I think we can probably manage more compassion for the people looking for ways to engage with the problems we care about than this thread has generally demonstrated. (Which to be fair is a criticism not directly aimed at just you)

Protest is really good for making people feel connected to eachother when everything sucks. Its really good at demonstrating to people in your community that you care about then and wish for then to be safe. Its good at keeping us afloat emotionally when fascism wishes for us to sink and give in to despair. And its a really good way to get involved, meet other people, and get comfortable with political action.

Even if you dont think it works to solve the problem directly it has several invaluable functions for making it through this mess. "Protest is a good start, from there try to get involved in organizing in your community and take direct political action" is a perfectly valid statement, and much better praxis in the way we treat people than "dont protest, its a waste of time"

the reality is most people have never protested, OR organized, OR taken direct political action to gum up the works. If they start with protest, GOOD. Anything that gets people out in the streets doing something. Hell, they can start with just meeting their neighbors.

The "protest is masturbation" approach to discussing things with your fellow leftists is why half this thread is people being sarcastic, insulting eachother, and generally being interpersonally dysfunctional instead of having a discussion as allies. Their bad behavior isnt your fault, but I think we can all maybe try to engage with eachother in a way that gets peoples best selves in return, if we wanna be able to accomplish any of our goals.

Again, this isnt really a strictly you issue. But man is it frustrating to watch this play out over and over and over. We consistently prioritize being right or worse still, dunking on the other guy, instead of trying to build consensus and effective political coalition