Continuing Long History, Public Protests Still Used To Initiate Change

By Haley Pritchett, TheStatehouseFile.com

Dec 1, 2021

INDIANAPOLIS—Sixty-six years ago on Wednesday, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on an Alabama bus. Her seemingly simple protest helped inspire many more to come during the Civil Rights Movement.

Confront the Climate Crisis stands outside the Indiana Statehouse during a protest demanding more climate action legislation.

Since 1955, Americans have been fighting injustice, often in the form of protest. Last year during the Black Lives Matter Movement, scholars raised questions about whether or not protesting actually brings about change.

Some Hoosiers who have protested across the state argue it certainly does in their eyes. Susan Olzak, emerita professor of sociology at Stanford University, dove deep into this question in the December American Sociological Review and in many cases agrees.

In her study, Olzak finds that the act of protesting leads to community empowerment, which signals a threat to elites and authorities, which then increases their likelihood of making compromises, leading to change.

“Protest achieves desired outcomes when it signals the importance of an issue and empowers an aggrieved community to take action,” she said in the study. “These processes, in turn, pose a threat to existing elites and authorities, raising the cost of maintaining the status quo, which provides incentives for authorities to make concessions.”

Haley Bougher, director of education and advocacy for Women4Change in Indianapolis, says protests provide a platform for voices in marginalized groups who are often silenced and ignored.

While pro-abortion-rights protesters gathered on Oct. 2 in downtown Indianapolis in response to a new Texas abortion law, anti-abortion advocates assembled nearby for a counter-protest.

“It is a way for lawmakers and folks in power to finally hear people,” she said. “It is unfortunate it has to be that way, but it seems like that’s sometimes the only way those folks are heard.”

Bougher has been attending protests since high school and says that even when the goals of a protest are not accomplished, she still thinks the act has an impact.

“Even if those demands aren’t met, you still feel some sort of gratification,” she said, “like you were heard that day.”

Aaron Welcher, a co-founder of the Greater Indianapolis Multifaith Alliance, said to him, protesting absolutely makes a difference on a personal level but also on a political level.

Haleigh Inscore and Sarah Austin stand with their signs at an Oct. 2 abortion rights rally in downtown Indianapolis.

“That doesn’t mean all protests are successful or that all protests end up really being able to get the change they need and the change they want, but if you look at the history of protests, the Civil Rights Movement was built on protest, the LGBTQ-plus community was built on protest,” he said.

A statistic that stood out to Welcher from the BBC is that it only takes 3.5% of the population actively participating in protests to ensure serious political change.

Danielle Nimtz, who supports Women4Change, the Equality in Indiana organization, racial uprising, climate action, and youth activism groups. She said that a lot of justice work requires money, but with income inequalities, not a lot of people have the freedom to support organizations financially.

“And (protesting is) a virtually costless attempt to support these people who are on the ground, in the Statehouse, and in different locations advocating for these solutions and these changes,” she said.

Nimtz wants people to know that protesting is not always the first instinct of organizations.

“Sometimes protest is the option that you have to go to get people to listen, to get those results, and to see your issues in the Statehouse and in your community to the forefront of conversations,” she said.

FOOTNOTE:  Haley Pritchett is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.