“Much protest is naive; it expects quick, visible improvements and despairs and gives up when such improvement does not come. Protestors who hold out longer have perhaps understood that success is not the proper goal. If protest depended on success, there would be little protest of any durability or significance. History simply affords too little evidence that anyone’s individual protest is of any use. Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one’s own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.”
Protest, in the public sense, has always been a necessary part of community change and growth. Whether it is the massive injustices that continue to happen or the real threats to our environment and the health of the ecosystem we share. Protest is an important part of managing and engaging with power—and enacting change.
Understanding protest may require us to explore protest from the inside out—from the places where we uttered our first protest. We often conflate the protest at the individual level with protest at the community level. And by doing so we tend to judge the act of individual protest as childish or stubborn—and we don’t honor how important the act of protest is in growing our capacity for choice, judgment, justice and our ability to hold our center.
Protest may be the first real declaration of identity—a separate identity from a parent or caretaker—a statement that sets you apart—even momentarily. I have just spent the past week getting a masterclass in protest from a fabulous six year old. The protests of this six year are so familiar you could probably rattle them off yourself: No to brushing teeth, No to going to bed, No to homework, No I don’t want to eat that. Protest isn’t something separate from life when you are young, it’s the way we learn where we begin and end—what we like—who we are. It’s the way we slow things down from the constant onslaught of new information and learning.
It’s the way we manage our emotions when we just can’t handle the emotion that would arise if we said ‘Yes.’ We protest when we don’t have other language or words for what we want: we don’t know how to say that it’s just too hard to let go of a big day and let go of my parents at night. So we fight over bedtime instead.
Protest is essentially “I don’t want your rules to be my rules right now.” As such, protest is often seen and felt (I hear it from parents all the time) as an affront to their authority—which it is. But protest a necessary affront. It’s the way we wrestle with the rule. It’s the way we wrestle with ourselves. It’s the way we can feel the relationship’s strength. It’s the way you come to know something about yourself and how you may be alike or different than the rule makers (parents, teachers, coaches, friends). This friction between the rulemakers and the self is what builds the necessary components of discernment, conscience, judgment, self-efficacy or self-esteem. Our I-can-do-it-ness may be entirely dependent on our “I-won’t-do-it-ness.”
And to be clear—voicing protest doesn’t mean that often the rule isn’t essentially upheld—bedtimes are important, as is homework, as are the rules of safe behavior. But when there’s protest --there’s a relationship—between two entities who have different opinions—and this tension is a source of connection—a source of connection that supports relationship, as opposed to weakening it. If a child comes to know himself through protest, a parent also comes to know their child better, and maybe themselves as a parent.
For many people who grew up in households with trauma or violence this kind of learning didn’t happen. Protest wasn’t an option. You never really got to protest or you were punished for doing so. As an adult you may find it hard to say no. And many adults I have worked with have found themselves frustrated with an inability to say No, and feeling like they get caught up with people pleasing. And these behaviors aren’t personality problems. They are a lack of practice and skill development. You have to practice saying No. It’s something that you learn—but most importantly, it’s something you learn in relationship.
Learning protest in adulthood is hard. It almost always feels and sounds childish at first. In part because our protests often show up small: I don’t want to do that task, I don’t want to have that conversation, I don’t want to go to that event. The No seems petty. Small. Not worth the fight. And certainly not worth the relationship. It’s why I counsel people who have never learned protest to choose their practice partners well—trusted and sturdy friends and spouses/partners, or therapists or coaches—folks who know that this is a growing edge and can hold the other side as you learn. And to not, for example, to try to learn protest first with your manager or some other place that provides stability or your livelihood.
Protest helps us grow our values and our purpose—we start with what we don’t want—and don’t like and then we begin to know what we do want. Protest teaches us to speak up for ourselves –and it’s the source of being able to speak up on behalf of others. Yes, protest may be an affront to authority, but it’s also an invitation. In the moment that you are the receiver of protest you are invited to be the container, to hold the other end of the belay rope. You are invited to assess the authority you hold and how it may be serving or impeding what you hold dear.
© 2022 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD
