Given the number of times I've either quarrelled with or ridiculed the complaint of those who went on the great anti-Iraq war demo that they weren't listened to, and pointed out that there's no rule of democratic politics in a parliamentary system to say that your word goes provided you march, I'm glad to be able to respond to an apparently contrary notion. This comes from Lexington at the Economist, who doubts that Occupy Wall Street can become a tea-party movement of the left. The doubt arises from 'its fixation on protest'. Lexington accepts that the protesters have a right to protest, referring to the honourable place of marches and sit-ins in American history. On the other hand...
...to bring about real change in a real democracy you also have to do real politics.
That's an impoverished conception of real politics. Granted, an effective protest movement needs a realistic programme of demands. Within an electoral system, it also needs to be able to translate its numbers on the street or wherever into pressures on and through elected politicians and party systems. But, apart from this, the idea that protest isn't real politics is not only a one-sidedness similar to the delusion that marching should be the whole of politics, it also downgrades the importance of finding whatever legitimate ways one can to influence parties and governments, beyond the brief act of using one's vote.