At risk of being cynical, dear Hacker News - avoid protests and think about how to be effective if you want to get involved in politics. I can count on not very many fingers how many times I've seen protests accomplish anything useful.

Protests, as a political tool, are for minority opinions to keep themselves in the spotlight using tactics a little bit like a pufferfish. If an opinion has the numbers there are much more effective political routes to take.

Political success, ultimately, comes from persuading neutral parties to support a cause or even at a pinch political opponents to become neutrals. Waving placards and chanting doesn't actually do either of those things effectively. Door-knocking and pamphlet distribution is more effective and more sustainable.

In good spirit, I would like to challenge your argument that protests are just a tool for minority opinions. I wholeheartedly disagree. Nonviolence collective action is one of the most powerful things about democracy. It is by no means a tactic. It may not have a cohesive strategy, but these movements can and do work the numbers games. For me at least, protests can define entire generations of politics well beyond the scope of elected representatives careers or laws that are passed. Anyways, the real meat of my argument: These events define our social contract. They are what define the timeline, not election dates and not term limits. Because ultimately what protests do is either refute or legitimize the value of a single vote. How many modern democracies were formed from rebelling against colonial or imperial rule?

I agree with you there that political success can be derived from persuading neutral parties or neutralizing opponents. However, I would not say ultimately, as you know that neither you nor I can predict chaos. We take polls, we make bets, and then everything's on the table because people don't make rational decisions.

You're right to be cynical. Everything we say and do either gains or loses votes for each side. Protests do need to be aware of the fact that issues are measured in salience, candidates based on congruence. There's this statistical idea of the "median voter", that frames the argument persuasively for me. Success comes from actually winning. And sometimes you have to remind people to stop being losers. We do not need a moment the opposition can then use to galvanize and consolidate their power, which they've already tried to artificially justify anyways.

Note: I have a distinctly American bias on what is appropriate for campaign strategy here that may seem obvious but I have tried my best to generalize my understanding of how election mechanisms work internationally as well.

I'm somewhat skeptical of the ability of politics to bring about meaningful change in the United States. It seems to me that a combination of propaganda from those in power and a political system that's biased towards the status quo is almost insurmountable. It just doesn't seem like face to face persuasion scales the way that media propaganda does.

They do also have a large amount of success in establishing as public knowledge that an idea is well supported, despite mainstream information channels claiming otherwise.

And finally, they have the form people take when fighting anti-democratic actions. What is a completely different action, but looks exactly alike from the outside.