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Students from The School Without Walls in Washington, D.C., participate in a "die in" during a protest in front of the White House, Dec. 17, 2014. The students were protesting recent grand jury decisions not to indict police officers in the killings of unarmed black men in Ferguson, Missouri and Staten Island, N.Y.(Photo: Mark Wilson, Getty Images)
Although it might have seemed 2014 was a banner year for protests, it really wasn't. And there were many reminders of the limits – and frequently, the failures – of earlier political mass movements.
True, people in the USA marched to protest grand juries' failure to indict white policemen in the deaths of unarmed black men, in Hong Kong to demand democratic elections, in Ukraine to oust an unpopular regime.
Huge crowds gathered in Mexico to demand investigation into the disappearance of 43 student activists, and in Hungary to oppose an Internet tax. There also were big demonstrations in Venezuela, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Thailand and Burkina Faso.
But by historical standards, 2014's protests were no bumper crop.
USA TODAY's Rick Hampson discusses the many protests of 2014.
Not compared to 1968, when demonstrators battled police at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, students took over the streets of Paris and Czechs rallied in a vain attempt to preserve their "Prague Spring'' from a Soviet communist crackdown.
Not compared to 1989, when the Berlin Wall's fall heralded the end of Soviet communism, and protesters in Tiananmen Square shook the foundations of Chinese communism.
Not compared even to a year as recent as 2011, which saw the Arab Spring rebellions and the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Peter Stearns, former George Mason University provost and an expert on world history, says that as a group, 2014's protests constitute nothing more than "a bit of a spike. … It's not a major protest year, and there's not a lot of connection between the protests.''
Jeremi Suri, a University of Texas historian who has studied global revolutions, agrees: "The protests were fragmented; it wasn't one movement. With 1968 or 1989, we think of protests with big themes – more than just street actions.''
Meanwhile, the futility of some previous protest movements became glaringly apparent in 2014. As Suri puts it, "we've relearned the lesson that it's a lot easier to get people out in the street than it is to make a political difference.''
Consider the legacies of Occupy, which is virtually a spent force, and the Arab Spring, which has become the Arab Winter.
In Egypt this year, former defense minister Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who had deposed the legally elected Mohamed Morsi in a military coup, won a stacked presidential election. The Muslim Brotherhood, which had won every election since the 2011 ouster of Hosni Mubarak, was banned.
An Egyptian court also dropped charges against Mubarak in connection with the killing of hundreds of protesters three years ago.
In Libya, armed factions fought over the nation ruled until 2011 by dictator Moammar Gadhafi. In July, its foreign minister told the U.N. Security Council that his nation, the toast of the Arab world after Gadhafi fell, could become a "failed state.''
The endless Syrian civil war, which had its genesis in a rebellion during the Arab Spring, spawned the Islamic State. In June, the group declared a global caliphate under its black flag and brought a reign of terror, including summary beheadings, across half of war-weary Iraq.
In the U.S., the Occupy movement's legacy continues to wane.
Participants in the Occupy Wall Street Movement stand in Zuccotti Park in the Financial District near Wall Street on Nov. 8, 2011.(Photo: Spencer Platt, Getty Images)
Three years ago its members gathered in lower Manhattan to protest economic inequality, chanting "We are the 99 percent!'' and complaining of federal policies that benefited the wealthiest 1% of the population.
Occupy scorned Democrats and Republicans, but a GOP takeover of Congress – the result of the midterm elections – was hardly what the protesters had in mind. And in a sign of how much had changed in three years, the House voted to roll back a rule regulating derivatives, the instruments that were at the center of the financial crisis of 2008.
Three years after Occupy sprung up in lower Manhattan, says George Washington University political scientist Eric Arnesen, its biggest issue – income inequality – "is just a talking point. It's not part of anyone's political agenda.''
Two of 2014's biggest protest movements already have fallen on hard times.
The hopes of Ukraine's Maiden movement, which crested early this year with the ouster of the nation's pro-Russian president, foundered. Russia first invaded and annexed Crimea, then backed dissidents in eastern Ukraine in a civil war against the new Kiev government that has settled into a stalemate.
Protesters stand on top of barricades in front of the main stage at the pro-democracy movement's protest site in the Admiralty district of Hong Kong on Dec. 10, 2014. The demolition of Hong Kong's main protest camp ended a pro-democracy occupation that paralyzed the city for two months.(Photo: Isaac Lawrence, AFP/Getty Images)
This month, Hong Kong police dismantled pro-democracy demonstrators' last makeshift settlement in the city's Admiralty district, apparently ending the protest phase of the Umbrella Movement (so called because protesters used umbrellas against police pepper spray) with no major government concessions.
In the United States, in contrast, people continue to take to the streets to protest police killings in Ferguson, Mo.; Staten Island, N.Y.; and Cleveland.
In recent weeks they've blocked highways and transit lines and staged "die-ins'' in public spaces. They've made "Hands up, don't shoot!'' (a reference to the shooting of Michael Brown of Ferguson) and "I can't breathe!'' (the last words of Eric Garner of Staten Island), among the year's most familiar slogans.
One result has been a confluence of celebrity, fashion and protest, as when LeBron James warmed up for an NBA game in Brooklyn (attended by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge) wearing an "I can't breathe!'' T-shirt.
At a rally in Washington on Dec. 13, civil rights leader Al Sharpton made the case for protest: "We must have this nation deal with the fact that, just like 50 years ago, the states have taken a position to rob the human rights and civil rights of citizens. ... You may bury us, but you didn't know you were burying seeds. We'll grow stronger and last longer.''
Phillip Agnew, who has protested the killings, was one of several activists who met with President Obama this month. They told him that "the eruptions in the streets … would continue until a radical change happened,'' he wrote in The Guardian. "We told him that the country was on the brink, and that nothing short of major capitulations at all levels of the government to the demands of the people could prevent it.''
Rasheen Alridge, a 20-year-old St. Louis fast-food worker, said he first went to Ferguson to protest because he was shocked by photos on social media of Michael Brown's body lying in the street.
"It was so gruesome – he was lying there, blood leaking out of his head. I just had to go,'' he says. "And when I got there, what people told me about what the police, and what i saw them doing, made me feel I had to stay.''
Demonstrators protest against the Aug. 9 police shooting of Michael Brown by holding their hands up while gathered on the streets of Ferguson, Mo., on Aug.16, 2014.(Photo: Joshua Lott, AFP/Getty Images)
But unless the Justice Department files civil rights charges following its investigations of the deaths, it's unclear what will come of the protests.
The year's events illustrate two ways that protest movements can raise unreasonable expectations.
One is their use of social media, which allows demonstrators to mobilize and organize quickly, often without leadership hierarchies, established organizations or specific agendas.
But the question is how much a movement can accomplish without leaders, organizations or agendas. "Sometimes people put too much faith in the revolutionary potential of an app,'' Arnesen says.
Christian Davenport, a University of Michigan expert on the subject, says 2011's activists proved good at getting people into the street, which is often exciting, and not so good at following up – "things like lobbying, reading legislative drafts, monitoring a law after its been passed, sitting through a legal proceeding'' – which is often boring.
Another source of unjustified optimism is what Arnesen calls "wish projection'' by a news media audience that feels police should not kill young blacks, dictators should fall and the Internet should be free. So they lionize those who rally for such causes, regardless of whether the protesters have the stamina or plan to realize their goals.
What are the chances that 2014's protest movements will bear fruit?
Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at the University of Denver, and Maria Stephan studied more than 300 resistance movements. She says the most important factor in determining their success is non-violence; 53% of the non-violent movements succeeded between 1900 and 2006 – including Martin Luther King's in the South and Ghandi's in India – compared with only 26% of those that were violent.
Almost every movement has what she calls "a violent flank.'' Successful movements contain and isolate them.
By that standard, this year's U.S. protests against police killings get high marks. Although there was looting in Ferguson and Berkeley, Calif., the violence this year pales compared to that in 1992, when a jury verdict clearing Los Angeles policemen in the beating of Rodney King led to rioting in which more than 50 people died and more than $1 billion in property was destroyed.
Chenoweth says that given the outcome of some of 2011's protests, cynicism is understandable. But in light of hundreds of successful protest campaigns over the past century, she says, "it's also ahistorical.''
A similar note was struck by Alex Chow, a Hong Kong student leader who was arrested during the pro-democracy demonstrations, as police demolished the protest camp: "People will come back again, and they will come back with stronger force.''
Contributing: The Associated Press
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