Marches are not effective in combatting governmental abuse of power

the articles you have posted are somewhat insubstantial. "Why I am not marching for Mike Brown and Ferguson" is just a bald claim that marches don't accomplish anything, accompanied by the confusingly incongruous claim that we're consumed by slactivism. The writer dismisses the efforts and participation of people today as if it has no parallels to the 1960s, when in fact today's marches and the social media attention focused on them could very well be part of changing people's attitudes. If I were feeling uncharitable, I would say that the advice in the article is to refrain from making a big stink; since I'm not, I'll just say it reads like a half-reasoned self-justification for not being outspoken in certain ways. It's a bald assertion that we're living in an age when one of the rights afforded to us in the Constitution is passe, the very right that is intended to allow the people to demonstrate in order to draw attention to important social issues when the activities recommended by the writer have failed. The other article you cite delivers an analysis on a stunning statistic of one. Anyone can find a glib person to embarrass in the setup of an article; it does not make any of the points that follow valid. The "studies" and "stories" cited by the author are short musings, have flaws such as not considering the relevance of social media when questioning whether a march has an "audience," and themselves take positions that are contrary to the author's. For instance, the author claims that broad goals cannot be the basis of a successful protest, but does not define what is a broad goal. "National Independence," is, for instance, narrower than "Opposing British Oppression," but still broader than "Forming an Indian Democracy." In reality her sources support the contention that broad goals can work, as long as they have some specificity (my own example: "opposing structural injustice in the police actions" versus "opposing racism"). Those commentaries themselves are marked by the flaw that they assume that the individuals participating in those marches, on average, shared very specific goals. In fact, it is likely that a group driving the overarching movement had goals and that we remember the "march" as having "goals" because of the success of the march, rather than the success of the march arising out of the great mass of people having an awesome branding strategy. In any case, you could simply review the data. If calling attention to a conflict is important, it is certainly the case that the media response that is so downplayed in the articles you cited has a real effect on raising a conflict to the forefront of people's minds. ( http://www.afrometrics.org... ) That's part of the attention and discussion that's necessary to have debate and hopefully reach a consensus. It's hard to say that consciousness of race issues hasn't become salient in recent years, and that's because of demonstrations (including marches) and how that plays with the media to drive national attention. This of course can have effects that might be inconsistent with certain presumed goals, as on issues of race where whites may have become, at least temporarily, less willing to consider the realities of structural injustice. (http://www.ksg.harvard.edu...) Some would say that this is because a series of very public demonstrations (including marches) have gotten enough media attention to make whites feel uncomfortable at being presented with evidence of aversive racism. (http://www.apa.org...) It must be remembered that pronounced opposition can precede positive changes in society and attitudes (as in the 1960s), so the elevation of today's race issues to an uncomfortable national consciousness is not inherently counter-productive in combating governmental abuses of power that create racial injustices. Of course, I say "the" data, as if it's the only data on the only issue--but there are other issues that may play out differently. I've basically focused on the issue that your articles led off with. As you've acknowledged, in the past marches did accomplish the goal of combating governmental abuses of power. Neither you nor your articles provides any well-argued reason why marches can't still have that effect. Claiming that today's marches, unlike yesteryear's, don't have "goals" ignores the likelihood that, at any given time in the history of marches, the marching masses may be rather incoherent about a specific goal, but history remembers the victor's tale. Even though you have cited some perfunctorily dismissive articles, the data challenges the attitude expressed in those articles that marches are useless without the demonstrators having very specific goals. Is branding important? Sure, people connect with a "why." But dismissing marches on the fact that social movements are often messy and imprecise is not a convincing argument.