[Barry the Sprout]

I've been on a lot of protests and in my experience they are an extremely effective method of disseminating your ideas and persuading people who were previously on the fence or procrastinating on the issue. They don't persuade people who're dead set against you, but then again reasonable debate rarely does either (as any regular of these boards should know...). Remember that not all protests are alike. Like any method of changing the world it only works if its done right and if you recognise it can never be the entirety of political activity. To badly misquote Lenin (the books upstairs and I can't be bothered to go get it) we have to use every weapon in our arsenal and that includes electoral campaign, sure, but it also includes grassroots protest action.