Protests are pointless were beyond that now. To compound on Johngalt's point. Every change that happened as a result of a protest would have happened without the protest because that was a change they wanted to implement anyway. The protest wasn't to illicit change in government policy. The protest was a vehicle to get the rest of the population to accept that the change was their idea and that it would be a positive change. It's called manufactured consent and it's also a form of cargo-culting and astro turfing. Thats why their protests succeed and ours fail.