In print | Published October 1, 2009 — Updated October 07, 2009 17:04

Last week, the G20 economic summit was convened at the University of Pittsburgh, where the leaders of the free world discussed measures to remedy the current global economic quagmire. Marring the two-day convention, however, was a series of protests and the ensuing police reaction. A wide-ranging selection of interest groups — from the Free Tibet contingent to the members of the Iraq Veterans Against the War — chose last Thursday to protest in support of their various unaddressed causes. The police response that followed led to dozens of arrests, numerous innocent bystander injuries and accusations of police brutality — all this on top of the 50,000 dollars’ worth of property damages perpetrated by the protestors. A more peaceful Friday march, dubbed “The People’s March,” reportedly attracted over 4,000 protestors and an accompanying ensemble of police officers in even greater numbers, fully dressed in riot gear.

Leaving aside the predictable shouting match about the line between violating citizen liberties and maintaining orderly conduct, last week’s events raise many interesting — and troubling — issues regarding the state of the American protest. “[Last Friday’s protest march] was the biggest protest march in Pittsburgh since the 1970s protests against Vietnam,” said Peter Shell, president of the Thomas Merton Center, the local social justice group that sponsored “The People’s March.” Yet the overwhelming sentiment is that the impact of the G20 protests, even coupling Thursday’s and Friday’s events, falls pathetically short of the urgency and fury that defined the anti-Vietnam movement.

Such a disparity highlights a key question: how relevant is the political tool of the protest in modern times?

A significant amount of the social progress achieved in the last century, to be sure, was fueled by the raw rage of political protests. Vietnam has already been acknowledged. And even with the necessity of behind-the-scenes political wrangling for the Civil Rights Movement, the symbolism of the March on Washington endures. In our current political climate, then, with its ever-increasing numbers of hot button topics and ever-improving means of communication, it seems that more causes should be heard and acted upon.

But the problem lies in the simple fact that when there are too many voices clamoring for attention, even the most accommodating ear is unable to distinguish between all of them. The G20 protests are a microcosm of a national — even global — problem. Despite their large numbers, the protestors at Pittsburgh ultimately contributed very little to any of their various causes, precisely because they represented so many causes. When members of the religious Falun Gong are marching in silence alongside alleged anarchists wreaking havoc on private property, it becomes extraordinarily difficult to find a unifying purpose of the protest.

It is as though the concept of freedom of speech has been perverted to the point where interest groups decide that to seize any national spotlight — the G20 summit, for example — and throw as many voices and bodies and slogans into a few miles of marching with no cohesive goal in mind is somehow appropriate.

None of this is to deny the potential viability of a protest as a political tool in and of itself. The issue is with how protests are currently being employed (poorly) by the numerous social activist groups. An organized protest that may be small in scale and relatively far from the spotlight can achieve so much more than a disjointed amalgamation of factions. Look no further than Center City Philadelphia, where concentrated efforts by the Asian American Union and Casino-Free Philadelphia have staved off the construction of a Foxwoods casino near Chinatown for a year now. There have been arrests during the course of protesting, but there has not been the senseless vandalism or endangering of innocent bystanders that can so easily accompany a protest without a purpose.

Despite the success of relatively smaller endeavors like No Casino in Chinatown, however, the fact remains that triumphs of social justice on a grander scale are few and far between. Cindy Sheehan took the anti-Iraq movement to the very gates of George W. Bush’s Texas ranch, yet unrest in Iraq still lurches on with as little sense of direction as the G20 protestors. Gay rights parades and marches make waves that unfortunately seem easier and easier to ignore, and their uphill battle is being fought on an ever-steeper surface. Has the political protest’s propensity for great change been exhausted?

That is a question with no easy answer. It is true that the protest can still be a symbol of serious discontent; it is also true that this symbol can be cheapened by farces like Glenn Beck’s 912 Project. What is abundantly clear, however, is that disorganized operations like the one in Pittsburgh last week are unlikely to be very beneficial for any party involved.

It is a fair conclusion to say that the existence of too many voices has diluted the power of the protest. And yet that is what we, as Swarthmore students, find ourselves continually doing — diluting the persuasiveness of dissent.

Our comfort with the inclination to subdivide ourselves allows us to identify with specific causes, admittedly. But perhaps the frustration certain groups feel as they attempt to enact change arises from the fact that even a campus as liberal as ours purports to be cannot support so many different voices, each one rendering the previous one less potent.

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