Protesters only reach targets when they go where audiences already are

Evidence

In the beginning, they considered two different approaches. The first was to launch a bold “umbrella” campaign in central London, with the umbrella symbolizing the futility and absurdity of trying to protect oneself from a nuclear explosion. They would parade with umbrellas in Grosvenor Square, suspend them from balloons over the capital, and carry them as they followed prominent figures from the US around the city. This was seen as too provocative. Instead, they chose to go out to military bases and atomic energy plants far from the city. Their activism took the form of a direct moral appeal to the people they hoped to convert. But out in the middle of nowhere, workers at the military-industrial complex simply ignored them, local farmers mocked them, and the media didn’t send anyone to cover them. The pacifists found this embarrassing and ineffective. They realized they really needed to get people’s attention. This may seem obvious to us now, but at the time they were learning by doing. One thing the pacifists figured out quickly was that they had to explain the meaning of their activities to passersby. They addressed this by making pamphlets. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 67

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: the pacifists chose the remote-base approach partly because the umbrella campaign was ‘too provocative’ — interesting inversion where the symbolic-disruption option was deemed more dangerous than the moral-appeal option.
• XREF: connects to: Protesters reproduce familiar routines rather than adopt unfamiliar effective tactics — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 64; The protestors deliberately staged a media event for television coverage — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now: The 1960s New York…, 299; Large vocal protests can force mainstream media to platform dissenters (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Well-planned protest spectacles can dictate front-page coverage #corroborates (0.85) — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 369
• The protestors deliberately staged a media event for television coverage #exemplifies (0.82) — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 299
• Political issues only become contested once enough people attend to them #expands (0.78) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 446
• Large vocal protests can force mainstream media to platform dissenters #qualifies (0.75)
• Protesters reproduce familiar routines rather than adopt unfamiliar effective tactics #complicates (0.72) — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 64
• Protesters strategically provoke opponents to force third-party intervention and support. #complicates (0.72) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4452