>>150937180
Equal civil rights for all didn't exist in the US, until they did, after people marched for them.
The unpopularity of the Vietnam war was hidden from the same public it was unpopular with, telling them to keep quiet if they had doubts, until protests revealed actual sentiment.
The same with the Iraq war, which because protests are public record, virtually everyone that supported that shit now pretends they were always against it, when they were accusing anyone who was of being a traitor.
Protests 'work' in the sense that people in charge really do not like them, so they try to get as many people who don't think they're affected by most issues to not like them either.
If politicians and client media actually had civilised attitudes towards protests, they would suffer less damage from them, but that would mean having to accept they get things fundamentally wrong, which is a no-no under neoliberal socialism-for-the-rich.
