At the Heart of the Protest - The Protester

Whats happening online these days, is interesting, amusing and sad. It somehow seems the virus of activism has thoroughly taken over media like Twitter and Facebook. Everybody is lecturing on something. Everybody is the online equivalent of placard-holders.

We argue for days on why this phenomenon is interesting, amusing and sad. Though that is not the objective of this write, however I will venture my quick answer to this statement.

This online activism is interesting because it shows the slowing dawning awareness among people on varied subjects, subjects in previous years would not have been aware of nor have got any showing of support for its cause. This group of new Share and Retweet activists are at the root of the changes that will have enormous impact on society of future. This trend will only gather pace in future and it becomes easier and easier to share the user-generated information to mass audience. Every activist with an issue to propagate and zeal to create will have a platform to do so. And be heard.

This activism is amusing because you see the rot that is plaguing the society just runs deeper and deeper than we originally thought. More we see the underbelly of the activist and their commitment to the issue, or more precisely how they contort themselves to assume the roles they will for surely not touch with a totem pole in real life is definitely amusing. It is amusing how the perpetrators of the crime and their supporters; political class somehow seems to straddle both the horses here; are having a laughing day with all the vent up frustrations and energy and voices being finally vent up in the cyberspace with badly and utterly no consequence. For the perpetrators, it is amusing to see this happen. And to watch these well-intentioned activists chop through furiously at the hologram image of criminals and politicians online, is just as amusing.

And most of all its Sad, very sad. Its sad to see these well intentioned people use the media and not use it in a manner that will prolong their voice and energy. It is sad to see these pools of honesty and ideas work in isolation with the group of who social media, and yet they wonder how they are not able to achieve anything. It is sad to see how their genuine frustrations and issues, are swept under the rug by the next-big-thing on the breaking-news platform. And unfortunately, most do not realize that the "breaking news" is minutely controlled by the people who just want to distract from real issues. Politicians are masters at engineering such distractions. Well, 90% of any battle is about distraction and deception. Why should these be any different.

It is truly sad that these islands of consciousnesses and goodwill work alone, unplanned, unfocused reaching out to unorganized people in an unorganized way, on the issues that can be deliberately manipulated out of the public consciousness with a lift of a finger, and ultimately, these genuine people having as little impact as a mayfly moving a mountain. Its truly sad, because it need not be so.

Sorry, I digress a lot.

For me the root at all these drama is an intriguing question: What leads a person to protest and become an activist?

Now not being a sociology major puts me at genuine disadvantage to understand these. But it is fascinating as to understand what makes a person take up an issue with the force and ferocity that he / she exhibits  What is it in the psychology that associates one person to a particular theme and helps him / her guide to expend energy for the results that truly altruistic and never material. Its a genuine curiosity as to what makes an activist take up a cause where the end results too may never what he / she had expected, i.e. results of that confrontation could be highly counter-productive.

At first glance there seems to nothing 'mass' about what is happening across the world - real or cyber. On a closer look, the big picture is starkly identical across the world. Here is one take:

These are not so much movements of the exploited, though they have joined in, but of the dispossessed – those whose existence is defined by precarity. They are movements of students or ex-students or more broadly of youth, dispossessed of their future, of opportunities to utilize their skills and knowledge. They also include movements of peasants dispossessed of their land or water – in China, India, the Philippines, Brazil, Bolivia and elsewhere. Occupy movements have also come up against urban enclosures, battling the police to hold onto supposedly public spaces.

First and foremost there doesn't seem to be a specific geo / gender / strata barricade on who can protest or not. Anybody with sufficient knowledge, determination and commitment to the cause can protest. And the protest, happens across the board not just for revolutionary causes but for some things very simple as water-in-the-tap or garbage clearing! There is nothing that highlights what could be the boundaries of the protester - intraneous or extraneous. Profile of the protesters and differences between their causes are stark! (check here)

TIME magazine when it hit upon protester as the Person of the Year in 2011, definitely hit upon one theme which is the reason why "see" so many protests. Below is the video where they explain the rationale behind the choice of Protester as Person of the Year.

If I could demarcate two broad but important points Time highlights, its this:

a. People are coming out of house to protest

b. People are using new technologies to organize themselves.*

The motivations for this new found "strength in numbers" theory was superbly displayed at Tahrir Square where an army of peaceful protesters has an impact beyond the wildest imagination:

 Anger against the brutality of the regime was mounting as was the determination to resist. This time things will be different, it was said. Protesters lost their fear, they resisted through barricading themselves, through praying communally while confronting the columns of black police, and by throwing stones when they were attacked. They did not fear the green police vans that ran into them. Then the police forces started to retreat out of fear – they could not deal with the growing fearlessness of the moving compact army of bodies. They ran away from the powerful but pacifist crowds. Suddenly all policemen disappeared. Cairenes woke up one morning and found the entire city without one single policeman. The army then entered the city with their tanks.

Once you taste that taste of Freedom, the possibility of being capable to bringing about a change, paradigm changes. There is no going back to intellectual and sociological slavery.

Many like me, who were not political activists and who were afraid of the violence perpetrated in crushing the protesters, decided finally to march to the square. Middle-class mothers descended onto the streets. My friends’ sons and daughters experienced a metamorphosis in their lives. These youngsters, who led their parents to the street, had been protesting since day one. They found their new selves in the life of the Square. Several youngsters were proud of their newly discovered skills in street fighting.

Then the spectacular first one-million-demonstration turned into a historic moment that mesmerized the Egyptians themselves. It was the euphoria of the newly discovered freedom and the collective longing for dignity. Words fail me to describe how more than some 2 million people marched peacefully and in an orderly manner towards one main space: the Tahrir Square. The organization was spectacular. A clear sense of order was masterminded by the young protesters to penetrate and then move through the square in a peaceful way. It was most remarkable.

Source: Revolutionary moments in Tharir Square

Interestingly, the sometimes protests seem to start almost for anything and for most curious of the cases. Sample this.

It all began when a guy named Itzik discovered that the price of cottage cheese, an Israeli staple, was far higher than the price of similar products in Europe or the USA. Through his page in Facebook, he organized a consumer boycott which not only brought down prices, but served as the dress rehearsal for the ‘middle-class’ protest. The protest itself started at the beginning of July when Dafna Leef moved into a tent because she could not afford to go on paying rent – and hundreds joined her.

And the impact it has on the general awareness levels of society is almost irreversible. 

Suddenly ‘Kiturim’ – the sport of sitting-in-living-rooms-with-friends-and-refreshments-to-air-complaints, a traditional Friday night pursuit for Jews in Israel – became the basis for a rational list of demands that specify the right to have a life. This development recalls the participatory democracy of kibbutz movement ‘town meetings’.

Source

But all these doesn't really tell us why people are Protesters in first place. It is understandable when people are protesting on which their life, welfare and livelihoods are directly dependent on. But how do we understand what drives people to back up and protest for somebody or something which is essentially an abstract concept or for person / people who are far detached from themselves.

For that we have to look far deeper into the realms of psychology and its impact of and by sociology. Here are few salient points from this incredible MUST READ paper on The Social Psychology of Protest

1. Protest is a form of collective action and of social movement participation at the same time.
2. Networks increase efficacy and transform individual grievances into shared grievances and group-based anger, which translates into protest participation. 
3. (Tyler and Smith proposed that) procedural justice might be a more powerful predictor of social movement participation than distributive justice.
4. The social psychological answer to the question as to why some people become mobilized while others do not is efficacy
5. The least active are those who combine political cynicism with the feeling that they are treated fairly; the most active are those who combine cynicism with the feeling that they are treated unfairly
6. Next to shared fate, shared emotions and enhanced efficaciousness, identification with others involved generates a felt inner obligation to behave as a ‘good’ group member
7. People experience emotions on behalf of their group when the social category is salient  and  they identify with the group at stake
8. Anger is seen as THE prototypical protest emotion.
9. When trust is built between people they are more willing to engage in cooperative activity through which further trust can be generated
10. Consciousness raising takes place within social networks. It is within these networks that individual processes such as grievance formation, strengthening of efficacy, identification and groupbased emotions all synthesize into a motivational constellation preparing people for action.
11. The effect of interaction in networks on the propensity to participate in politics is contingent on the amount of political discussion that occurs in social networks and the information that people are able to gather about politics as a result.
12. Action mobilization is further broken down into four separate steps: people need to  sympathize with the cause, need to  know about the upcoming event, must want to participate and they must be  able to participate
13. Participation in protest strengthens identification and induces collective empowerment. The emergence of an inclusive selfcategorization as ‘oppositional’ leads to feelings of unity and expectations of support. This  empowers people to offend authorities. Such action, they continue, creates  collective self-objectification, that is, defines the participant’s oppositional identity opposite the dominant out-group.

The above paper pretty much encapsulates all the thing we need to know on the subject. And pretty much completes the idea that we set out to achieve.

Protest is a state of belief which is using the radical methods to achieve selfish or even altruistic goals while organizing self with a larger number of like-minded individuals thereby seeking safety in large numbers and also enabling positive and social feedbacks to continue the protest.

For the Protesters:

Here are some little suggestions on how to start a revolution.

First and foremost, read Gene Sharp's From Dictatorship to Democracy. Its also a good idea to read and see the "How to start a Revolution" (see here, read here). Also see this, Gene Sharp's lecture on Power of non-violent struggles

Tharir

Time Magazine

*[Note: If the Twitter activists has to learn something is this: they have to USE the media, to GET people OUT on to Streets. In other words, PEOPLE have to make an impact OFFLINE! Its simple as that]