Mass protests transform individual participants into class-conscious actors

Evidence

This echoes a point made by John Berger in a 1968 essay about the alchemy of large protests, strikes, rallies, and sit-ins. These demonstrations, Berger wrote, don’t just demonstrate something to those in power (that people are angry, say, and have the power to disrupt the smooth flow of business). They also demonstrate something to the people gathered on the streets. Those people come to realize that they are not merely individuals, with the limited power of their individual selves, but that “they belong to a class. Belonging to that class ceases to imply a common fate, and implies a common opportunity.” Those opportunities manifest in different ways: when individual renters or debtors or workers can’t pay the bills, it’s a crisis for them and their families. When groups of renters or debtors or workers refuse to pay the bills, or decide to jointly withhold their labor, it’s a crisis for their creditors, their landlords, and their bosses. — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 1087

Categorization

• SHARE: Berger’s 1968 distinction between what a protest demonstrates to power vs. to the participants is a clean formulation a movement-historian friend would enjoy.
• XREF: connects to: Riots’ social-media coordination and retail destruction hinted at nascent class consciousness; Professional classes joining protests changes their political dimensions — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 197; Mass protest can electrify even the most jaded observers — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 406 (+1 more)