We have no say.

George W Bush likened the massive protests against the war in Iraq that took place in NYC which had hundreds of thousands of participants, and those in hundreds of cities around the world to “focus group activity”.

George W Bush simply blew off these protests as insignificant because he wanted the war in Iraq and he wasn’t going to let protests prevent him from getting the war he wanted.

On the first full day of Donald Trump’s presidency, hundreds of thousands of people crowded into the U.S. capital for the Women’s March on Washington. What was Trump’s reaction? Zilch.

These protests involved 100s of thousands of participants. But they are being treated as if they mean nothing.

It has become routine for our elected officials to blow off protest when they go against what they want.

How can a plurality or majority of Americans be a part of the decisions and policies that the government makes without their input being totally dismissed by their elected officials?

How can Americans excercise any kind of agency in their government when the government does not acknowledge or accept the American people taking part in their own government?

The American government has never really encouraged the American people to take part in the decisions and policies that it makes and taken what the people want into consideration. The American government has never devised a way to do this. The American government does not have a way, outside of polling, to know what Americans think and want.

As Americans, how much do we use the mechanism of referendum to determine public policy and governmental decision making? We don’t. At least not on a regular basis. The government does not have a mechanism that the people can use to communicate with it in a reliable and easy way.

A recent article in the NYT asked some of their opinion writers to write an article about something they got wrong. One of them, Zeynep Tufekci, commented that she had thought these large scale protests had had the potential to change policy but realized that even these very large protests, by themselves, needed more to create change. She stated that in the large protests and movements for social change in the past, like the civil rights movement, had been successful because they were organized, followed a plan, and had a commitment to the project through its completion. Not for it to just be a single, one off event. And that is why it was eventually successful.

So, how can Americans have more of a say? It cannot just be a single event, a single protest, no matter how massive. To get anything done, Americans will have to organize. They will have to have a plan. They will have to be committed. And they will have to stick with the plan until they achieve parity with a government that has thus far excluded them and gain actual assess to the decision and policy making of government, even if it is only on an occasional basis.

On important matters it might make all the difference in the world.