Protesting anyone?

What good does protesting do? Through the years my initial reaction to protests is the feeling that little benefit comes from people yelling at each other as typically happens when there's a protest. Peaceful protest requires a great deal more discipline than most people can exhibit.
Indeed peaceful protest has historically been very effective. In addition to discipline by the protesters, it required long term commitment. Major change to the status quo does not come easily.
The purposes of protest are to draw attention to an issue, gain support and get people talking outside of the protesting. It's meant to be a catalyst. The end goal is to gain enough support to gain enough momentum to ultimately create the desired change.
What's interesting is the effect of violence in relation to protesting. Violence changes the course of protesting faster than anything.
Suffragists marched and protested to gain women's right to vote. They marched peacefully for decades, held conventions, crisscrossed the nation lecturing on the topic but it was violence that created the greatest impact. Alice Paul led a group of protesters who were jailed. She went on a hunger strike and was brutally force fed. Once news got out about the brutality she endured, the tide changed.
In the 60's we watch protest after protest unfold during the civil rights movement. With the civil rights movement, a very small group advocated for violence to push change. That threat often overshadowed the work being done by Martin Luther King's follower who were very dedicated to peaceful protesting. Once we began to see violence and brutality used against the peaceful protesters, the tide changed.
We watch protests against the Vietnam War. The vast majority of those protests were peaceful. Their efforts had little effect until the students were killed at Kent State. Sympathy's changed.
Our tendency as humans seems to be to accept the status quo, even if we believe it may be wrong. We'll stick to it, quietly preserve it, until something happens that pushes us off balance and forces us to re-examine it. Most of us won't organize a march to change something. We certainly don't want to be standing in the minority to push for it. But until someone does, that status quo remains. Once someone starts beating the drums for change, it takes a while before the numbers grow in favor. Nothing serves a greater catalyst than violence. Take note! The side perpetrating the violence will lose public support.
How we protest matter! We need to quell the anger and replace it with resolve. While there is a temptation to be outrageous to gain attention, the message will become the outrageous. Fighting violence and hatred with violence and hatred will never work.
Yes, protesting matters and it works. There's a historic roadmap for doing it effectively.