Talk:Demonstration (protest)/Archive 1

Not necessarily an activist group

Re: "A demonstration is the public display of the common opinion of an activist group..." - many demonstrations involve members of the public, who share the opinion although they are not members of the organizing group. Or it could be organized ad hoc by people with shared interests, although not members of a pre-existing activist group. My first attempt at an improvement is: "A demonstration is the public display of the common opinion of a group of people, whether members of the public, a sector of the community, or an activist group..." Can't find wording I'm happy with, so I'll leave it to someone else to make any changes. --Singkong2005 03:34, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you on the reword, but I actually really like the way you worded it. I spliced it in verbatim. SchuminWeb (Talk) 04:01, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Activist groups are made up of members of the public and often represent sectors of the community82.23.135.169 (talk) 00:50, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

POV on demonstrations turning to violence and property damage

The section on demonstrations turning to violence and property damage (currently the last paragraph of the article intro) needs complete reworking to conform to NPOV and to represent a worldwide view.

A few examples: "Thought by some" is an unencyclopedic phrase. The part about "can turn into" would be better stated as a "some have led to" statement citing some examples (and ideally making clear that it is a extremely tiny minority of demonstrations that have resulted in such - for example, I've participated in hundreds of demos in my life and not one has led to violence, a riot, smashed windows, or anything like that.). The stuff about targetting corporations and not going after local businesses applies only to a subset (I've no idea of percentage) of violent and/or destructive actions that have occurred. Not all demonstrations are by progressive, social justice & environmentally minded, activists. etc. —GrantNeufeld 15:30, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

The wording makes it sound like 'pre-emptive' or unprovoked violence by the state is the exception to a rule. This isn't the case. At least half of all physical violence at demonstrations is precipitated by the police (my experience).82.23.135.169 (talk) 00:56, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Find a reliable source to back it up, and make it so. SchuminWeb (Talk) 01:45, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Merge

This article should be merged with Protest. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 14:02, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. A protest can take a very wide range of forms (letter writing, boycotts, petitions, etc.), whereas a demonstration is a very specific type of action. Additionally, a demonstration is not necessarily a protest, it can be a rally of support. —GrantNeufeld 20:02, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Agree with Grant Neufeld in that these two articles, while sometimes related, are not always related. SchuminWeb (Talk) 19:47, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the above (i.e. not always related). Tyrenius 20:21, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Changed article title

Since "demenstration" is not primarily used as the word for "peaceful demonstration," the article content has been moved in full to Peaceful demonstration to clarify, and leave "demonstration" as a disambiguation page. Wipfeln 19:13, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Started disambig page; probably needs more entries, and also the peaceful/political demonstration stuff probably needs a better article structure. -- Akb4 06:29, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Too shallow on history/forms, too deep on crowd control

This article has too little information on the history/uses and forms of demonstrations and focuses proportionally too much on corwd control, giving the impression that demonstrations are over all a bad thing. In addition it is too focussed on the phenomenon as it occurs in the US. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 62.101.204.98 (talk • contribs) .

Thank you for your suggestion! When you feel an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the Edit this page link at the top. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes — they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. SchuminWeb (Talk) 07:32, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

sectionated and rewritten some

I divided the article into sections and rewrote a lot of it. I tried to add more who-what-where-when-why-how, but I'd say it still needs tons of work. There almost certainly should be some seperate articles, and better integration with other existing articles. topics not addressed include the tradition of peaceful demonstrations and non-violent protest, major demonstrations thru history, the wto protests, etc etc. Rally probably shouldn't redirect here, since not all rallys are explicitly demonstrations. There's a very slippery definitional slope; some might say a boycott or a strike is a demonstration, while others would disagree; literally, of course, both demonstrate something. I don't think the current article title ("demonstration (people)") is very good, but can't offhand think of anything better. This is a yucky topic to address. - Akb4 23:13, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I admit that "Demonstration (people)" is an odd title, but it was moved off the main "Demonstration" title by someone who wanted to move the dab page there. I admit in the end that was probably a good thing. This article was briefly on "Peaceful demonstration", which just kind of grated, plus didn't take into account that some demonstrations do turn to violence, sometimes intentionally.

I do like the work done on the article. It certainly is an improvement on what we had, and it still reads well. I just did some formatting cleanup on it. SchuminWeb (Talk) 14:46, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

History of the term

The article currently reads:

The term "demonstration" was coined in the United States during the civil rights movement of the 1950s-1970s and refers to the public display of the common opinion of a group of people...

But the Oxford English Dictionary gives the following definition:

A public manifestation, by a number of persons, of interest in some public question, or sympathy with some political or other cause; usually taking the form of a procession and mass-meeting.

and cites several quotations from the 19th century:

1839 Britannia in Spirit Metropol. Conserv. Press (1840) I. 421 Whig emissaries have been employed to get up what, in their own conventional cant, they call a demonstration, to mark the national joy [etc.]. 1861 Sat. Rev. 22 June 630 Then, besides ‘ovations’, there are ‘demonstrations’, the Q.E.D. of which is not always very easy to see. We read how the students of such an University ‘made a demonstration’. This we believe means, in plain English, that the students kicked up a row. 1884 Chr. World 16 Oct. 781/1 The demonstration of demonstrations took place on Saturday at Chatsworth, when..about 80,000 people came together.

So the claim that the term was coined in the 1950s-1970s does not seem to hold water. --macrakis (talk) 05:27, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Okay, then change it in the article and cite your source. Be bold! SchuminWeb (Talk) 19:26, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

I did. But there may be some reason for the 60's claim. Perhaps the term was (re)popularized by M.L. King or redefined by Saul Alinsky or whatever. --macrakis (talk) 03:50, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Citations

I restore citations about illegal demonstrations and government-organized demonstrations as no reason for their removal was given.Luis Napoles (talk) 18:24, 9 May 2009 (UTC) The first image should be about demonstrations which are also clearly called demonstrations and even have color image.Luis Napoles (talk) 04:14, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

File:Human Rights China .jpg

Polylepsis wrote "(NPOV why do you put this image on the top of the article ? it must be on the bottom)". i dont't know where is the best place to put, but i can not follow his opinion "it must be on the bottom". why "MUST BE"?--NederlandsNederlands (talk) 14:40, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

There are too many pictures altogether. I don't care where they go on the article, but there are just too many on there. SchuminWeb (Talk) 23:53, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

yes, too many on there now... but i just want to know why "it must be on the bottom"?, and wish Polylepsis to answer.--NederlandsNederlands (talk) 15:31, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

It doesn't have to be on the bottom. I don't understand that one, either. I'm probably going to remove all the pictures at some point and re-place photos to keep it uncluttered. SchuminWeb (Talk) 19:54, 27 January 2010 (UTC)