow the inclusion of large number of folks who cannot or will not take the legal and physical risks of more aggressive actions.

These protests are often about showing numbers, and usually will get 10x - 100x more people than more aggressive actions. The show of numbers creates social and political pressure for change and increases the chance of getting media coverage for an issue.

There are other reasons for these protests - like showing support for families of victims, from police crimes to the genocide in Palestine. Detractors will say the protest “accomplished nothing”. Supporting and uplifting traumatized people is accomplishing something in itself.

Aggressive Protests

What change came out of the uprisings of 2020 would not have come without aggressive mass uprisings. Politicians were scared. They had to listen a little, for a little while.

Cops, armchair activists, and large non-profit organizations decry these protests as “not the right way to protest”. They don’t get to decide.

Aggressive protests are harder to organize. Less people can and will attend. How do you throw a protest that could be considered illegal without misleading protesters or alerting the cops? The legal risks are more severe than tamer protests.

A strength of more aggressive protests is that they get more media attention, but a danger is that the media attention will be reduced to discussing - usually criticizing - the tactics rather than discussing the reasons for the protest.

You Seldom Can Incite or Stop a Riot

A lot of folks are angry that the uprisings of 2020-2021 are over, and they blame organizers for killing the uprising. That’s not how it works in the modern US. Events happen, people come out in mass, and then they go home. Over and over. Organizers are trying to keep people informed, educated, and organized for change between these big events. The public complacency is exhausting. Seeing people fight for change for 6-24 months and never come back is heartbreaking.

While there is a legal charge “Inciting a riot”, in the streets, you seldom can incite a riot. The people decide that without you. If people are going to rise up, they will, whether you want them to or not.

At the first march from George Floyd Square to the now burned down third precinct, no one had to encourage the crowd to charge the police station, tear down fences, and start trashing things. And the organizers could not have stopped it. The crowd decided.

Not long after the execution of George Floyd, there was a lethal incident involving police and a man in downtown Minneapolis. The man actually killed himself. It was clear on body cameras, and the police chief shared the video with community leaders, some of whom tried to inform the crowd that this was not another police killing. It didn’t matter. The crowd was fed up with violent cops, and downtown exploded.

But it works the other way too. All these folks that want to turn a family friendly protest into a revolt don’t understand that most of the time, people aren’t ready to go charge a police line or tear stuff up just because some random person tells them to.

If you want that sort of activity, there are two options: 1) organize a tightly knit group of trusted people who want to do aggressive actions the way black bloc groups do, or 2) wait for those rare moments where people are ready to rise up - in the meantime, you can organize and network to prepare.

In any case, don’t be the protest equivalent of a creepy guy who won’t take “no” as an answer - always pushing for something that is not going to happen and being inappropriate about it.

How Protests are Organized

What most detractors and upstarts don’t realize is that most effective protests involve a lot of planning and expertise. Decisions are made. Trade-offs are balanced. Commitments are made to community members. Research and scouting is done. Tactics and targets are chosen. Sometimes legal battles are fought. Supplies are purchased. People are trained. Speakers, messaging, signs, and press information are dealt with. Resources such as medics, jail support, marshals, and legal observers are arranged. If arrests are intended, then civil disobedience planning is done. The action you see is the total of those efforts. A large action may have hundreds of hours of planning.

Whether an action is low-risk or high-risk, the choices are intentional, and resources are arranged to support those choices.

For example, maybe the organizers are fed up with inaction on an issue, have a number of people willing to risk arrest, and want to throw a contentious protest. They will arrange the support for such an action. They will inform the crowd of the risks and have a way to separate people who cannot afford the risk from the rest of the protest. They will have extraction plans, medical support, and jail support.

On the other hand, maybe an organizer wants to show numbers and involve a large community, which includes people who are not arrestable because of legal and immigration status. They will make choices to have a comparatively safe march, and engage resources to support that.

What You Don’t Know

You don’t know the considerations that were made planning a protest. If you don’t like how aggressive a protest is or don’t trust how it is being run, leave. If you think a protest is too tame, there are probably reasons for that decision.

In general, if people marketed a protest as “family friendly”, they have an obligation to do their best to get people out safely. Arrests and physical harm generally cause people to drop out of the struggle. Encouraging unnecessary arrests sets us back.

You also don’t know what the organizer’s plans are with the community. Perhaps, for a certain action, the organizers are working with an Indigenous group who wants an angry and aggressive action. Perhaps the organizers are respecting the wishes of immigrants they are working with to keep the march safe for people who have a risk deportation.

There is a real problem with white activists wanting to be aggressive and put Black and Brown people at risk of violence and arrest, which they will experience more often and more severely than the white instigators. A similar problem happens with non-immigrants putting immigrants at risk.

By demanding a protest - that you had no hand in planning and have no idea of the considerations that were made - be more or less aggressive, you could be sabotaging the intentions of the protest or putting people at risk. So, don’t.

Have It Your Way

There are ways to handle things properly that encourage a variety of forms of protest:

• Follow the damned St Paul Principles. They literally exist to allow different politics and tactics to coexist without undermining each other.
• Ask or suggest, don’t demand: maybe the protest leadership would like your ideas if they were presented as a suggestions, not attacks.
• Get involved: get involved in organizing protests, both to learn what is involved and to offer your ideas in planning
• Form your own group: if you can’t find anyone organizing the way you want to, find some like-minded people and start organizing your own things.
• Handle criticisms behind the scenes, between actions: when someone is trying to run a protest is not the time for a polite discourse about why their tactics are poor. They are busy, stressed, and have more important things to deal with.
• Don’t shit on aggressive tactics. Don’t talk about “peaceful protests” in a way that implies the opposite is bad. If you are a leader or a marshal and someone’s behavior is a threat to your action, politely inform them so (and why), and ask them to stop or separate by time or space. Never say shit like, “that’s not how we protest”.
• Arrange your tactics with organizers. Often if you say something like “hey, we would like to drop a tiny house in the intersection after your action” organizers will say something like, “wait until most of our people are out, and go for it”. They might tell their people to stay and support you if they are willing to take the risk. But you just dumping your stuff in the middle of their action creates tension, confusion, and puts people at risk.
• Never misrepresent your action: this is a consent issue, and don’t be a piece of shit. Don’t market a black bloc action as a friendly friendly event and get people hurt or arrested who aren’t willing and able to do so.
• Realize that aggressive actions aren’t just a free-for-all: it’s not just “we’re storming the building”. How do you provide your own security for that activity? How do you get people ready to take that action? How do you get people out afterwards? What about jail support? What about medics? If you’re trying to create these sort of activities and you aren’t dealing with these things, you aren’t a “radical activist”, you are just doing the cops work for them by setting people up for jail.
• Ask, read, and learn. There are a lot of us who love helping folks find their way in activism, and even if we don’t know exactly what you need, we’ll tell you what you can and suggest how you find the people you are looking for.
• Don't be a protest-parasite. If you need other groups to get protesters out because you can't or won't organize your own actions, respect the intentions of the protests you attend. Would you be cool if random people took over your shit, and then called you a “cop” for you telling them to stop?
• Have a security plan: if you are planning your own event and don't have experience with protest security, consult people who do. It's on you if you organize stuff and people are harmed because you are too naive, arrogant, or inept to consider safety.
• But do try stuff!: none of this is supposed to discourage you from trying new things, taking chances, or organizing your own stuff. Some of my favorite actions came from off-the-wall ideas or new organizers. Just be mindful that you are responsible for people. Try to consider the best way to organize for your vision that considers your risks and outcomes.
• Have demands: it's great you want to face down with the cops for some issue, but what are your demands or goals? Who should they be directed to, and how is that going to be communicated?

Just Protests aren’t Enough

Whatever kind of protests you are attending or executing, that on its own will not be enough. The follow-through that brings change from protests is organizing and connecting people. It is educating people. It is forcing the media to publish our statements. It is building support for leftist and progressive politicians, and demanding those politicians stick to their alleged principles. It is legal and legislative battles. It is call-in campaigns and letter campaigns. It is writing and publishing position statements. It is getting your message to new people. It is strikes, walk-outs, and sit-ins. You don’t have to do all that, but if we don’t make sure someone is, we aren’t going to get very far. And finally, it is staying in the game - not being taken out unnecessarily by burnout, injury, or legal complications