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Not sure if I've told this story here before, but once upon a time, I didn't really get the point of most protests happening my area because I viewed them as "preaching to your own echo chamber" in a lot of cases. Ex: I saw people do a climate march through a very liberal university campus within a very liberal city, and I was just like "Okay, everyone here agrees with you. This place has crazy aggressive sustainability goals. What is the point of this?"

Then when Roe fell, there were a lot of protests outside the courthouses in cities near me, and though those city courthouses do serve the surrounding rural areas as well, the cities themselves are all rather progressive and left-leaning, so once again I was like "Okay, what is the point of this?" but I went anyway just for the experience. We stood on a street corner with our signs. Most people driving by honked in agreement with us. A few people yelled "abortion is murder" at us out their car windows, and we yelled back "abortion is healthcare!" Cool, okay, still didn't get the point because it's not like we were changing any minds or there in large numbers (we were no threat to any power structures), and the city already largely agreed with us.

But then we got another SUV that pulled up and yelled "abortion is murder!" at us (both husband and wife this time). Looked in the back seat, and they were traveling with their daughter who was maybe 13ish. She locked eyes with me, gave me the most serious look I've ever received, and gave us a thumbs up just above the window ledge so that her family couldn't see.

And that's the day I learned that protests are not always about threatening entrenched power structures but letting people in isolated ideological bubbles know that there are other perspectives and that if they share them, they're not alone.

Timely reminder that protests have many purposes, and one of them is to steel the nerves of the youth.

And one of them is to say “this is our town.”

In our town the right wing have sometimes had protests or hosted speakers. We have one guy - one guy - who rallies the counter protests, which are always larger than any right-wing audience, and we turn up and make it awkward.

The right wing are less visible in Bristol or Brighton because they’d be afraid: if you tried to book an anti-gay speaker in Brighton you’d be laughed to death and then eaten. Why shouldn’t our town have the same protective shell of reputation? How else will they know who we are? How else are they supposed to know that our town doesn’t want them?

What makes a city liberal? What keeps a city liberal?

What is protest if not an act of making?

As someone who has helped organize climate marches for several years now. Protests matter. For the already mentioned reasons, but also because they might get news coverage. Or at least give you something to post about on social media. You can spread what you are doing beyond the people attending the protest.

And especially in democracies it's also to remind elected politicians that the People have the Power. And you know, remind them a little that in the past those crowds might have turned up with torches and pitchforks instead of protest-signs.

It's also for the people themselves. To know they are not alone, that there are other people on their side and to overcome the feeling of "But I can't do anything..."

And then looking at my own country (Germany) it's funny because we actually:

Protests can and have changed the world. So keep going to them^^