According To Mike

Question: has a protest been "successful" in the past 30 years?

Did anti-war protests do anything except result in angry citizens because they messed up traffic (those people probably didn't support the war either) and some arrests. I do not believe us little guys can rally numbers substantial enough to change anything. Even violence doesn't change anything. Remember when that guy flew a plane into the IRS? He got some of the best international coverage fighting a larger system and nothing changed. No matter how loud you speak anymore it doesn't matter - you have to have the numbers or the power, and nobody can put together enough numbers large enough to do anything anymore.

Our government has been helping out the crooks on Wall Street and a lot of other shady activities and there has been nothing we can do. Some people with larger voices publish things online, even some politicians try to kick up some action - but it never seems to go anywhere.

What can we do?

The only ideas I've come up with so far have all been useless.

• Write your local Congressman? If they were representing our interests to begin with, half the stuff the government pulls wouldn't have happened.
• Protest? Even with press coverage, you're not going to change a policy. Someone always winds up using it as an excuse to get belligerent as well, further tainting the original point.
• Get violent or terrorist-like? We've seen things like that (the IRS plane deal) - seemed like it was a headline for a day or two, and then it was gone.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate living in a country where it is okay to voice my opinion and not worry too much about repercussions. However, I tend to view things based on ROI, and I don't typically see any point in wasting hours, days or months on something you cannot change. Obviously, there has to be some way to make changes, but as I've said above, options are quite limited and not very effective.