It was probably the marches Gandhi organized that popularized this tactic, though of course there were not a few before his. The marches in the Indian independence movement no doubt served some important purposes, including publicizing the amount of opposition to British rule in a country without today's methods of mass communication, polling, etc., and furthering the organizational activity of the movement as Gandhi and his co-workers walked from village to village recruiting marchers.
In the Southern U.S. civil rights movement of the late 50s and the 60s, King and other leaders of course borrowed the mass march method directly from Gandhi, and used it for similar purposes. In this case, television had been developed since Gandhi's time, but national TV networks had under-covered the civil rights issue, and the marches were useful as a way of getting the issue before the general public and thus forcing the Kennedy-Johnson administration to do something about it.
In the case of marches at Dem and Repub conventions, I would agree that they probably don't do much to change the politics of the country, but they still seem to be necessary in some sense. I was at the Dem convention in Atlantic City in 1964, participating in a very small demo, only a few dozen people, about the Vietnam War -- probably one of the first demos ever held about the war. In those days, we weren't separated from the convention; a number of locations for demonstrations were laid out on the boardwalk right in front of the convention hall, and we had the location next to the Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party. We and the MDFP had a sort of synergistic activity, attracting interest from a number of delegates and DP mucky-mucks.
The next DP convention, in 1968, was a different matter altogether, of course, and since then it seems that large, often very unruly demos have come to have been expected by everyone, especially when there is a particularly controversial issue. Therefore, not having one would make a bigger statement, probably, than having one. If no mass march had been organized for the RNC this year, it would have been widely seen as a sign that opponents of the war and of Bush had given up. So there had to be one, whether such marches have become "outmoded" or "too tame to frighten anyone" or not.
The question for the future is: can something other than the stereotyped mass march be developed that would not only indicate that the opposition has not given up, but would also go beyond that to take the opposition to the system to the next level.
Moving from mass marches to mass riots would not do the job, it seems to me. A lot of people have forgotten that the mass marches of the anti-Vietnam-War movement were only part of the mix -- there were many, many local activities, including blood-pouring-on-draft-files actions at draft boards, counseling men facing the draft and "underground railroads" helping them to get to Canada, people lying down on tracks in front of trains carrying military cargo, and on and on. I think that this level of militant local actions is what is missing today. It seems to be either mass marches or nothing.
Perhaps a resumption of the draft -- widely expected whichever candidate wins the White House -- will rekindle this kind of activity.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, 'You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk-dancing.' -- Sir Arnold Bax