Dramatize the Injustice

Should protests be about expression or persuasion? What makes for an effective protest? And is it still possible for protests to effect change in a fractured, algorithmic media environment? Jon talks to Dr. Omar Wasow, a professor at UC-Berkeley, about his famous study on the effectiveness of civil rights protests in the 1960s. They discuss why the protests of the early 60s led to more political change than those of the later 60s, why the media environment of that era is much closer to our current environment than we realize, and why Dr. King and John Lewis focused on storytelling and dramatizing the injustice of the moment. But first: Jon discusses the shutdown fight and why we need a big grassroots political movement to wake the rest of this country up. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [email protected] and include the name of the podcast.