Protests are well known, and popular. The trouble is, when I look back on the one-off protests I’ve joined over the years, I don’t remember a single one that changed the policy we were protesting against. In February 2003, I joined millions of others around the world on the eve of US/British war on Iraq. The BBC estimated that a million protested on 15 February in London alone. In the US, unprecedented numbers turned out in 150 cities, according to CBS. The New York Times said in a front page story that the protest indicated a ‘second global superpower’. I wish. Even while we were in the streets, I realised that the protest wouldn’t prevent the war, because the protest’s leadership wasn’t telling us what we would do next, and that we would escalate after that – how we would take the offensive. The leadership didn’t offer us a campaign.
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