The nature of protest, particularly in the United States, has changed over the past few decades. The anti-war and civil rights protests of the 1960s were strategically effective, but rallies like those of the Vietnam era are now staid, predictable affairs that bolster unity among groups within a cause but seldom have a significant impact on how the media or policymakers view issues. Increasingly often, they degrade into forums for activist leaders, politicians and policy opportunists to promote themselves and their issues -- but rarely do they change policy anymore.

As the immigration issue shows, however, some types of protests can still be successful. As activists who rely on direct action (or who would like to use it effectively) learn what is working and what is not, the nature of direct action in the United States will change. Demonstrations will become more focused on individuals rather than ideas, even when the most abstract concepts are at issue.

Decisiveness of Student Protests

The protest marches of April 10, 2006, likely will be remembered for years as a decisive moment in immigration policy -- a turning point when hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to express their opposition to federal legislation addressing illegal immigration. As is often the case with popular memory, it likely will be recalled that the marches coincided in time with Senate passage of a moderate immigration bill that included none of the language the protesters opposed.

Popular memory, of course, will be wrong. The massive protests of April 10 came three days after the Senate removed controversial language making it a felony to be an illegal immigrant, and at least a week before a vote was held on the final bill. Instead, the protests that had a decisive impact in turning the nature of the debate were those staged by students in late March and early April. In the majority of these demonstrations, Hispanic school kids skipped class and took to the streets to oppose the immigration bill that had just passed the House of Representatives (HR 4437). For the people in the streets, the provisions of that bill would have been life-changing. The issue was highly personal to them. These swiftly organized demonstrations focused the public's attention on the issues raised by the House bill and changed the debate in Congress, and set the stage for the Senate to pass a far more moderate bill.

In the wake of the demonstrations, the questionable clauses in the HR 4437 gave rise to plenty of debate. The central question, however, did not concern the merits of the clauses, but which political party was responsible for including them in the legislation in the first place. Politicians couldn't seem to get away from the proposal fast enough.

The highly public demonstrations that came April 10 certainly cemented the earlier marchers' arguments in the public mind, but they didn't really impact policy. Rather, they provided an opportunity for the professional activist organizers -- particularly those from labor, civil rights and church groups -- to show after the fact just how much influence their movement had, and to use the immigration issue to further increase their influence within the Hispanic community.

Different Causes, Different Results

Protests in the United States typically take one of three distinct forms: They can be a kind of organized theater staged by issue activists, overly planned political marches or nearly spontaneous, mass actions.

The most noteworthy direct actions in U.S. history have been of the second sort, such as the 1963 March on Washington, but these miss their mark more often than they hit. Most civil rights marches -- whether focused on issues related to race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation -- tend to be overly planned. They often devolve into highly politicized theatrical events in which the activists' objectives tend get lost amid political posturing.

The third type of demonstration, fairly rare in the United States, nevertheless has the greatest potential to result in change, because it draws attention to policy issues in the context of the people who are affected by them. A classic example would be the spontaneous nationwide demonstrations that followed the 1969 Stonewall riots, which stand as a watershed moment in the gay-rights movement. The protests focused on people who were expressing concerns about their lives. There was little political grandstanding or populist opportunism.

The least effective type of protest is the issue-specific street theater that has become fairly common in large cities. This includes most labor protests and also actions led by "policy issue activists" -- for example, anti-tax, environmental and mainstream animal-rights protesters. Organizers of these demonstrations recognize that the actions alone will not change public policy; they view protests primarily as a way to keep grassroots activists energized and to perhaps bring some public attention to their cause. Organizers also know that when protests focus on a corporation, they get the company's attention. No matter how small the numbers demonstrators may be, a protest means that some within senior management will be aware that of the organizer's position on a given issue.

Increasingly, these types of protests are losing what limited effectiveness they have had. Anti-tax, family values, environmental, human rights and other groups are finding it difficult to rally demonstrators in sufficient numbers to really make a scene. And even when they do manage this, issue-focused activists still face an uphill battle; they tend to ask passersby and the media to "pay attention" to whatever the issue is -- or in other words, ask for time and attention that are incredibly scarce in the age of the Internet, multimedia advertising and information overload.

The Boreal Day of Action in November 2005, for instance, was designed to bring together North America's timber activists -- once a powerful force in the Pacific Northwest, other parts of the United States and western Canada -- and focus them on a single issue (the fate of Canada's boreal forests). Roughly 60 events were staged throughout North America. Few noticed. The preparation and buildup for the event was so out of balance with the result that the "Day of Action" actually might have proved counterproductive to activists, who had hoped to convince timber companies they could bring grassroots power to bear against the industry.

To cite another (and fairly absurd) example, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals demonstrates each year against the turkey massacre known as Thanksgiving by putting on display its "sexy Pilgrims" -- women who say they would rather be naked than eat turkey. Though most average Americans have never seen this display, it appears certain -- to one who has -- that the turkey tradition is under no immediate threat.

"Sexy Pilgrims" aside, the recent activities of some within the animal rights movement do highlight a fairly new style of demonstration that can, at times, be highly effective. A new thread of tactics has taken to targeting individuals directly. These kinds of actions, pioneered by animal rights groups, sometimes pass from demonstration and protest into obvious intimidation of corporate and political leaders. Actions might be staged at the executive's or official's home, gym, church, or at a child's school. The protesters usually chant the same slogans and carry signs as they do in more mainstream demonstrations, but by focusing on the "customer experience," so to speak (with the targeted person being the "customer" in this case), they can be much more effective.

Personalizing the Cause

In the United States, protests like those over the immigration bill are a rarity; direct action seldom plays a significant role in changing public policy. It works when the lives of the people demonstrating are touched by the issue -- and when a significant number of people are convinced that a policy proposal would change their lives, the reaction does not require theater, activist leaders or political opportunists. Orchestration and significant planning are not required -- and in fact, planning increasingly is proving counterproductive. What works is a raw emotional outpouring that cannot be faked. Sexy Pilgrim gambits don't do this.

Consider the anti-globalization protests in Seattle in 1999. The demonstrations made news largely because of the anarchists who were throwing objects at police and through windows, but the real power of the demonstration was in the tens of thousands of protesters -- led by unions -- who came to defend what they saw as threats to their jobs and communities. The vast majority did not come to throw objects, and only a minority was driven to demonstrate in support of those in developing countries who they thought would be harmed by free trade agreements. The bulk of the demonstrators were people who had a personal stake in the issues under debate.

A similar lesson can be gleaned from protests at an animal rights conference in Maryland in 1996. Animal rights protesters gathered to denounce the National Institutes of Health's support for animal testing, and they planned to demonstrate outside meetings of researchers. The AIDS activist community, however, organized a counter-protest that led to the arrest of ACT UP protesters. The media images of the event -- with AIDS activists shouting that the animal rights protesters were willing to let people die in order to save the lives of test animals -- was devastating to the animal rights cause.

Searching for Authenticity

At the heart of what makes protests effective is the emotion of the participants. No matter what the issue, authenticity is hard to fake, and activists are learning this key. Activist organizations will adjust their tactics as they come to understand the changes in ways that protests and demonstrations are viewed and received. These adjustments could go in two directions.

First, as discussed, we anticipate an increasing use of "personalization" tactics, with targets being threatened in their homes or caused to fear for the safety of their families or person. This type of protest is highly risky, and any increase in media attention to such tactics likely will render them, in the end, less effective, since the public tends to sympathize with the victim of intimidation -- regardless of what claims are being made against that person.

The other natural adjustment would be for activist groups to seek out allies who are directly affected by their issues of concern -- giving them a way to do more than stage protests asking passersby to "pay attention." By finding allies who can speak as victims of the alleged wrong -- tortured political dissidents or environmental justice activists, to name two -- protesters can say instead, "Look what is happening to us."

In any event, massive and authentic emotional outpourings like the recent immigration protests are unusual, and the chances that something similar will occur again soon are slight. There are few policy issues on the table that are as easily personalized, and with such strong attendant emotions, as the immigration issue. Others could be imagined -- for instance, reinstatement of a draft or the overturn of Roe v. Wade -- but these are unlikely to come about. Health care, climate change and tax policy are continuously up for debate and change, but they do not lend themselves to personalization in such a way that thousands rise up in spontaneous demonstrations. Moreover, politicians themselves are increasingly sensitive to their own vulnerabilities in drafting legislation that strikes such emotional nerves -- as the current squabble over the language in HR 4437 shows.

All things taken together, history suggests it could be another generation before direct protest again impacts the course of U.S. policy.