Here's the background on this question.
My apartment sits across from a vacant lot that is public property so you can legally stand there and make as much noise as you like for any period of time without getting hit with fire hoses and pepper spray bombs no matter how many times my fellow apartment dwellers call the cops. Both the lot and the apartment are at the corner of a busy intersection that lots of people have to go through to go anywhere valuable (movies/church/stores/work). Protesters love that lot.
For the last three Sunday's at truly godforsaken hour of the morning a group of people protesting have gathered there and made a ton of noise setting up then when cars and people start to pass they make even more noise. I'm not religious and don't go to church so Sunday is basically Sleep All Day Part 2 and it's been incredibly annoying that they've been waking me up every weekend.
I tend not to be interested in/care about any issue unless it directly effects me. Their issue affects me as directly as speed limits in the Congo so I didn't care about it. When these protesters started waking me up I was poisoned to their cause.
So ultimately their protest had the exact opposite effect they were going for. What I want to know is how Protests affect other people. Do protests change peoples minds? Are they just loud support gatherings for people who are already on a side? If so then can people find a quieter form of gathering? Are you a protester and do you think you achieve your goals?
This thread is about protesting itself not the issues people are protesting about. It's not my goal to start a religious or political flame war so please don't directly mention any issues.
EDIT: A lot of people are mentioning noise laws and permission to protest. My city doesn't require permission to protest as long as you have less than 20 people and they are very apathetic to send law enforcement unless people are being violent.
EDIT: Seems many people are curious about the protest subject. They were protesting Abortion. If you are pro-life I respect your beliefs and you have every right to voice your opinions and I'm aware every group is different and you are most likely more polite than these people, but this is my second bad experience with pro-life protesters and I'm not very supportive of your cause anymore.
Plus it's rather obnoxious to protest abortion in our neighborhood because there isn't a clinic or government building anywhere near it. So their protest while probably done with good intentions was in the worst possible place at the worst possible time. (Sunday morning when religious people are driving to church and non-religious people are sleeping in.) So they were getting a lot of people honking their support but they were being incredibly inefficient at furthering their cause.
My apartment sits across from a vacant lot that is public property so you can legally stand there and make as much noise as you like for any period of time without getting hit with fire hoses and pepper spray bombs no matter how many times my fellow apartment dwellers call the cops. Both the lot and the apartment are at the corner of a busy intersection that lots of people have to go through to go anywhere valuable (movies/church/stores/work). Protesters love that lot.
For the last three Sunday's at truly godforsaken hour of the morning a group of people protesting have gathered there and made a ton of noise setting up then when cars and people start to pass they make even more noise. I'm not religious and don't go to church so Sunday is basically Sleep All Day Part 2 and it's been incredibly annoying that they've been waking me up every weekend.
I tend not to be interested in/care about any issue unless it directly effects me. Their issue affects me as directly as speed limits in the Congo so I didn't care about it. When these protesters started waking me up I was poisoned to their cause.
So ultimately their protest had the exact opposite effect they were going for. What I want to know is how Protests affect other people. Do protests change peoples minds? Are they just loud support gatherings for people who are already on a side? If so then can people find a quieter form of gathering? Are you a protester and do you think you achieve your goals?
This thread is about protesting itself not the issues people are protesting about. It's not my goal to start a religious or political flame war so please don't directly mention any issues.
EDIT: A lot of people are mentioning noise laws and permission to protest. My city doesn't require permission to protest as long as you have less than 20 people and they are very apathetic to send law enforcement unless people are being violent.
EDIT: Seems many people are curious about the protest subject. They were protesting Abortion. If you are pro-life I respect your beliefs and you have every right to voice your opinions and I'm aware every group is different and you are most likely more polite than these people, but this is my second bad experience with pro-life protesters and I'm not very supportive of your cause anymore.
Plus it's rather obnoxious to protest abortion in our neighborhood because there isn't a clinic or government building anywhere near it. So their protest while probably done with good intentions was in the worst possible place at the worst possible time. (Sunday morning when religious people are driving to church and non-religious people are sleeping in.) So they were getting a lot of people honking their support but they were being incredibly inefficient at furthering their cause.
