Union Power Can Change Campus Protests Forever
Strikes are different from protests. Though protesters frequently say that they are making “demands,” it is more accurate to say they are making requests. Protests rely on persuasion. Their persuasion may be gentle, or it may be aggressive. It may rely on moral shaming to get its point across, or it may rely on the elevation of awareness, or it may rely on the pure intimidation of numbers. But protests, for all of their righteous fury and necessity, lack the legal ability to shut things down until change is achieved.
Strikers, on the other hand, can truly make demands. Their proposition is simple: No work will get done until a change is made.