By: SOPHIA PACHECO
The Long Term Effects of Protestant Reformation On Society
In the short time after political unrest has been acted upon, the protestant reformation can affect the community(small businesses and the like) and the city in which the citizens live in. But what about the effects the protests have in the far future? With the protesting and riots for George Floyd reaching a milestone of several weeks and counting, it makes one wonder how much this will affect our nation, not only in 2020, but in the many years to come. Short term, protests may affect the immediate year after it, causing small businesses to struggle and the people’s trust in the government to temporarily waver. And if these protests were followed up with riots, one example being the current ones today, then these effects can become even more deadly. If we look at the effects of these protests in the long run, like with the Stonewall Riots and the Anti-Nuclear Weapon march, you get an entirely different set of issues that will persist for many decades, some of these effects being a high distrust of the government, more same-sex rights and acceptance than before, stricter regulations on nuclear weapons, and resentment towards the police force.
In the words of The Atlantic, “Protests sometimes look like failures in the short term, but much of the power of protests is in their long-term effects, on both the protesters themselves and the rest of society. ”(Zeynep Tufekci, Do Protests Even Work?) This means that while the immediate effects are small, the effects later on will be momentous on society. Take the Tax Day in 2009 as an example. It is estimated that between 450,000 and 800,000 people attended more than 500 different “Tax Day” rallies around the country that year, and that instead of the influences in political parties going down over time, it was, according to Quartz, “what actually happened was the opposite: The difference in political outcomes actually increased over time. Larger turnout for the initial protest had lasting effects on voting, political contributions, ideology, and future participation in the Tea Party movement,”(Dan Kopf, A Harvard study identified the precise reason protests are an effective way to cause political change)
Based on the information presented, we can predict that the effects of the current protests for George Floyd will increase over time, becoming a symbol ingrained into the hearts of all Americans. Most likely, our society will experience the fundamental distrust of the police force, changing hierarchy between minorities, and greater freedom for people of color in the many decades to come.
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