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https://www.alainguillot.com/protesting/ During the past months, My friend Cheryl Williams and I have gone out on the streets to protest against some of the day-to-day injustices. Protests such as Black Lives Matter, and actions to prevent climat change. Can we improve the world by protesting? I have to ask myself: Is this accomplishing something? Aren’t we wasting our time? Does anyone care? I have to tell myself that yes, protesting is important. Protests create public awareness of injustices or wrongs that need to be fixed. Usually, we don’t see the results right away. Many times they feel like failures at the moment, but protests have a lasting long-term effect on the participants and on society as a whole. In the short term, protest serve as a signal to the people in power, that they are being watched, that there are people who care enough to go out on the streets and express their dissatisfaction, that many are not willing to tolerate the status quo. If the people in power ignore such cries of dissatisfaction, at the very least they could appear as insensitive, and the worse, they could lose their power. Yes, most protests yield no results at that exact moment in time. Oftentimes is business as usual and the oppressors continue oppressing. Injustice, discrimination, bigotry, continue unabated. But little by little, the cries of dissent reaches the ears of the indifferent, the indifferent becomes conscious of the injustice and join the ranks, and the movement grows until a change is made. Slowly, over time, movements and protests confront injustices and they change the minds of those on the periphery. Eventually, that social cause which at one time seemed impossible becomes attainable. The civil rights movement happened because millions of people protested on the street. Women gained their right to vote because thousand of people could no longer tolerate gender discrimination. Eventually, protest wins because racism has no legitimacy, destroying the planet has no legitimacy, killing animals to feed ourselves has no legitimacy. There is no place in our world for homophobia, sexual abuse, gender discrimination, animal exploitation, or economic oppression. Change never happens overnight. Its the growing masses of protesters the ones who precipitate change. The marches lead by Greta Thurber attracted millions of people, and already, there have been changes in public policy to slow down climate change. The marches triggered by the assassination of George Floyd have brought white people alongside blacks to fight against racial discrimination. Municipalities don’t want to get labeled as complicit in police abuse and they providing better training to their police forces. I think protests work because they create an awareness of the injustices being committed, not in some faraway place, but close to home. Protest works, because often time it’s more difficult to sit idly doing nothing than to stand up and join the ranks.