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Topic #309: Have you ever protested for anything? What was the cause? If you haven’t, what would it take for you to go stand up and protest for (or against) something?

If you’ve ever taken a look at my profile page or have read up on any of my background or personal information, you might know that I am an undergraduate college student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States. If you’ve been keeping up with the news for the past year, you might have heard about the protests that have been going on in Madison, Wisconsin against the governor. Even though massive protests are going on in my area, I still have never participated in a protest before, and I don’t ever plan on doing so in the future.

Even though I lived literally less than a few miles away from the capitol building, I chose not to participate in the protests because I thought it would be a waste of my time. You might also know that I work for the Badger Herald, which is a campus newspaper, and I still did not participate in the protests, even though I am so closely tied with current events. The only time I even went into the capitol building during the protests was when I went with the editor-in-chief to find one of our reporters inside the building.

Going back to my reasoning behind why I don’t protest, I don’t feel as if I would make a significant difference (or even a marginal difference) if I were to go and protest with everyone else. There are already so many people protesting that I probably would not even fit in the area at which they are protesting, and nobody would ever notice that I showed up. If you know me, you know that I like optimizing everything I do, and I feel as if going to protest would not be an efficient use of my time.

Addressing the second part of the prompt, the only reason I would ever go and protest for or against something is if I knew for a fact that my participation would make a significant difference in the outcome of the protest, and I had nothing better to do. For example, I would attend the protest if there were thousands of people who will only go to the protest if I go, or if I was publicly speaking at the protests and I was able to influence people of power with my opinions. As we probably all know, something like that will probably never happen, or if it does happen, it will not happen for a very long time, so I don’t think we have to be very concerned about expecting me at any protests any time soon.