How to build a better mosh pit
This week’s question comes from me, actually:
Do protests work?
Depends what you mean by “work,” but let me tell my story and let’s see if we can come up with a satisfying answer.
I’ve always been more comfortable as the carnival barker that gets people into the tent than as one of the people in the tent. After the election in November, I felt lost and I was looking to help people who were already doing the work, so I decided to get in the tent and see if I could help.
I joined a local progressive organization with the hope that I could join others in doing something positive in our community. I went to meetings. I took a class in organizing (that was quite good). I also promised myself I would keep my mouth shut and just listen for a few months. And I’m proud to say I managed to do so. I listened to other folks as they told me why they were there. I listened to various speakers as they gave informative lectures on how our city works. I also listened to a room of people debate for 45 minutes—and then vote on—whether we should be handing out fliers. All the while thinking of how many fliers I could’ve staple gunned to lamp posts in those 45 minutes.
That aside, I gotta tell you, it felt amazing to be hanging out with a room full of people who agreed on so many things. We all agreed that Gaza was a genocide. We all agreed that cops weren’t the answer to anything. We all agreed that health care was a human right. We all agreed that trans people are who they say they are. Etc etc etc. That part was amazing, and quite honestly, in 2025 America, shouldn’t be taken lightly. It’s good to have a community where you feel like you can be yourself and where you can feel like you’re amongst people who celebrate you for being yourself.
I also started going to the weekly Tesla Takedown protests that are happening across the world. I really enjoyed going to those because it turns out I really, really like to yell at people. Especially people driving Teslas, which San Francisco has a lot of. And while there’s certainly ample opportunities to do this while I ride my bike back and forth every day, there’s a joy in doing it as a group. (It’s also safer.) So Erika and I make signs, meet up with friends, and make a lot of noise. Do the Tesla Takedown protests work? Signs would point that they’re definitely having some effect.
These protests also come with a bit of community attached to it. You start hoping that Drum Guy is coming this week. At the same time, you start looking at some of the signs people are carrying and you begin to realize that I might not agree on everything with the other folks at this protest. (As an immigrant, I’m not crazy about the amount of white people carrying DEPORT MUSK signs. White people shouldn’t be talking about deporting anyone. Find another angle. He’s given us hundreds. Also, the signs with Trump and Musk kissing are straight up homophobic. We’re well beyond that.)
But I also noticed that there wasn’t a crossover between the two groups. The local progressive organization had no presence at the Tesla Takedown protests. And I began wondering why.
What’s the difference between a movement, a political party, and a club? Great question. All three groups can look very similar. In fact, they’re made of the same basic three ingredients: change, power, and community. It’s the percentages that set them apart. A movement is mostly interested in making change, while recognizing that it needs a little bit of power to do that, and a foothold in the community for traction. A political party is mostly interested in power, and uses the promise of change to get it (while also being relatively comfortable changing its core beliefs to get that power), while rallying a community to gather that power. A club is mostly interested in community, while promising change and power as a way to gather that community. It’s also a more insular definition of community than the other two.
Last Friday I got an email from the local progressive organization reminding me of the upcoming vision meeting where we’d be deciding, or debating, or voting, or probably all three, on our goals for the upcoming year. I thought that sounded interesting and I wanted to go. Except that it was happening on Saturday afternoon. The same Saturday afternoon as the big Hands Off protest that was happening all over the country. Which I also wanted to go to. They were sitting out the protest.
I thought I was joining a movement. In hindsight, I’d joined a club. And there’s nothing wrong with a club, but if it’s not what you’re looking for, you’re in the wrong place.
I feel fairly comfortable telling you that protests don’t work if you don’t attend them.
Sackets Harbor is a small town of 1,400 people in upstate New York. It’s also the home town of Trump border czar Tom Homan, who sucks. On March 27th, Homan’s ICE agents kidnapped a mother and three children from Sackets Harbor and took them to a concentration camp in Texas. The children were aged nine, 15, and 18. Over the weekend, the town rallied. Over a thousand people protested in front of Homan’s house, demanding the family’s release. According to the Guardian, the protest was organized by the local Democratic Party. Do I agree with everything the Democratic Party does and/or says? Not even close. Would I have agreed with everything the protestors gathered in front of Tom Homan’s house believed? I’m gonna guess not. It’s also fair to say I would’ve very much disagreed with them on a few very important things. Would I have been at the protest? Absolutely. Because for a weekend, and maybe for just one weekend, we would’ve shared a common cause: a family’s release from a concentration camp.
That protest worked. The family was released on Monday.
You will never completely agree with everyone at a protest. You don’t even completely agree with everyone in your house, even—maybe especially—if you live alone. And if you share your house with a cat, your cat hates you more than another human being ever could. And yet, you make it work. You focus on the moments of agreement that bond you, and not the time Seymour used your new couch as a scratching post.
I ended up going to the Hands Off protest on Saturday in San Francisco. As did thousands of other people. And yes, I saw a few signs that made me roll my eyes, and a few that actually pissed me off, but I also saw a few that made me laugh. I saw puppets. (We need more puppets.) (And a lot more things on fire.) I saw groups of trans kids, veterans, your standard Bay Area neo-liberals, the furries were out, some anemic looking tech kids, old hippies, new hippies. Some of these groups are very much my people, and some of them are very much not. But I attempted to focus on our common cause, which is to get fascists out of our government. Which means we’re going to have to get good at building cringe coalitions.
Cringe coalitions have been with us for a long time. Old people call it movement building. If you’ve seen the movie Rustin you can skip this paragraph, but if you haven’t I encourage you to. It’s a very good movie about the logistics that it takes to put together a coalition. Specifically the March on Washington of 1963, which included getting a lot of people who mostly agreed on common cause, to put aside their differences (not all of them minor), and come together to throw the most successful protest in our nation’s history. Not to mention coordinating stages, chairs, buses, a PA system, sandwiches, and porta potties. It also stars Colman Domingo, who is always worth your time.
We’re never going to agree with everyone on everything, and not all disagreements can be weighed equally, but if we are going to get through this, we’re gonna have to get comfortable with the fact that the person marching next to us might be a neo-liberal.
I also took some time after the protest to read about some of the criticisms. And you know what? A lot of them were right. Specifically this one: mostly everyone I saw was white. Not everyone. But mostly everyone. It’s not enough to say that everyone is welcome. I spent a fair amount of my youth in mosh pits. Where supposedly “everyone was welcome,” except that was more dependent on the band than anything else. Bands made up of angry white guys (this was 95% of bands) typically generated mosh pits made up of angry white guys. And if you’re not an angry white guy, that is not a welcoming mosh pit. So I would urge the organizers to look at themselves and make sure they look like the audience they want to see in the mosh pit. You’re also gonna have to get comfortable with the idea that not every organization in your coalition will agree on everything. Honestly, some of the members of your coalition should make you uncomfortable.
Protests need to better represent the communities we’re in. But for this to happen, leftist and progressive organizations also need to decide if they want to be a club or a movement. Which isn’t to say that your Marx/Lenin Reading Group isn’t a valuable endeavor. It is. But it’s also a peacetime endeavor. And this isn’t peacetime. While it’s amazing to hang out with people you agree with, sometimes to accomplish a thing you might have to spend time with people you don’t actually like. As the San Francisco flag says: teoría en paz, acción en guerra.
Just as I was about to post this, a friend posted a link about Kentucky unions staging a protest to stop the deportation of 200 union workers, again rounded up by the thugs at ICE. Most of those 200 workers are immigrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Valenzuela. Cassie Lyles, a Kentucky teacher and union member who was at the protest had this to say:
“These are our neighbors. These are kids who are in my building.”
I guarantee you don’t agree with with all the people living in your building. Some of them might be legit pains in the ass. But like Cassie says, these are our neighbors. And when our neighbors need us we show up.
Do protests work?
Yes, and… maybe not by themselves. But they’re a part of what works. Everything will work until it doesn’t, and even those things will stop working after a while. We need to do all of it. The protests, the phone calls, the postcard writing, the chaining ourselves to federal buildings, the setting cybertrucks on fire, the mutual aid, the turning away when you see someone pocketing a sandwich or babyfood, the boycotts, the corporate sabotage, the essay writing (this one is self-serving), the Luigis, the very simple act of just being kind to one another. And yes, even the vision meetings.
But maybe not on the same day as the protest.
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