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Today will see the largest march in London since the 2003 protests over Iraq. People will march to Hyde Park in support of an alternative to the coalition government's savage cuts. These cuts are not inevitable – they are driven by ideology, not economic necessity. We can address the deficit by putting hundreds of thousands of people back to work in low-carbon jobs, implementing a Robin Hood tax, cutting spending like Trident, and seriously cracking down on tax evasion and avoidance.
Caroline Lucas MP
Leader, Green party
• At least Simon Jenkins is even-handed in his dismissal of virtually every demonstration in British history (Britain has long been a poor venue for protest, 25 March). But no one now defends refusing women or the poor the right to vote. Few justify the wars in Vietnam or Iraq. The poll tax riot is generally considered to have contributed to the fall of Margaret Thatcher. Brixton and Toxteth did demonstrate that black people were no longer prepared to tolerate the worst manifestations of racism. Why does it take governments so long to catch up with popular opinion and do the right thing?
Lindsey German
London
• In 1941 Edward Dowling wrote: "The two great obstacles to democracy in the US are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror amongst the rich, lest we get it." For US then read UK now, and while Simon Jenkins is hardly one of the poor, he certainly shares that delusion – or perhaps he is just one of the rich.
John Airs
Liverpool
• Many veterans of campaigns would not share Simon Jenkins's cynicism about public demonstration. It is just one form of protest, alongside contacting our MPs, the May ballot box and, of course, writing to the Guardian.
Katy Simmons
Burnham, Buckinghamshire
• With governments not keeping electoral promises and media in general tendentiously controlled by big money, the only genuine democratic expression of popular feeling between elections is the public demonstrations Jenkins discounts.
J Monjardino
London
• In dismissing protests as "childish song festivals", Simon Jenkins turns history on its head. How else does he think the general population gained all the rights and freedoms we take for granted today? As freed slave Frederick Douglass once said: "Power concedes nothing without a demand."
Ian Sinclair
London
