@Lookout on what an antiwar and anti-imperialism movement could be as well as a revolution. No offense, but I've seen over and over where people automatically assume a revolution and/or an antiwar movement is all about street protests and violence. I don't think that has to be the case, actually it can't be the case or we will not be successful. We have to find a way to organize the voices out there who can't walk in the streets or travel to Washington D.C.

Relative to working locally, nothing wrong with walking and chewing gum at the same time, I'm not denigrating those efforts at all. But we need more than that, in my opinion, to stop the criminal class from killing and starving people and stealing all the wealth and to change the way we're governed at the national level.

As I've said many times, if we can organize twenty million people to vote for a politician, why can't we organize twenty million people to oppose war and oligarchy?

...I just have been wondering if marching in the streets helps.

First the corporate media doesn't cover marches nor protests. I think back to Occupy. When they finally were forced to cover the story, Obomber moved in nationally to shut down the protest.

Secondly the militarized/privatized police are prepared. Just look at the random round up of the inauguration protestors with absurd charges...
https://www.thenation.com/article/the-prosecution-of-inauguration-day-pr...

The charges—which include felony rioting, inciting or urging others to riot, conspiracy to riot, and property destruction—all stem from the same mass arrest, during which police indiscriminately swept up protesters, journalists, and legal observers. What makes the charges all the more troubling is that prosecutors then failed to allege that the bulk of defendants did anything specifically unlawful; rather, merely being at the protest was a crime.

and the use of fake evidence...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/28/project-veritas-protesters...

As I watched the travesty at Standing Rock...every bit as horrendous as "Bloody Sunday" in Selma...with little to no public outcry...I started questioning the effectiveness of protests in this corporate country.

So I may be one of the folks you refer to -

some suggested the best we can do is work locally in our communities, deprive the corporations and big banks our money and live life to the fullest.

...because I don't see an option. I look forward to your insights on an effective strategy to end our insane wars, invest in people, and protect the planet. Peace my friend is the answer...I just don't know how to get us there.

@Nastarana rampant wealth inequality, the decimation of the middle class and the continued automation (robots are coming) of the workplace is that they, the ruling class and their corporations, simply don't need a good percentage of us anymore.

Check out some of the commercials on TV selling cars or houses and you'll see things 70% of the public can't even contemplate affording. Hell, I went to a fast food place the other day to get a burger and saw they were all 5-8 bucks, for a burger. At a fast food place. I drove right on out without a burger.
So even targeted boycotts against the corporations are getting harder to get results from in this global capitalist system. They just don't give a shit.

That is to say, we need a national peace and justice movement AND we need to be not feeding the beast in our own spending whenever possible AND we need to take back our local govts. That last is hard, much harder than turning out for demonstrations, which is why the Dems. mostly don't want to bother.

I also have been wondering about the efficacy of public protest as a tactic. Now, there are so many of them, no one really pays much attention.

I do think that carefully thought out consumer boycotts can be quite effective. Remember the grape boycott? It is easy in retrospect to sneer at limousine liberals giving up, wait for it..taable grapes. Wow, what a sacrifice! Like, man, they had to make their salads out of melon balls instead of grapes. That boycott was effective BECAUSE it was easy, and by being easy, it exposed the fragile underpinnings of corporate success. If people don't buy your product, you don't make any money.

Present day boycott of GMO containing foods is mostly informal, not at all nationally coordinated, but is showing some successes. The powers of darkness, mostly from the Dumb Party I am sorry to say, can fly in and take over and sabotage an iniative campaign, but they can't--yet--control people's buying decisions.