the sound of protest

I’ve been wondering for a while now what the point of protesting [fill in the blank] is – what purpose does it serve? For example, protesting the recent bombings on Falluja isn’t going to stop the bombings; the largest protest in history didn’t stop the attack on Iraq, so why is a smaller protest going to do anything? I now think that the point is to prevent marginalizing from happening; by getting out and creating enough of a ruckus that the media – one of the creatures of the virtual that helps perpetuate mimetic circulation – covers the event, people who hold an alternate view are suddenly no longer marginalized, but instead are taking over the very mechanism that is attempting to silence them.