From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section is missing citations or needs footnotes. Using inline citations helps guard against copyright violations and factual inaccuracies.(October 2007)

Protest expresses relatively overt reaction to events or situations: sometimes in favor, though more often opposed. Protesters may organize a protest as a way of publicly and forcefully making their opinions heard in an attempt to influence public opinion or government policy, or may undertake direct action to attempt to directly enact desired changes themselves.

Self-expression can, in theory, in practice or in appearance, be restricted by governmental policy, economic circumstances, religious orthodoxy, social structures, or media monopoly. When such restrictions occur, opposition may spill over into other areas such as culture, the streets or emigration.

A protest can itself sometimes be the subject of a counter-protest. In such a case, counter-protesters demonstrate their support for the person, policy, action, etc. that is the subject of the original protest.

Contents 1 Historical notions 2 Forms of protest 2.1 Public demonstration or political rally 2.2 Written demonstration 2.3 Civil disobedience demonstrations 2.4 As a residence 2.5 Destructive 2.6 General direct action 2.7 Protesting a government 2.8 Protesting a military shipment 2.9 By government employees 2.10 Job action 2.11 By management 2.12 By tenants 2.13 By consumers 2.14 Information 2.15 Civil disobedience to censorship 2.16 Literature, art, culture 2.17 Religious 3 Usage in American English 4 Teach-In 5 Economic Effects of Protests against Companies 6 References 7 See also 8 External links

Unaddressed protest may grow and widen into dissent, activism, riots, insurgency, revolts, and political and/or social revolution, as in:

• Northern Europe in the early 16th century (Protestant Reformation)
• North America in the 1770s (American Revolution)
• France in 1789 (French Revolution)
• The Haymarket riot, 1886, a violent labor protest led by the Anarchist Movement
• Martin Luther King's 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, a key moment in the Civil Rights Movement
• The Stonewall riots in 1969 protesting the treatment of homosexuals in New York City
• The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
• The many ACT-UP AIDS protests of the late 1980s and early 1990s
• The Seattle WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999 protest activity against the World Trade Organization
• Anti-globalization Protests in Prague in 2000
• Serbia in 2000
• The YCAC (Youth Campaign Against Conscription) was mainly made up of university students, in which they would organise marches and demonstrations
• SOS (Save Our Sons) were moderate middle class women who would hold silent protest vigils-founded in 1965

Recognized forms of protest include:

Some forms of direct action listed in this article are also public demonstrations or rallies.

• Protest march
• Picketing
• Street protesters
• Die-in
• Protest song
• Silent protest
• Radical cheerleading

Written evidence of political or economic power, or democratic justification may also be a way of protesting.

• Petitions
• Letters (to show political power by the volume of letters): For example, some letter writing campaigns especially with signed form letter

Any protest could be civil disobedience if a “ruling authority” says so, but the following are usually civil disobedience demonstrations:

• Public nudity or topfree (to protest indecency laws or as a publicity stunt for another protest such as a war protest) or animal mistreatment (e.g. PETA's campaign against fur)
• Sit-in
• Raasta roko (people blocking auto traffic with their bodies)
• Some other publicity stunts

• Peace camp
• Formation of a tent city

• Riot - Protests or attempts to end protests sometimes lead to rioting.
• Self-immolation

• Nonviolent resistance
• Occupation

• Tax resistance
• Conscientious objector
• Flag desecration

• Port Militarization Resistance - protests which attempt to prevent military cargo shipments.

• Bully pulpit
• Judicial activism

• Strike action
• Sitdown strike
• Walkout
• work-in

• Lockout

• Rent strike

• Boycott
• Consumer Court
• Public burning/destroying of product, eg. Burning of British cloth during the Non-cooperation movement in India, 1920

• Informative letters, letter writing campaigns, letters to the editor
• Teach-in
• Zine
• Soapboxing

• Samizdat (distributing censored materials)
• Protest Graffiti

• Culture jamming

• Recusancy

In American English, the verb protest often acts transitively: The students protested the policy. Elsewhere one can still find intransitive usage: The students protested against the policy; or: The students protested in favor of the policy.

Early protests began with basic things such as a teach-in. These were organised from 1965 onwards, at these speakers representing different viewpoint debated issues.

A study of 342 US protests covered by the New York Times newspaper in the period 1962 and 1990 showed that such public activities usually had an impact on the company's publicly-traded stock price. The most intriguing aspect of the study's findings is that what mattered most was not the number of protest participants, but the amount of media coverage the event received. Stock prices fell an average of one-tenth of a percent for every paragraph printed about the event.^[1]

• Action on climate change
• Anti-globalization
• 2006 Dalit protests in Maharashtra
• First Amendment to the United States Constitution
• France Protest
• Gandhigiri
• 2006 Indian anti-reservation protests
• May 1968
• Police
• Port Militarization Resistance
• Protest (baseball)
• Protest art
• Protests against the 2003 Iraq war
• Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
• UK fuel protests

• Slideshow of pictures from the Amnesty International denounce torture rally at Portland, Oregon.
• Essay examining ICTs and protest
• High-tech protest at the 2004 Republican National Convention
• Parenting Versus Protesting: Are They Mutually Exclusive?
• Is There A Legal Age for Political Dissent? Teens at Protests!
• Important Protests Mapped on Platial.