The thing about protests is that the people still don't have the power to make a difference in some cases. The people in question are protected by authorities who have been hired by people that we vote for. The people that we vote for stand by a simple position (gay marriage, supporting middle class, supporting wealthy, etc), but doesn't solve the bigger picture, and chances are, you'll be able to have an influence on these small issues anyway. (protesting, petitions, organizations, etc).

So what are you voting for? Honestly, you are voting for who you think the government needs right now by their personality. It is important to vote for that alone, the closest representative of the people. Media plays a big part of persuading people against even their own personal interests, but its still important to vote.

So while I agree you should vote for a candidate, I think it would be better if people could be more informed without so much bias. Maybe that way people will have more motivation to vote. Also,… help me make the software to do it.

@nap: That seems pretty useful. I should have clarified that it would be more geared towards 'debate' like topics where the information is not as clear and the choices are not obvious. For example, SOPA was a law that had a lot of special interests within it. You could protest against it, but most people really didnt know what they were protesting against. Other examples would be allowing regulation or development, when you don't know the costs or other consequences. The media will give you a biased view about how it is good or bad, but youre left with not knowing a thing.

But anyway, that is a good website even though it is difficult to navigate. I would go to vote for members of the government based on a general idea of what their choices are, but for the proposals, I would have to do a lot of research for to even get an idea of what to vote for. This is more of what I'm talking about.

It's legally required that people vote in Australia. The situation is pretty similar. Most of the social progress came from the trade unions, women's movement, and indigenous movement.

I consider this a good sign. It means most of the public is aware that voting doesn't really work.

People with next to nothing to lose. That's quite a lot of people at the moment, and people have been doing things. There's some pretty promising organizing and action going on in Oakland, the rust belt, New Orleans, and from time to time in New York (think Occupy Sandy). Some good stuff also came out of the occupy movement and fights against foreclosure. What I like say is that the revolution won't be some big time event; rather, we'll create the structures of the new society in the shell of the old and people will be driven to joining us because it'll become obvious, especially as things get worse, that democratic communist (anarchist) modes of organizing will do the best for everybody other than those rich fucks who're always ruining everything.

Agreed, such things are almost always a waste of time. A mechanism by which people can feel good about themselves, like they're really making a difference, when they don't have the kind of organization or consciousness to really make changes. In this sense it's a lot like voting.

Ha, good luck. Even if some decent people did seize power in some town or state, how much could they really do? The courts, the federal government, and the constitution basically limit the extent of reform to a social-democratic model like we had before the '80s, which had enough of its own problems and didn't really go that far. Members of the bureaucracy can't trusted to really have our interests in mind anyway; simply holding a position of power means different things benefit and effect them than working people.