Have Glenn Beck and Jon Stewart changed the face of activism?

Their rallies on the National Mall drew some of the biggest crowds this year but resulted in no direct legislative outcomes. At the sarcastic Stewart event, attendees made fun of protest rallies and called them outdated in a digital world.

Not so fast, says Lucy Barber, author of “Marches on Washington: The Forging of an American Political Tradition.”

Rallies may no longer have the shock factor they elicited when Jacob Coaxey led the first popular march on Washington in 1894, but Barber said they still serve a purpose.

We asked the rally expert for her take on the evolution of political marches:

How did we get from Jacob Coaxey to Jon Stewart? 

When the first people came to Washington in a group to march, it wasn’t really what other people expected them to do.

People were completely horrified by this notion. They first planned to arrest everyone at boundaries.

That became far less common over the years. Now your spectators tend to be television cameras rather than live people.

Are marches an effective tactic for present-day activists? 

I’m in the slightly ambivalent crowd. I think they’re often effective movement-building tactics.

It’s a way to help movements keep their supporters going, bring them together, and let people see that there are also other people who work on the same causes.

In terms of resulting in very direct political change, I think that that process has been and remains much more complex.

Has that always been the case? 

That was true in 1963 [during the Civil Rights era March on Washington]. They marched in August and there still wasn’t a civil rights bill in the next summer after a lot of horrible things happened.

Marches don’t instantly result in political change. They are a part of the process. In the case of the civil rights march, it was very important. I think it was a useful symbol of bringing Southern activists and Northern activists together.

What has changed since then? 

More recent marches often don’t have that much of a cachet. Some of that is because they don’t pose much risk for anyone. People feared the civil rights march.

What makes a rally stand out today? 

There are pretty standard ways marches judged, mainly turnout. When it seems like a remarkable new crowd, that makes it interesting. There’s a ritual that’s reassuring for the pro-choice and anti-abortion groups in having a march every year but doesn’t necessarily draw many other people’s interest.

But when you have the tea party come and the Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert crowd show up, that is interesting. It’s not people that have necessarily come to Washington in the same way before.

Does that make it more effective? 

I think the things that make [Stewart and Glenn Beck's] rallies remarkable is there isn’t any explicit demand. It’s almost a political atmosphere demand rather than a list of, “We want this bill changed. We want these rights.”

When I think about what it felt like down there [at Stewart's rally], it didn’t feel remarkable. What is remarkable is the sponsorship was different. There were pretty vague outcomes.

Should activists try to recruit celebrities for their marches? 

They’ve been doing that for years. Almost every march has celebrities come. I think it’s always been effective and tends to be appealing to have that piece of it.

Do you think rallies are becoming outdated? 

I think that bringing people together in marches can be really good inspirational moments. That helps them keep writing letters and sending the faxes and holding the fundraisers that they might get weary of otherwise.

The Facebook page is useful to have people talk to each other, but at some point people want to see each other.