Permission to reprint or copy this article or photo, other than personal use, must be obtained from BARRIOZONA,
Call 480-983-1445 or e-mail admin@barriozona.com with your request
Phoenix, Arizona – Almost every time a group of people is going to take the streets to march and protest in favor or against
any cause or issue, the question about the effectiveness of demonstrations arises. It has become a cliché to hear
arguments defending and attacking the validity of the subject: “marches do work,” “marches don’t work.” Perhaps even this
commentary is part of that repetitive discourse to justify one side or the other, but for this commentator, the debate is
redundant, because marches do work. It all depends on what purpose and on if those who advocate or oppose marches
are willing to accept the price and acknowledge the consequences that come along with a protest.
New generations have to live their own experiences, most of the time in spite of what history has already taught us all.
History will repeat itself, regardless. However, for the sake of some sense of advance and accomplishment, we shouldn’t
be discussing whether marches do work or don’t, because the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor that they work, though
not only or always in the way advocates and opponents of marches envision, want, or are willing to recognize.
Marches can work for both sides; those protesting and those being protested against. As a journalist for many years, I
have seen it first hand, having attended big and small demonstrations, and having walked miles and miles along
dissatisfied, angry, sometimes violent demonstrators. A march, especially a large one, cannot go unnoticed and without
some sort of outcome, good or bad. In any sense, marches work because they have an effect, even if negative and
counterproductive to those who organized it.
I have attended massive, impressive demonstrations where tens of thousands of people pressured the government to
change their condition or situation. In every instance, these marches have worked, whether it was in bringing attention in
such a dramatic way to their pleas, generating public content or displease, or backfiring on them when authorities and
governments crushed movements, arrested leaders, and even killed demonstrators.
Marches work, but not just in one intended way. They may work to help alleviate an issue or to worsen it. Sometimes
protests bring awareness; other times they result in repression and retaliation. Groups organizing demonstrations do it
because they are persuaded they will work, but many times they fail to assess the full extent and consequences that will
follow, and so often they end up working against them. Those who are being protested against, particularly if they’re in
political or economic power, manipulate demonstrations for their own purposes, even to try to prove their point, justify their
policies, and demonize protesters.
In the early 80’s, when I was in the dawn of my career as a writer and photojournalist, I attended some of the multitudinous
marches teachers organized in Mexico. Those were monster marches, not the junior demonstrations we see here in
Arizona. They sure created awareness to their pleas for better salaries and benefits; there were so many marching that it
was impossible to ignore them. They also made many people angry because they paralyzed Downtown Mexico City,
blocking streets for days and weeks. For them, their demonstrations worked positively but also negatively. They achieved
little progress and failed to see most of their demands met by the government. More sadly, teachers saw one of their own
killed, allegedly by the government.
Teacher and leader Misael Nuñez Acosta was gunned down on January 30, 1981. He had just finished an organizing
meeting to plan a national teachers’ demonstration to take place in Mexico City. The march organized after his death was
even more impressive (see the photos I took then); the government’s repression continued. Those strong marches
worked in more than one way, and not always to benefit the demonstrators.
Most recently, I walked along one million people, again in Mexico City. Presidential candidate Manuel López Obrador and
his thousands and thousands of supporters from all over the country of Mexico took to the streets several times. His
protests were some of the most impressive, large and peaceful I’ve ever seen. López Obrador claimed he was the
legitimate winner of the 2006 election, and that the incumbent government had stolen the election from him.
The massive demonstrations shook the city, pressured the government, and created a sense of a grassroots movement
among protestors. Yet, the party in power utilized the marches as a way to prove López Obrador was a populist who
preyed on Mexico’s poorest and gained them over providing them with basic needs. At the end, those marches worked for
more than one purpose; not for López Obrador and his many sympathizers’ purpose.
Here in the United States, I also attended the immigrants’ marches of March 24, and April 10, 2006, and May 1st, 2007.
Organizers brought out to the streets the, until then, “invisible” masses of undocumented immigrants to dramatize the
need for a comprehensive immigration reform. Supposing that by seeing a combined amount of millions of immigrants
marching across the nation in cities like Phoenix, Chicago and Los Angeles, American citizens would be persuaded to
accept a reform to legalize about 12 million people without documents.
Organizers, though, failed to consider the potential negative consequences, the backlash that followed against
immigrants, and the stage created in Arizona, for example, for the volatile racial atmosphere that is fueling politicians’
crackdown on undocumented immigrants, as well as the immigration enforcement conducted not just by ICE anymore
but –attention, not just from the Maricopa County Sheriff Department (MCSO)– by half a dozen of Arizona law enforcement
agencies.
These demonstrations worked to create the awareness about the issue, but also worked for politicians to prove their
points that immigration crackdown is necessary. Today, many people believe that the main outcome of those impressive
and intimidating immigrant marches was an increase in policies against undocumented individuals, a resurgence of hate
crimes, and a growing opposition to an immigration reform.
Undocumented immigrant advocacy groups in Maricopa County have been protesting and organizing demonstrations
more regularly since 2007. They have their own claims of effectiveness and their reasoning to continue taking their
demands to the streets. At the same time, beginning with a series of protests in December 2007 against a business
owner that hired off-duty sheriff deputies to patrol their premises, the MCSO launched, along the marches, a systematic
crackdown on the streets to stop motorists mainly for non-moving violations that lead to the arrest of undocumented
immigrants.
The sheriff department’s actions are too obvious to dismiss the idea that they are not using a racial and economic profile
to stop certain people based on their physical appearance, and that he is retaliating those who have protested against
him.
Once again, these local demonstrations worked. They created awareness against Arizona’s crackdown on undocumented
workers and their families not only locally, but in other states. At the same time, these protests have worked for other
purposes for the opposing side, by generating more support for the Sheriff, also in other states, and with people who
didn't know about him before.
Another march is scheduled to take place this Saturday, January 16, 2009 in Phoenix. It may achieve its intended
purposes, but it may also have its unintended consequences. Even before this demonstration takes place, the head of the
MCSO has announced, according to an article published in The Arizona Republic, continued actions in the enforcement of
Arizona laws against undocumented immigrants. He will again counteract by closing the jails to visitors since the protest
is targeting the county’s jail complex in South Phoenix.
Since demonstrations do work, perhaps the real issue is not to debate about their effectiveness, as some inexperienced
analysts still do, but to consider if the consequences are worth the effort, not for the organizers, but for the people they say
they represent, and ultimately, will feel in their own flesh the positive or negative impact of the protest others organized for
them.
Those who claim to work on behalf of the people and encourage them to protest may be willing to pay a price for their
actions, but should not assume that other, more vulnerable people can afford to pay the price of the negative
consequences marches and protest may bring, and most likely they will.
The short and long outcome of demonstrations may well benefit those who participate in them. In the case of honest, hard-
working and law-abiding workers and their families who are in need of an immigration reform, hopefully their situation can
be resolved and obtain legal status. This writer has extensively written in favor of that. So far, my personal observation is
that some actions have done more harm than the benefit they have achieved.
Nevertheless, they also must be aware of the consequences and understand that there may be a high price to pay.
Instead of deciding if marches do work or don’t, organizers and those who participate in the demonstrations need to
decide if that price is worth it, and whether they’re willing to live with the outcome, even if it boomerangs on them
Copyright © 2010 Hispanic Institute of Social Issues
Grassroots Journalism
www.barriozona.com
|
Believers and doubters still debate on the effectiveness of marches and protests, but both sides have to
be willing to see the pros and cons, and decide if they can live with the consequences.
By Eduardo Barraza
BARRIOZONA
January 13, 2010
Marches and Demonstrations Do Work,
For a Variety of (Good and Bad) Reasons