How to Protest Well
A tactical critique of "pro-Palestinian" activism
I criticize a lot of things, but that comes paired with a core responsibility. If I’m knocking something down, the onus is on me to showcase what the target of my criticism should do differently. I have lobbed a lot of degradation towards so-called “pro-Palestinian” protesters and true to my word, I will give feedback while using the 1964 Free Speech Movement (FSM) protest as a contrasting template. I’ll be retreading some familiar points but with a lot more depth.
The comparison is particularly fitting because many organizers and participants in today’s campus protests have explicitly inspired their actions and tactics from the FSM and the wave of student activism that defined the 1960s.
Background
The free speech golden age we were previously enjoying up until a few months ago didn’t always exist.
In 1964, the University of California, Berkeley, began prohibiting student groups from distributing political literature and organizing on campus. While these restrictions may have been enacted with specific groups in mind, such as civil rights activists or those protesting segregation, the new rules applied to everyone. As unconscionable as it might sound today, students at public universities in America could literally get arrested for engaging in what was deemed “political activities”. The reason that is no longer the case is thanks to student protest movements such as the FSM.
The FSM emerged in response to the university’s enforcement attempts. Jack Weinberg, a former student, was arrested for refusing to show identification while tabling for the group Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Within 15 minutes of the arrest, about 300 students had arrived at the scene and completely surrounded the police car, with the crowd eventually swelling to up 3,000 people. Weinberg remained inside the car, with students passing him food and water through the window, and he was not released until 32 hours later.
This confrontation catalyzed the FSM, leading to mass sit-ins, building occupations, and ultimately the mass arrest of 801 students. Their unrelenting actions forced the administration to capitulate and eventually roll back the prohibitions on political activity.
I fully support FSM’s titular cause, as well as the tactics they used to achieve their objectives. There’s no disputing their actions were illegal and constituted real transgressions — trespassing is generally bad — but in this context, those actions were deployed in a serious and proportional manner which maintained a clear moral focus.
Now, it’s really easy to get nostalgic about a time period, especially one you never lived through. I aim to avoid this pitfall by focusing on concrete and particularized suggestions about how to properly engage in disruptive protest. It will take a similar form to how I evaluate when it’s appropriate to engage in violence.
1. Your Cause Must be Just
Ideally, you’re protesting in favor of a good cause. This is a very boring point to make, but I mention it first because it’s often the beginning and end of how protest movements get evaluated. “Is it for a good cause? If so, then I shan’t criticize it” and vice versa. I get it, and don’t fault anyone for caring only about the cause’s merits. After all, if you believe a cause is unbearably noxious, there’s no tactical reconfiguration that could sanitize it. But for my purposes, that’s too myopic.
Although it should be painfully obvious that I have very little sympathy with the “pro-Palestinian” movement, I nevertheless have taken pains to critique their tactics from the perspective of their putative objectives — as in “What they’re doing is bad because it’s bad for Palestinians”.
The challenge, however, is that I genuinely cannot know for sure what cause “pro-Palestinian” activists are pursuing. A distressing number of campus groups are unambiguously in favor of Hamas and want nothing more than to cheer on Jewish massacres. Some want to slam the undo button on Israel as a whole. Some are gullible conformists who will parrot any slogan, geographic knowledge be damned. And some, I assume, are good people who are understandably disturbed by the horrendous civilian suffering in Gaza.
This is a messy and contradictory coalition. It’s the inevitable result of extreme factions hiding behind human shields because they are too timid about expressing their true aims. Worse, the non-crazies within this movement who tolerate the Hamas apologists are culpable for shifting the Overton window in precisely the wrong direction — toward “music festival massacres are justified” and away from Palestinian welfare.
So, before anyone can evaluate whether your cause is just, at minimum it must be coherent. You must be able to specifically articulate what your ultimate goal is, void of euphemism. The “pro-Palestinian” movement has completely failed at this initial elementary step.
In contrast, FSM’s objective was clear and unified: Berkeley students wanted their university to stop prohibiting political activities on campus. While participants may have had different motivations — some animated by the broader principle of freedom of expression, others by civil rights or opposition to the Vietnam War — none of that prevented them from coalescing around a clearly-honed mission.
2. Your Goal Must be Actionable
Having established the need for a coherent cause and assuming you have one, the next requirement is an actionable plan that can — at least theoretically — move you closer to said goal. I say “theoretically” because it’s unreasonable to expect guaranteed results amidst so much uncertainty. However, you must at minimum be able to explain how your actions advance you forward. Not every action has to directly advance the ultimate goal, and it’s perfectly ok to pursue intermediate objectives so long as they serve your larger aims.
Let’s start with the FSM, because it’s much simpler. Their problem was that Berkeley University was prohibiting political activities on campus, and they wanted Berkeley University to stop prohibiting political activities on campus. Therefore, it made sense that Berkeley University was the target of their actions.
All of FSM’s actions aimed either to frustrate enforcement or otherwise convince Berkeley to stop prohibiting political activities on campus. Their tactics included mass sit-ins, occupying Sproul Hall, surrounding a police car to prevent the removal of an arrested student, and organizing rallies and negotiations with administration. Demonstrations showcased strength and widespread popularity among the student body. Occupying a building (without damaging it) and voluntarily submitting to arrests showcased a level of dedication and commitment.
In the end, the dispute was resolved through brute calculus: any time the university tried to enforce its rules, thousands of students jammed the gears and made it very costly. Enforcement of the ban became logistically impossible. The administration eventually backed off, presumably because prohibiting political speech on campus was simply not worth the headache.
Turning to the “pro-Palestinian” protests, even if we set aside the problem of a muddled cause, their actions often lack a clear path to achieving them. The most coherent campaign was the Uncommitted movement, which threatened to withhold votes from Kamala Harris unless their demands were met. Mainly, they wanted Israel (but curiously, not Hamas) to be somehow pressured into a permanent ceasefire, an end to all US military aid, plus an arms embargo for good measure. Notably, Uncommitted never offered a concrete plan for how Israel should secure the release of hostages held by Hamas.
While Uncommitted absolutely had an appropriate target for their protests, their “unless” made no sense. First, they could not conclusively argue that a policy shift would have been a net positive — whatever anti-Israel votes gained could be offset by pro-Israel votes lost. At best, it was a serious gamble. Second, the inevitable alternative to Kamala Harris was Trump, someone who has been much more unequivocable in his support of Israel. Uncommitted was essentially saying “either you feed me, or else I’ll starve myself!”
[A brief detour into Israeli military capabilities]
There are issues with Uncommitted’s demands that are much more fundamental, and which I temporarily side-stepped above. Israel has been receiving around $3.8 billion per year in military aid from the US since the 2000s, constituting roughly 15% of Israeli military funding.
US military aid has since increased to $17.9 billion total in emergency military aid since Hamas initiated the current war. Israel’s military budget on its own has surged 65% to $46.5 billion in 2024. This now constitutes 8.8% of Israel’s GDP, the second highest in the world, right after Ukraine’s current 34.5% (for context the US spends 3.4%). This remains a significant decline from 1975, when Israel was willing to allocate a record 30% of its GDP towards its military.
Obviously, America’s military aid to Israel is significant. But let’s say Uncommitted got what they wanted and the US stopped all aid and imposed a total arms embargo on Israel. Given the significant chunk involved, we should reasonably expect Israel’s military capabilities to be hobbled. At least, temporarily.
The problem that few protesters seem to consider is that while Israel started out scrimping and scrounging for whatever military equipment they could get their hands on (including Soviet hand-me-downs via Czechoslovakia in their 1948 independence war), it now has a robust and healthy military industry that is both iconic and prolific. Israel designs and manufactures a wide range of its own advanced military equipment, including the Uzi submachine gun, the IMI Galil rifle, the Merkava main battle tank, and precision-guided munitions like the Iron Sting 120mm mortar and the SPICE family of guided bombs.
Major manufacturing sites include Israel Military Industries (IMI) for small arms and ammunition, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems for precision-guided bombs and missiles, and Elbit Systems in Haifa. Elbit recently secured contracts to supply thousands of heavy air munitions and establish new raw materials plants, with the explicit aim of reaching “full independence” in bomb and munitions manufacturing.
It is particularly relevant to note that Israel has already been subjected to arms embargoes several times before: France in 1967, the US in 1971, and the UK in 1973. Israel’s world-class military industry was developed in response, and it would not have reached its level of sophistication were it not for the embargoes. Now, this tiny country barely the size of New Jersey, is the 8th largest weapons exporter in the world, comprising 3.1% of global arms exports.
What the US gives that Israel cannot readily make itself are advanced fighter jets (F-15, F-35), and certain precision ordinance (JDAM kits, GBU-39 Small Diameter Bombs). Were that supply source suddenly vanish, there is no universe where the IDF just shrugs and says “ah we don’t have GBUs, let’s pack it up and go home guys.”
Making things go boom is very easy. It takes little technical sophistication to drop an unguided bomb from a plane when gravity does all the work. The eye-watering invoices of modern munitions come from the integration of guidance systems, sensors, and networked targeting computers — features that reduce collateral damage but are harder to replace quickly if US supplies are cut off.
If you’re genuinely and earnestly concerned about the civilian death toll in Gaza, there is a serious risk that an arms embargo would make that worse! Both by further entrenching Israel’s domestic military industry, or by encouraging a reduced reliance on precision munitions.
[End of detour]
I know, I know, I have probably devoted more thought into this subject across a few paragraphs than all protestors everywhere combined. It’s hard to get straight answers, but their rhetoric evinces a sort of magical thinking; that Israeli military capacity would somehow fall apart if the US isn’t there to prop it up. This abyss of ignorance might explain why some appear to genuinely believe that the US could somehow “pressure” Israel into abandoning its campaign against Hamas.
What’s the alternative for earnest and well-informed activists? The fundamental problem with Uncommitted is that they were advocating for an unpopular position. Unfortunately, that happens sometimes, and even if your cause is righteous, there is no shortcut out of this unenviable hole. When you are universally shunned by those in power, your only way forward is slow, step-by-step coalition building. You find the sympathetic compatriots that do exist and figure out how to help them advance over their less favorable alternatives.
Uncommitted could have called on Hamas to release all their hostages…why not? They could have protested in front of Qatari embassies to highlight its funding of Hamas and sanctuary for their terrorist leaders. They could have advocated for alternative military suggestions — such as, instead of bombs, sending in special operations forces to rescue hostages or whatever.1 Israeli journalist Haviv Rettig Gur has explicitly advocated for moving Gazans out of harm’s way by allowing them into Israeli territory, and protestors could ask Egypt for the exact same relief on its side of the blockade. The number one humanitarian priority for any warzone is the evacuation of civilians, so why should the Gaza war be any different? (Hint). There are literally infinite alternative suggestions that, while they wouldn’t fully satisfy the protestors’ ultimate goals, would at least get them closer.
You can stop laughing now. I’m trying my best to be as charitable as possible although I don’t blame you for rolling your eyes at the last paragraph. The reason we saw none of those attempted compromises from Uncommitted and others can only be explained by the fact that the central animating motivation of this protest movement is that “Jewish Massacres” must take priority over “Palestinian Wellbeing”.
I don’t intend to nitpick every single action just because it isn’t immediately consequential. I already acknowledged that it may be necessary to chop gigantic causes into tiny digestible chunks. The issue is that, in the midst of so much tactical uncertainty, the movement stridently undercuts its own effectiveness and credibility.
3. Your Actions Must be Proportional
Beyond actionability, protesters must also consider proportionality. Ideally, you would achieve your goals solely through compelling rational arguments — because then nobody gets hurt or inconvenienced, and nothing gets damaged. But if we’re at the protest stage, we’re assuming that window has already closed, although mass demonstrations synergize with backchannel lobbying.
In practice, disruptive protest movements work by making things unpleasant enough to force a capitulation to their demands. These range across a spectrum of tactics: from “I’ll vote for someone else unless…” to “I’ll camp outside your home to yell at you unless…” to “I will break into and occupy your workplace unless…” and, in the worst cases, “I will bomb random bystanders unless…”.
I’ll focus on two elements: target and feasibility. Call this the “Whaddaya want me to do about it?” test.
FSM’s actions were proportional in the sense that they were properly targeted and showcased a level of seriousness that remained effective. For example, if the thousands of students who occupied Sproul Hall had instead occupied a bakery twenty miles from campus because one of its owners was the stepbrother to the university chancellor, it would make sense to ask, “Whaddaya want me to do about it?”
Or, if Mario Savio had responded to the university’s policies not by giving an iconic speech, but by killing a campus police officer. That would no longer be proportional to the cause because now the entire foundation of law and order is at stake, far beyond just a dispute over speech on campus.
Contrast this with recent protests at the University of Washington, where members of an unambiguously pro-Hamas group called SUPER UW broke into the newly-built Interdisciplinary Engineering Building and caused up to $1 million in damages — doors pulled off hinges, broken CNC machines, smashed windows, the works.2
What’s the nexus between a university building and Palestine? Grab my hand as I take you on a homeopathic accounting journey…
The IEB cost $102 million to build, half of it came from the state legislature. Of the rest, Boeing donated $10 million for naming rights over the building’s second floor. Boeing is a gigantic corporation with $65 billion in yearly revenue, and is Israel’s supplier of the aforementioned advanced fighter jets. Not every detail of this relationship is public, but it’s probably fair to say that Israeli defense contracts constitute about 1-2% of Boeing’s total revenues.
In terms of intensity, SUPER UW’s actions could be justified under my proportionality rubric if lives are at stake and Boeing is complicit. The problem is it’s both too much and too little. Only a portion of the IEB building had anything to do with Boeing, and it was specifically devoted towards how to incorporate AI into engineering. It’s not like they had impoverished grad students screwing in screws on ordinance about to drop on Gaza the next day. At the same time, if a $100 million building is vaporized on campus, does a multi-billion conglomerate hear it?
Yet, SUPER UW remains sanguine about its self-importance:
What the fuck are they accomplishing here? This is by no means the only such example of a befuddling disproportionate intensity of effort.3 If you appreciate homeopathic accounting, then you’ll love the fact that endless manhours were wasted on fruitlessly trying to convince some universities to divest from some index funds which include some companies with some operations in Israel, of which some may have something to do with its military.
When they failed to pursue campaigns that had actual consequence, protestors regularly double-down on whatever happened to be within reach. As of a year ago, at least 70 US cities have passed some sort of resolution on Gaza, typically asking for a ceasefire. One activist, Riddhi Patel, felt so strongly about her quixotic campaign that she personally threatened to murder Bakersfield City councilmembers who didn’t vote her way: “We’ll see you at your house. We’ll murder you.”
Now, you might think this is a total joke and a waste of time for everyone involved, but I have it on good authority that at least one Israeli artillery officer hesitated for a few milliseconds when he heard that the city of Ojai, California (pop: 5k) disapproved of what he was doing.
There’s a dimension along which I would like to extend empathy: helplessness, particularly in the face of what you deem to be a grave injustice, feels absolutely terrible. I myself regularly encounter this sentiment; there is a great deal of awfulness around the world I can’t do a fucking thing about.
Don Quixote is me. I’m an open borders advocate and believe immigration restrictions to be a moral travesty from both injustice (why should people be treated differently solely based on which lines of the sand they were born in?) and material (immigration can be the most potent anti-poverty program imaginable while also economically benefiting the host country) perspectives.4 However, I readily and wholeheartedly accept that my position is deeply and irredeemably unpopular, and has no realistic prospect of getting implemented!
I wish this wasn’t true, and I wish I could do something about it, but such is reality. I leave that unenviable mission to other advocates who are better positioned or motivated than I am, and I personally cope by imbibing on nihilism. Maybe this is not an ideal attitude to sport, but at least I have the awareness to know it does not help to 1) have a public meltdown 2) in front of someone who can’t do a damn thing about it.
4. Bitch Be Humble
It can feel really good to be in the limelight, to be the center of attention. There’s an inescapable, self-centered, performative dimension to many protests. Tent encampments on campuses across the country has the world’s most privileged human beings desperately aping the look of bona fide refugee camps. The full-throated chants of “Intifada!” which pretend to be part of something more consequential and dangerous than a few blokes marching around. And of course, what will never ever stop being funny is taking over a university building and then begging the school administration to allow “humanitarian aid” (aka DoorDash & water) through.
Self-adulation is not, on its own, necessarily a bad thing for protest movements. If all the other aspects are lined up correctly, perhaps adulation can encourage more participation in a positive direction. At the same time, it creates a serious risk of mission drift.
At a 20 year reunion movement, FSM leader Jackie Goldberg spoke about herself in self-effacing terms compared to current students: “I don’t think they’re really any different than we were, and we weren’t that special and we weren’t all that unusual, and we’re certainly no more committed to justice and equality than they must be.”
It’s good to remember that if you’re protesting for a cause, this isn’t about you, it’s about the cause. If you forget that, you’re liable to confuse what advances you personally for what advances the cause. And that’s a really bad space to be in.
What Now?
The Free Speech Movement succeeded because it understood something that today’s campus protesters have supposedly forgotten. Effective protest cannot sustain itself on just righteous anger. It demands strategic thinking, tactical discipline, and above all, intellectual honesty about one’s actual objectives.
The four principles I’ve outlined — just cause, actionable goals, proportional tactics, and humility — work synergistically. Without a coherent cause, you cannot develop actionable goals. Without actionable goals, you cannot calibrate proportional tactics. Without proportional tactics, you undermine your cause’s legitimacy. And without humility, you abandon course-correction and arson your entire edifice.
These are not just tactical failures; they are grave moral dereliction.
To the extent the “pro-Palestinian” movement is indeed just an anti-Palestinian movement that prioritizes homicidal spectacle over the welfare of actual Palestinians…I guess they should just keep doing what they’re already doing. Ideally they should also drop the unconvincing charade.
To the extent the “pro-Palestinian” movement genuinely cares about Palestinian welfare, they have an iron-clad obligation to pursue strategies that might actually help Palestinians, rather than performances that make them feel better about themselves.
If you have just a passing familiarity with any sort of military doctrine then you know how delusional of a suggestion this is.
They renamed the building after Shaban al-Dalou, a Gazan who was horrifically burned alive while taking shelter in a tent near Al-Aqsa Hospital. The fire occurred right after an IDF airstrike, and it was likely caused by secondary explosions from a Hamas munitions cache stored at the hospital:
Four munitions experts who reviewed videos of secondary explosions at the scene at The Post’s request said the explosions were probably caused by a mixture of fuel and relatively small munitions, including small-arms ammunition. But they cautioned that the exact balance of these factors would be difficult to determine without access to the site.
If you think I’m simply cherry-picking the worst examples, the movement’s failure to police or distance itself from these elements reinforces them as representative rather than aberrational. It takes no effort to hastily type out “This does not represent our movement and we condemn it” and send it out into the ether. You can even use voice2text if you’re strapped for time!
Don’t get distracted. If you have qualms about my position on immigration, save it for another forum.
Sorry to be late to the party. I think what MLK, Gandhi, Mandela and other people who created positive social change realize is that you have to make it safe for the other party to grant concessions. To put it another way, if you're fighting a democracy, you have to convince a certain proportion of the people that the change you want is in their interest. This is something most Palestinians and all the loudest supporters in the West have utterly failed to do. There is a very clear pattern since 1973: make peace with Israel, get land back (see: Egypt), or: make peace with Israel, and Israel will not attack you (see: Jordan.) Fail to make peace with Israel, and let your extremists sabotage the negotiations, and you get war. See: first Intifada, second Intifada, Lebanon War(s), Gaza war(s), etc.
I'm a middle-aged Jewish Zionist who has spent a fair amount of time in both Israel and some of the occupied (sic) territories, and would consider myself a leftist. But there's a reason the Left in Israel, which was ready to compromise and used comprise a pretty big part of the population, is now a mere shadow of its former self: they failed, over and over, to successfully conclude negotiations that would bring peace. That's not entirely their fault, but after Barak and then Olmert put almost everything on the table and got bupkis in return, the Right basically said: see, we told you this would never work. (Also, the religious right has more babies, but I think the first reason is bigger.)
To put it a third way, I'd love some of the noodleheads at the Gaza encampments to answer a very simple question: what would it take for the Knesset to vote to withdraw entirely from Gaza and the West Bank? How would you get there? When I have tried to ask this question, usually online, the answer is usually something like: Free Palestine, Palestine must be free, because Israel is a settler-colonial state.
OK, OK, great, Israel is a settler-colonial state, but it also has a badass army and nuclear weapons. You aren't going to convince Iran or Turkey to help you invade Tel Aviv and risk their capitals becoming holes in the ground. So maybe, just MAYBE, try behaving in a way that convinces Israelis that you're not trying to kill them all? So they vote for center and center-left parties that might cut a deal with you?
I read recently that the attacks on Jews in DC, Boulder, the worst of the encampment rhetoric, is ultimately such a self-own because the OG theory of Zionism is that we need a Jewish state because Jews aren't safe in the Diaspora. Well, fucking duh, every time you attack a Jewish event yelling "Free Palestine," you. . . . validate Zionist ideology and create Zionists.
Well done, Palestine activists.
PS: the lack of ability to connect your ideal vision of the future to concrete, practical steps to enact it in a democracy is hardly limited to Palestine activists. I used to travel more often in environmentalist circles and you'd hear "to stop climate change we need to totally change the economy from Earth-raping capitalism!" To which I'd ask: OK, great, how do we get there? How do we do that, with the Senate in the US set up the way it is? What Constitutional changes would you like to allow us to overthrow capitalism and how do you think we should go about getting those passed? Blank stares. . . . "to stop climate change we need to overthrow capitalism!"
Great article
One thing I would add: be prepared to take the win. Fundamentally, what most people will want from most protests is for them to shut up and go away. If the public/politicians/<insert whoever can grant your demands here> thinks that you will just find something else to protest even if they capitulate on everything…well then why would they capitulate in the first place?