Protests might not change the court's decision — but they have power.
Since the draft of Justice Samuel Alito's majority decision overturning Roe v. Wade leaked last week, people across the country have taken to the streets in protest. These demonstrations have been relatively small, especially when compared to the millions who came out for the George Floyd protests in the summer of 2020, but that may have more to do with the fact that this news caught a lot of people off guard. As the days pass and there's more clarity around the court's intentions, marches will be planned for what promises to be another summer of civil disobedience and unrest. |
I have covered protests for much of my career as a journalist. In December of 2016, I flew from Standing Rock in North Dakota to a protest in the streets of Seoul, South Korea, at which more than a million people gathered to demand the impeachment of then-President Park Geun-hye. A little more than a month later, I stood on the viaduct outside Grand Central Station and watched a throng of tens of thousands of New Yorkers slowly make their way up 42nd street as part of the Women's March that followed the inauguration of Donald Trump. A week later in a parking lot at Kennedy International Airport, I was interviewing families who were waiting for news of their loved ones after the announcement of a Muslim ban as a crowd protested at the entrance to the terminal. |
It was humbling to see so many people around the world engaged in the universal language of dissent: street protest. And yet, the differences between the actions — their planning, their size and how they were processed by the media and politicians — seemed particularly notable. |
Why were Korean protesters able to stay in the streets for weeks, even months? And why did they ultimately succeed with their goal? Why did so many of the people I met at Standing Rock, most of whom seemed to have no intention of leaving until the Dakota Access pipeline was ripped out of the earth, suddenly dissipate just a few months later? And why did the story of the Women's March, which at the time was likely the largest single day demonstration in this country's history, almost immediately spin out into infighting among its organizers? |
Does it make sense to protest when the court seems unlikely to change its mind? There is also no real clear road map to restoring abortion rights on the federal level — you can't vote out a Supreme Court justice, after all, and a national abortion law passed by Congress seems unlikely without a sweeping blue wave in the midterms. |
What my years covering protests have taught me, however, is that these moments of seeming hopelessness are exactly when people should take to the streets, meet with people with the same shared goal and start to build a movement that fights for long-term change. |
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