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protest

 
Dictionary: pro·test   (prə-tĕst', prō-, prō'tĕst') pronunciation
 

v., -test·ed, -test·ing, -tests.

v.tr.
  1. To object to, especially in a formal statement. See synonyms at object.
  2. To promise or affirm with earnest solemnity: “He continually protested his profound respect” (Frank Norris).
  3. Law. To declare (a bill) dishonored or refused.
  4. Archaic. To proclaim or make known: “unrough youths that even now/Protest their first of manhood” (Shakespeare).
v.intr.
  1. To express strong objection.
  2. To make an earnest avowal or affirmation.
n. (prō'tĕst')
  1. A formal declaration of disapproval or objection issued by a concerned person, group, or organization.
  2. An individual or collective gesture or display of disapproval.
  3. Law.
    1. A formal statement drawn up by a notary for a creditor declaring that the debtor has refused to accept or honor a bill.
    2. A formal declaration made by a taxpayer stating that the tax demanded is illegal or excessive and reserving the right to contest it.

[Middle English protesten, from Old French protester, from Latin prōtestārī : prō-, forth; see pro–1 + testārī, to testify (from testis, witness).]

protester pro'test'er n.
protestingly pro·test'ing·ly adv.
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Banking Dictionary: No Protest
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Instructions by one bank to another collecting bank not to object to items in case of nonpayment. The sending bank stamps on the face of the item the letters NP. If it cannot be collected, the collecting bank returns the item without objection.

 
Thesaurus: protest
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verb

    To express opposition, often by argument: challenge, demur, except, expostulate, inveigh, object, remonstrate. Informal kick, squawk. Idioms: set up a squawk, take exception. See support/oppose.

noun

    The act of expressing strong or reasoned opposition: challenge, demur, exception, expostulation, objection, protestation, remonstrance, remonstration, squawk. Slang kick. See support/oppose.

 
Antonyms: protest
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n

Definition: complaint, disapproval
Antonyms: acceptance, approval, praise, support

v

Definition: complain, disapprove; argue against
Antonyms: accept, approve, praise, support


 
US Government Guide: protest
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On any day, you might observe a rally or demonstration on the Capitol grounds. Concerned citizens, labor unions, women's rights organizations, civil rights activists, environmentalists, and advocates of special interests of every kind assemble at the Capitol, unfurl their banners, listen to their speakers, and then seek out their senators and representatives to lobby for their cause.

The 1st Amendment to the Constitution protects the “right of the people peaceably to assemble,” and the Capitol has often provided the backdrop for citizens' peaceful assembly. In 1894, during a severe economic depression, Ohio business executive Jacob Coxey led an army of unemployed men and women to Washington to demand federal job programs. “General” Coxey's army reached the Capitol but was prohibited from walking on the grass or displaying any banners or signs. When Coxey stepped forward to speak, he was arrested for walking on the grass. During another great depression, in 1932, an army of Bonus Marchers appeared on the Capitol grounds. World War I army veterans assembled outside the Capitol while the Senate debated making an early bonus payment to help them through the hard times. Although many people expected trouble when the Senate voted down the Bonus Bill, the marchers sang “America” and dispersed. Later, regular army troops forced the veterans out of Washington.

During the Vietnam War in the 1960s, antiwar protestors regularly picketed and protested at the Capitol. Every January on the anniversary of the Supreme Court's 1972 ruling in Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion, antiabortion protestors have marched on the Capitol. Smaller groups often gather on the Capitol steps to protest political oppression and human rights violations in their native land. Regardless of the issues, these groups can receive a permit to assemble peacefully at the Capitol to exercise their constitutional rights.

See also Bonus Marchers; Coxey's army

 
Law Encyclopedia: Protest
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This entry contains information applicable to United States law only.

A formal declaration whereby a person expresses a personal objection or disapproval of an act. A written statement, made by a notary, at the request of a holder of a bill or a note that describes the bill or note and declares that on a certain day the instrument was presented for, and refused, payment.

A protest is generally made to save some right that would be waived unless a negative opinion was expressly voiced. Taxes are often paid under protest, an action by which a taxpayer reserves the right to recover the amount paid if he has sufficient evidence to prevail.

The document states the reasons for the refusal and provides for the notary to protest against all parties to the instrument declaring that they can be held liable for any loss or damages. A notice of protest is given by the holder of the instrument to the drawer or endorser of the instrument.

 
Word Tutor: protest
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pronunciation

IN BRIEF: To speak out against.

pronunciation There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. — Elie Wiesel

 
Quotes About: Protest
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Quotes:

"There is all the difference in the world between the criminal's avoiding the public eye and the civil disobedience's taking the law into his own hands in open defiance. This distinction between an open violation of the law, performed in public, and a clandestine one is so glaringly obvious that it can be neglected only by prejudice or ill will." - Hannah Arendt

"If you attack the establishment long enough and hard enough, they will make you a member of it." - Art Buchwald

"Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature, and it is an obligation, I believe, for those who fear the consequences and detest the reality of the attempt to impose American hegemony." - Noam Chomsky

"While there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free." - Eugene V. Debs

"A great wind swept over the ghetto, carrying away shame, invisibility and four centuries of humiliation. But when the wind dropped people saw it had been only a little breeze, friendly, almost gentle." - Jean Genet

"Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance." - Vaclav Havel

See more famous quotes about Protest

 
Wikipedia: Protest
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Demonstrators march in the street while protesting the policies of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund on 16 April 2005.

Protest expresses relatively overt reaction to events or situations: sometimes in favor, though more often opposed. Protesters may organize a protest as a way of publicly and forcefully making their opinions heard in an attempt to influence public opinion or government policy, or may undertake direct action to attempt to directly enact desired changes themselves.[1]

Self-expression can, in theory, in practice or in appearance, be restricted by governmental policy, economic circumstances, religious orthodoxy, social structures, or media monopoly. When such restrictions occur, opposition may spill over into other areas such as culture, the streets or emigration.

A protest can itself sometimes be the subject of a counter-protest. In such a case, counter-protesters demonstrate their support for the person, policy, action, etc. that is the subject of the original protest.

Contents

Historical notions

Unaddressed protest may grow and widen into dissent, activism, riots, insurgency, revolts, and political and/or social revolution, as in:

Forms of protest

Commonly recognized forms of protest include:

Protesters outside the Hotel Washington during the Million Worker March.

Public demonstration or political rally

Some forms of direct action listed in this article are also public demonstrations or rallies.

  • Protest march, a historically and geographically common form of nonviolent action by groups of people.
  • Picketing, a form of protest in which people congregate outside a place of work or location where an event is taking place. Often, this is done in an attempt to dissuade others from going in ("crossing the picket line"), but it can also be done to draw public attention to a cause.
  • Street protesters, characteristically, work alone, gravitating towards areas of high foot traffic, and employing handmade placards such as sandwich boards or picket signs in order to maximize exposure and interaction with the public.
  • Lock-downs are a way to stop movement of an object, like a structure or tree and to thwart movement of actual protestors from the location. Users employ various chains, locks and even the sleeping dragon for impairment of those trying to remove them with a matrix of composited materials.
  • Die-ins are a form of protest where participants simulate being dead (with varying degrees of realism). In the simplest form of a die-in, protesters simply lie down on the ground and pretend to be dead, sometimes covering themselves with signs or banners. Much of the effectiveness depends on the posture of the protesters, for when not properly executed, the protest might look more like a "sleep-in". For added realism, simulated wounds are sometimes painted on the bodies, or (usually "bloody") bandages are used.
  • Protest song is a song which protests perceived problems in society. Every major movement in Western history has been accompanied by its own collection of protest songs, from slave emancipation to women's suffrage, the labor movement, civil rights, the anti-war movement, the feminist movement, the environmental movement. Over time, the songs have come to protest more abstract, moral issues, such as injustice, racial discrimination, the morality of war in general (as opposed to purely protesting individual wars), globalization, inflation, social inequalities, and incarceration.
  • Radical cheerleading. The idea is to ironically reappropriate the aesthetics of cheerleading, for example by changing the chants to promote feminism and left-wing causes. Many radical cheerleaders (some of whom are male, transgender or non-gender identified) are in appearance far from the stereotypical image of a cheerleader.
  • Critical Mass bike rides have been perceived as protest activities. A 2006 New Yorker magazine article described Critical Mass' activity in New York City as "monthly political-protest rides", and characterized Critical Mass as a part of a social movement;[2] and the UK e-zine Urban75, which advertises as well as publishes photographs of the Critical Mass event in London, describes this as "the monthly protest by cyclists reclaiming the streets of London."[3] However, Critical Mass participants have insisted that these events should be viewed as "celebrations" and spontaneous gatherings, and not as protests or organized demonstrations.[4][5] This stance allows Critical Mass to argue a legal position that its events can occur without advance notification of local police.[6][7]

Written demonstration

Written evidence of political or economic power, or democratic justification may also be a way of protesting.

  • Petitions
  • Letters (to show political power by the volume of letters): For example, some letter writing campaigns especially with signed form letter
Pro-life activists demonstrating in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C.
A semi-nude protest facing Insurgentes Avenue north of Paseo de la Reforma in front of the Monument to Mothers by the Movimiento de los 400 Pueblos on 24 Sept 2008 in Mexico City.

Civil disobedience demonstrations

Any protest could be civil disobedience if a “ruling authority” says so, but the following are usually civil disobedience demonstrations:

As a residence

Destructive

Direct action

Protesting a government

A Tea Party protest in Hartford, Connecticut, one of 750 held nationally on April 15, 2009.
Demonstration against the 2004 NATO summit in Istanbul.

Protesting a military shipment

By government employees

Job action

In sports

During a sporting event, under certain circumstances, one side may choose to play a game "under protest", usually when they feel the rules are not being correctly applied. The event continues as normal, and the events causing the protest are reviewed after the fact. If the protest is held to be valid, then the results of the event are changed. Each sport has different rules for protests.

By management

By tenants

By consumers

Anonymous demonstration in London against the Church of Scientology.

Information

Civil disobedience to censorship

Literature, art, culture

Religious

Economic effects of protests against companies

A study of 342 US protests covered by the New York Times newspaper in the period 1962 and 1990 showed that such public activities usually had an impact on the company's publicly-traded stock price. The most intriguing aspect of the study's findings is that what mattered most was not the number of protest participants, but the amount of media coverage the event received. Stock prices fell an average of one-tenth of a percent for every paragraph printed about the event.[8]

Protest and New Social Movements

One feature of new social movements is their concern with democracy from below or ’direct democracy’, which differs from ‘representative democracy’. Whereas the ‘old’ labour movement made its demands and aired its grievances via the apparatus of the state, new social movements question this mode of political organization and interest intermediation, aiming at ‘the creation of a new conception of democracy’ or a new model of democracy.[9]

New social movements are then protest that has gathered support and ingrained itself in a rather significant proportion of society. One such example of these new social movements then is the “Anti-Capitalist Campaigns in Global Civil Society.”[10] This movement is a result of the modern globalization and because the “nation-states are losing their authority as, towards the top of the system, planetary interdependence and the emergence of transnational political and economic forces shift the locus of real decision making elsewhere, while, towards the bottom, the proliferation of autonomous decision-making centres endows the ‘societal’ level of present-day societies with a power they never knew during the development of the modern state.”[11]

Further reading

  • The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest: 1500 to the Present, ed. by Immanuel Ness, Malden, MA [etc.]: Wiley & Sons, 2009, ISBN 1405184647

See also

Notes

  1. ^ St. John Barned-Smith, "How We Rage: This Is Not Your Parents' Protest," Current (Winter 2007): 17-25.
  2. ^ Mcgrath, Ben (November 13, 2006). "Holy Rollers". http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/061113fa_fact. 
  3. ^ "Critical Mass London". Urban75. 2006. http://www.urban75.org/photos/critical. 
  4. ^ "Pittsburgh Critical Mass". http://pghcriticalmass.org/. 
  5. ^ "Critical Mass: Over 260 Arrested in First Major Protest of RNC". Democracy Now!. August 30, 2004. http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/30/1453256. 
  6. ^ Seaton, Matt (October 26, 2005). "Critical crackdown". The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1600570,00.html. 
  7. ^ Rosi-Kessel, Adam (August 24, 2004). "[*BCM* Hong Kong Critical Mass News]". http://www.bostoncriticalmass.org/pipermail/bostoncriticalmass/2004-August/000146.html. 
  8. ^ Deseret Morning News, 13 Nov. 2007 issue, p. E3, Coverage of protests hurts firms, Cornell-Y. study says, Angie Welling
  9. ^ Edited by Malcolm J. Todd and Gary Taylor. Democracy and participation : popular protest and new social movements. London : Merlin, 2004.
  10. ^ Edited by Malcolm J. Todd and Gary Taylor. Democracy and participation : popular protest and new social movements. London : Merlin, 2004.
  11. ^ Edited by Malcolm J. Todd and Gary Taylor. Democracy and participation : popular protest and new social movements. London : Merlin, 2004.

External links


 
Translations: Protest
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Dansk (Danish)
n. - indvending, protest
v. tr. - protestere mod noget, gøre indsigelser mod
v. intr. - protestere, hævde

idioms:

  • under protest    under protest

Nederlands (Dutch)
protesteren, ernstig bezwaar maken, protest, tegenspraak, verzet, appel, klacht

Français (French)
n. - protestation, réclamation, plainte, manifestation, (Jur) protêt
v. tr. - protester, manifester, affirmer, protester que, (US) protester (contre), manifester (contre)
v. intr. - protester, manifester (contre)

idioms:

  • under protest    faisant l'objet d'une opposition/plainte

Deutsch (German)
n. - Protest
v. - protestieren, beteuern

idioms:

  • under protest    unter Protest

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - διαμαρτυρία
v. - διαμαρτύρομαι, ισχυρίζομαι

idioms:

  • under protest    με επιφύλαξη

Italiano (Italian)
protestare, protesta, opposizione, appello

idioms:

  • under protest    sotto riserva

Português (Portuguese)
n. - protesto (m)
v. - protestar

idioms:

  • under protest    sob protesto

Русский (Russian)
протестовать, утверждать, протест, утверждение

idioms:

  • under protest    против своей воли

Español (Spanish)
n. - protesta, queja, objeción, reparo, recurso, apelación
v. tr. - protestar, recusar
v. intr. - protestar, hacer protestas

idioms:

  • under protest    contra su voluntad, bajo protesta

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - protest, gensaga
v. - protestera, reagera mot, beklaga sig över, bedyra

中文(简体)(Chinese (Simplified))
主张, 抗议, 断言, 力言, 声明, 声明拒付, 对...提出异议, 反对

idioms:

  • under protest    抗议着, 极不乐意地

中文(繁體)(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 主張, 抗議, 斷言
v. tr. - 力言, 聲明, 斷言, 聲明拒付, 抗議, 對...提出異議
v. intr. - 抗議, 反對, 力言, 斷言

idioms:

  • under protest    抗議著, 極不樂意地

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 항의, 항변
v. tr. - 항의하여[이의를 제기하여] 말하다
v. intr. - 항의하다, 이의를 제기하다

idioms:

  • under protest    이의를 내세우고

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 抗議, 異議, 反対, 不服, 断言, 拒絶
v. - 抗議する, 主張する

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) احتجاج, اعتراض (فعل) احتج على, أكد (ولائه)‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮מחאה, הצהרה על התנגדות, הפגנת התנגדות למדיניות הממשלה, הצהרה חגיגית, הצהרה נוטריונית בכתב לסירוב לקבל תשלום או לאשר‬
v. tr. - ‮התנגד להחלטה, טען בתוקף, הצהיר, הצהיר רשמית על חפותו, כתב הצהרה נגד‬
v. intr. - ‮מחה נגד, מיחה על‬


 
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