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make their way to the table where such abortion bills are signed. When they do (like with the case of Alabama Governor Kay Ivey) they must be better educated to understand the importance and wider implications beyond such irrational decision-making based on conservative values rather than statistics and science about female health. Social movements have always been among us, but the political hierarchies and social elite make it harder for the public opinion to reach on top. This can be due to the aggressive nature linked to protesting as an activity, for example, the feminist protests. Such movements have the downside of dividing the population into two opposing sides, ignoring the necessity of collaboration. Protesting alone can be counterproductive if it focuses on forcing change without persuading and targeting the leaders, not just frustrating average people.
Do Protests Work? A LatinAmerican Perspective By KlĂŠber Olmedo In Latin America, a single person can earn up to 16,000 times more than another. As reported by the United Nations, this is the most unequal region in the world in terms of wagedistribution. Consequently, economically and socially disadvantaged minorities have proliferated and have become KCL Politics Society
subaltern social groups, which are the social groups whose political voice is denied, as per explained by Gramsci’s work on cultural hegemony. In addition, weak institutionalism has also impacted the region due to a historical trend of shifting between democratic and autocratic rule parties. As a result, formal spaces for political participation seem to be scarce and rather unconventional forms of participation such as protests have become more tense. Based on the above, demonstrations are apparently the only mechanism that minorities have in Latin America to pursue their policy interests. Notwithstanding, the effectiveness of this mechanism is only evident in the short-term because, paradoxically, institutional weakness also hinders the proper political articulation of the demonstrations. As explained by Professor Brown -Nagin, Dean of the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard University, not only can protest work but it becomes a need for those groups who are ostracised from the political processes and who lack effective
representation of their interests. From a post-colonial prism, protest is defined as a 'popular self-activity to challenge the hegemonic order and the existing patterns of hegemonic domination.' It is post-colonial in the sense that it goes beyond traditional understandings of the working class as the only emancipatory subject and rather incorporates other actors who ignore their differences and join together with a common protesting aim. The aims range from the achievement of legislative or policy change to the sole expression of disapproval.
An example of the above are the protests in Ecuador that took place at the beginning of October of this year. These demonstrations united indigenous groups, students, teachers, women’s collectives, transports unions and left-wing political parties who despite having been encountered in the past (such as the case of the indigenous groups and the leftist parties in 2015) united together against the elimination of fuel subsidies by the government. The policy goal was not only achieved but what particularly stands out is the fact that, during the negotiations that ended the protests, the indigenous groups
