The many ways of protesting

In Brazil we are going through a historical and political phase where protests have been taking place in many parts of the country. For that reason I've been reading many articles in English touching on the same topic, which has given me the chance to come across many terms related to it.

It's easy to understand what a protest is, even though there's a common confusion between protests and riots (more about that later on the post). But how many kinds of protests do you know? Let's see about that now.

The first kind that comes to mind is called sit-in or sit-down. As the name itself suggests, it's basically a kind of strike where people simply sit or stay in a place and refuse to leave until they're given what they demand. 

The second kind and maybe most common here in Brazil is the march. It basically consists of a group of people walking from a point to a certain destination while they claim for the same political interests.

But then there's rally, which seems to be pretty similar to the previous definitions except that: a rally can simply be a demonstration for or against a certain cause, which doesn't necessarily have to be political.

A boycott happens when people engage in a common refusal to consume, participate or use the goods or services of a company, country, etc until changes are made. During pride month for example it's very easy to see companies joining the march as a way to position themselves in favor of LGBT community. But that might've been the result of many previous boycotts imposed against their prejudice or segregation in the past.

And finally to finish this topic up we have the strikes, which are also common ways to demand something from employers. This time by engaging employees into simply crossing their arms and stopping work.

As mentioned before, I need to clarify the difference between a protest and a rally. I'm going to make things really easy and straightforward just by saying the main difference is that a rally is violent and a protest is not. In a way that you can hear people call a rally criminal and violent while the protests, staged as the many kinds I listed earlier, are always pacific.

here's a picture of me marching for education in Brazil (June 14, 2019)