Young people think Rosa Parks just sat down on a bus and ended segregation, but that wasn't the case at all.”

We all know Rosa Parks right? Good. Do we know Claudette Colvin? No.

So Claudette was a student of Rosa Parks back when she was the Youth Leader of the NAACP.

In March 1955, Claudette was arrested for refusing to give up her seat for a white person. She was 15 years old. Her lawyer was a 24-year old Fred D. Gray. Fred believed that to give them a stronger case, they needed to public support. So together with the NAACP, they planned a bus boycott. While they were planning the boycott, Claudette, a single woman got impregnated by a married man. The lawyers and leaders of the NAACP decided that she couldn’t be the face of the movement.

“If the white press got ahold of that information, they would have [had] a field day. They'd call her a bad girl, and her case wouldn't have a chance” Rosa Parks said. Protests are wars. In a war, people look for the weaknesses of their opponents to exploit. When you are protesting police brutality and you loot and vandalize, your “violence” become the story. Your enemy seizes on that to delegitimize your claims. They made Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling about the flag and his message was lost. They would have done the same with Claudette, if the movement had made her the face, especially because she was a dark-skinned woman with nappy hair.

Rosa Parks, a fair-skinned woman with “good hair”, was chosen to be the face of the movement. So in December 1955, Rosa Parks sat in the bus, got arrested and the arrest sparked a protest. What people don’t know is, the protest took 9 months to plan. Of course, Rosa Parks lost her case and the lawyer Fred Gray filed a civil case with the federal courts against segregation. Guess who was a plaintiff in the case, Claudette Colvin. Fred almost got disbarred because one of the Plaintiffs was forced to say she didn’t agree to be his client.

The protest together with the court action led to the desegregation of buses in Alabama State. So what did Fred do? Filed another case for desegregation of schools. Of course he was on a good cause but it was the successful fight for buses that empowered him to fight more. It’s the story of people like Rosa, Claudette and Fred that has led people to believe protests work.

The truth is, protests did work. The truth is, they don’t work anymore. The success of protests in the past has led to more protests, however the success of the demands of protestors being met have reduced. People are protesting more in the world and getting less results. The reason? Governments have come to realise that, when you meet the demand of protestors, you give them an incentive to protest more.

You remember the Hong Kong protest? It was about an extradition law. When the government of the Island caved and pulled the plug on the law, the people demanded more. Now they want to be a democracy, independence from China. A cause I agree with, I must say. The Chinese government realised it was a mistake to have caved the first time. Now it’s a problem. Most governments in the world have also realised that. If you cave, you pace the way for people to demand more. To protect their hold on power, governments have to let their citizens feel like they are “dead goats”, they are not afraid of knives anymore.

This is why protests don’t work anymore. This is why the Democratic leaders in Los Angeles responded to the protests by imposing a curfew on the city. That’s why the Democratic mayor of New York responded to them by defending the police. That’s why none of the political leaders on both sides WHO ARE IN POWER are publicly siding with the protestors. It’s only those currently in opposition who seem to care about the grievances of the protestors. Like Barack and Michelle are blabbing. Like dude, what did you do about these same issues when they came up during your time in office? Nothing. Obama actually pulled a Trump and called the protestors in Baltimore “criminals and thugs” in 2015. Now people are acting like Trump is the first US president to use those words.

My point is, protests don’t matter anymore because protests don’t work anymore. Do you know what works? Votes.

Let me put it this way. ''I don't think a woman should be in any government job whatsoever. I mean, I really don't. The reason why I do is mainly because they are erratic. And emotional. Men are erratic and emotional, too, but the point is a woman is more likely to be.''

Those were the words of President Richard Nixon. Why did Nixon say this? Nixon was telling his aide that he wanted to appoint a woman for the Supreme Court against his own will. However he was hoping the American Bar Association will do him the favour of rejecting the woman he will appoint. So in 1971, he nominated Mildred Lillie for the Supreme Court and she was rejected by the ABA. Publicly, that made Nixon look like he cared about women empowerment so he won the support of white women decidedly in the next election.

In 1981, the first elected Republican President after Nixon, Ronald Reagan saw the good the purported appointment of a woman for Nixon and appointed the first woman to the US Supreme Court, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. It was actually a campaign promise he made in 1980.

A campaign promise his rival at the time, incumbent President Jimmy Carter called, “just one job for one woman”. Reagan won the election and fulfilled that promise. Actually one of the women he shortlisted was a black woman, Judge Amalya Kearse. He was the first president to consider a black woman for the Supreme Court. Women supported Nixon for the attempt and overwhelmingly supported Reagan for the appointment.

His boring Vice President, George H.W Bush Sr, became president after him because women loved Reagan. So by promising to put a black woman on the Supreme Court, Joe Biden was following the Reagan Playbook. Every US President since Reagan has channelled Reagan in some form during their campaign. Obama wrote an article about his admiration for the man Black Americans love to hate.

My point is. The Blacks in the US have not leveraged their votes to get what they want well enough. If the Black Americans will decide this election to punish the Democratic Party by voting for a third party candidate, it will force both parties to wake up. Republicans try to win the Black vote (Trump organized a State of the Nation GiveAway for black people earlier this year) but they don’t fight for the Black vote aggressively because they know it is taken. Democrats know they have the Black vote so they only fight for “safe” black causes.

White women are the real kingmakers of America because they are not afraid to vote for Obama in one election and vote for Trump in the next. Their choice is not fixed. That’s why Joe Biden was considering making Amy Klobuchar his Vice Presidential candidate. Black people need to take the bold step of not voting Democrat this election cycle and they will become hot cake. But they won’t because they are more afraid of what will happen if they actually speak the truth to power in the only language that matters.That language is through the ballot. Make your vote something to fight for by not guaranteeing it to any party and you will be taken serious. For now, the protests are just things people do to make themselves feel good, like they are actually making a difference.