A benefit of "outrage politics"

Collective  action has been a key part of achieving human rights ever since the cost of two decades of constant warfare possibly combining with a volcanic eruption and the result that “the food rations for the favoured and elite royal tomb-builders and artisans ... could not be provisioned”  led to the first  documented  strike, back in in 1152 BCE, in Ramesses III’s Egypt. 

Since then, we have seen: 

• the peasant’s revolt, which was in large part due to objections to officials groping women to see if they were virgins (and thus, according to the thinking of the time, “unmarried”) or not; 
• abolitionism and other anti-slavery  actions; 
  
• the more militant suffragettes who became active after the non-violent suffragists were unable to get women the vote; 
• the long history of peace movements; 
  
• the many protests against US and other nation's involvement in the Vietnam War; 
• the US civil rights movement and the 1960s counterculture movement;
• the rise of Amnesty  International and other human rights NGOs; 
• the anti-apartheid  movement; and 
• the rise of social  media.
  

The latter aspect has also seen the rise of the pejorative term “outrage politics” - and a few other pejorative terms as well. 

Now, I consider some social media protests to be either ineffective or counter-productive in terms of trying to achieve change, but that is a charge that can be - and has been - laid at the feet of other protest methods throughout history (especially by those being protested against), and, equally, those methods also have good  reason to be considered successful. 

But there is other aspect of this that is not acknowledged enough, in my opinion: 

the feeling of being acknowledged, validated, and supported that it gives to those who are the victims of discrimination - it shows they have allies, and are not being subjected to the compounding abuse of the  bystander  effect.

Do not underestimate the power of letting people know they are not alone - and call out or challenge pejoratives such “outrage politics”, which are tools of oppression.