Protests have always been a struggle with a table heavily tipped in favor of people in power.

Given that I wish to even this field, and you probably do too, we should stop policing the methods that protestors use, even for protests we don’t like.

I would simply like to make a few observations about protesting in general, not focusing explicitly on current ones.

I consider a protest peaceful when the material status quo can be resumed after the protest, meaning that people and property are unharmed in the long run. This does not mean that people and property cannot be affected during the protest, but rather that the harm is temporary. 

For example, a group of protesters blocking a bridge is peaceful because when they leave, traffic can resume. 

A group of protesters toppling a bridge, on the other hand, is not peaceful because the property was destroyed. 

A peaceful protest can — and I would argue should — have economic costs. Take this example: if the bridge collects tolls, the owner will lose money during the protest.

A person in power will only concede if they determine that whatever benefit they see in their desired outcome is smaller than the damage of the protest if they do not concede. The goal of a protest is to force those in power to act against their own wishes and towards the cause of the protesters. 

From this, it can be seen that for a protest to succeed, it must be significantly harmful to the person in power. Thus, laws that serve to decrease the cost of protests — like permits or restricting the location — also serve to decrease the efficacy of those protests. 

Let’s consider a strike over wages at a company. The company loses money if it pays higher wages, but also loses money if it is not able to conduct business that day.  

If the striking workers block the doors to the workplace, then they have more bargaining power because the company can’t just replace them. To keep conducting business, the company will hire strikebreakers.

From this, it is obvious that if the government banned door blocking, then the ability for this kind of protest to succeed decreases. 

New York City’s protest laws make a good case study. In NYC, your rights to protest do not extend to trespassing or blocking buildings. To block traffic, you must acquire a permit from the city, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union. 

These restrictions serve to minimize the cost and thus the effectiveness of the protest. 

Given this, it seems to me that pleas for adherence to these laws and castigation of violators by people on the outside — talking heads, uncles and school administrators — amount to the argument that effective protest is too societally costly to be allowed. The effect is to promote the status quo at the expense of future change.

I hope that we might overcome this way of thinking. We should base our judgements on the target and aim of a protest and not reflexively defend those in power. The means — when existing in the sterile world of economics — should not matter.

Without the ability to gum up the works substantially, protests are limited to local impact through attempts to sway public opinions and consumer boycotts. 

Sometimes, boycotts against companies are impossible because of the demographics of product consumption. As I do not consume military armaments or corporate loans, it is impossible for me to boycott defense contractors or commercial banks.

The only thing more American than extolling the rights of the First Amendment seems to be narrowly tailoring them down to avoid economic costs. We can do better.