The Tuesday protest is now officially a Thursday protest and it’ll be outside City Hall. (Shifted it a couple days to get some other materials together.) If you can’t make it to this one, don’t worry. There’s about five more coming and each focuses on a different issue, so you’ll have another opportunity. The good news is that staples and hammers will be available for those who asked for them.

A Word About Protests

If you’ve watched a protest before, you realize they can be quite lacking. The enthusiasm is great, but the results are what matter. For most of us, this will be the first protests we’ve ever done, so let’s try to create protests that are genuinely effective.

The Message is What Matters

The personalities don’t matter, the number of people don’t matter, it’s the message. It’s all about the message. If you are saying something that’s both needed and true, you’ve won the day.

Handouts are more important than big signs.

But together, they’re like Voltron. Big signs, a staple of protests, can’t really communicate a whole lot and don’t do it very eloquently. They’re good for catching a glance, but aren’t so good for changing minds. So, use those big signs to catch a glance, but make sure you have a handout that they can read on the bus home so they know what is so important that it’s worth making a big sign.

Tell a Focused, Yet Simple Story

It’s not enough to be a cheerleader for something. Simply showing up and demanding a monorail isn’t good enough. Each protest should focus on a particular element of what it means to vote Yes on the monorail. There are so many positive aspects to highlight, so take your time to highlight each one.

Stay on Target

Once you’ve picked your message for a protest, stick to it. Sure, there are lots of great things to talk about, but right now you just want to get that one message across. You may find it a worthy cause to try to free mumia, but that’s another protest, not this one.

Any other advice we should add to our list? Add it in the comments.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 17th, 2005 at 10:52 pm and is filed under Monorail. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.