American mass protest marches typically serve as ritual catharsis rather than political change

Evidence

Initially, to an outsider looking in, the moment resembled the traditional theater of contemporary American protest. A march serves as a moment of catharsis. People gather, tensions are released, folks go back to business as usual, and the men (and it is typically always men) who lead the march leverage the spotlight for personal gain. But a brief glance beneath the surface of this particular gathering revealed something much more expansive. The march was just the tip of an organizing iceberg. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 532

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes cathartic spectacle from genuine organizing, a distinction central to judging Glaude’s politics of disruption.
• XREF: connects to: Mass protest can move US majorities toward anti-racist structural politics.; Spiritual and bohemian protest is absorbed as harmless ceremony by system — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 137; Mass protest without a vanguard naturally occupies symbolic space rather than seizing state power — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 225 (+2 more)