Protesting for the Wrong Shit

May 17, 2024

You stormed a building. You occupied a library. You painted slogans on cardboard and shouted them into the sky like the gods were listening.

And then what?

Let’s back up before we get to the what. Let’s start with the why. Why are you even protesting?

No, seriously. Why that thing?

It’s not that I think your issue is invalid. It’s not that I think sexual assault policies on campus don’t need to be burned down and rebuilt. It’s not that deportations don’t matter. It’s not that you don’t have reason to be pissed off.

It’s that you’ve somehow decided those are the only things worth risking something for. And I have questions about that.

Because if you’re willing to get arrested, or suspended, or labeled a “threat,” if you’re willing to lose your scholarship or blow your internship for this one cause—then why aren’t you also blowing the roof off the building for all the other shit your university does?

Where’s the sit-in for the school’s investments in defense contractors?

Where’s the rally against the hedge fund ties?

Where’s the disruption of the university’s shadow deals with surveillance tech companies or pharmaceutical monopolies?

You’re protesting some of the symptoms, but you won’t go after the bloodstream. You won’t touch the money.

And maybe that’s because nobody taught you how.

Or maybe you just got hypnotized into thinking that protest is this…thing. This socialized, Instagrammable group experience. You lock arms. You chant. You hold space. You get filmed. Maybe the university cancels a speaker or releases a limp statement.

But you don’t move the needle. You don’t scare anyone.

Because you’re reenacting.

You’re not rebelling—you’re playing out a scene from 1968. From Kent State. From the Civil Rights movement. But you’re doing it in 4K with social media coverage and Starbucks cups in your hand. You’re a reenactor with student debt.

They’ve adapted to you.

They know what your protest will look like before you do. They have police on standby. They have legal protocols. They have PR consultants. They’ll wait you out and sanitize the mess with a ribbon-cutting ceremony next semester.

Because your rebellion is scheduled.

So here’s the part you don’t hear in class: stop using 20th century tools to fix 21st century problems.

Would you go to the hospital and demand 1960s cancer treatments?

No?

Then why the hell are you using 1960s protest tactics against institutions that live in the algorithmic age?

Your enemy isn’t waiting in the administration building. Your enemy is the system they serve—global, adaptive, economically insulated, brand-sensitive. And that system expects protest. Hell, it feeds off protest. It uses it to prove it’s “listening.”

What it doesn’t expect is non-cooperation. Strategic sabotage. Total denial of participation. Refusal to fuel its rituals.

It doesn’t expect you to know your rights, form alternate networks, or break it with bureaucratic leverage. It doesn’t expect creative resistance. It only expects emotional release.

And here’s where I challenge you: ask yourself what actually motivates you.

What gets you out of your chair? What gets you to write a manifesto or occupy a library?

And why is it easier to be mad about an injustice abroad than the scam in your own tuition bill?

You want real change? Protest for selfish shit.

Protest for the right to an education that isn’t 50 years out of date.

Protest for an environment that teaches you to build, not memorize. To survive, not submit.

Protest the lectures that haven’t changed since 1987. Protest the useless gen eds. Protest the career center that tells you to “network” while you drown in debt.

Protest your own erasure.

Know yourself. Know your enemy.

And know that your enemy won’t be stopped by chants and cardboard. It’ll be stopped by things it doesn’t understand.

By creativity.

By strategy.

By people who refuse to play the role they’ve been assigned.

Stop storming buildings.

Start storming the playbook.