Protesting is one part of a variety of anti-establishment responses. I’m tired of hearing people say it doesn’t work - obviously, on its own it doesn’t, but combine it with the many other aspects and there can be change. Of course, not everyone is fit to do every single one of the things required, but stop shitting on people who are trying to do even one of the things.
Protests are what get people fired up. Protests are part of what connect people and provide networking opportunities to organize other actions. Protests make people realize that they arenot alone, and that they CAN do something. Will they? Some of them will, and that’s the fucking point. Protests are a warning. Telling people “protests don’t work” only harms the fucking movement, so fucking stop it.
Why does it have to be Im shitting on them? Why can you just take a truth for what it is?
Just overly sensitive as if you understand the implication but are still in denial.
I’ve met people at protests who have organized boycotts, advocacy campaigns, fundraisers, and many many more things that enact measurable change. These people often meet through these types of events and I can guarantee you, if it wasn’t for rallies, I wouldn’t have even known where to start or how to find people that are doing the work.
Your “truth” is only true if you (or whoever the fuck you’re talking about) isn’t benefiting from the protest/rally/event. So maybe you should go to a protest and find a network and do some work if you feel like you’re not getting what you need from protests.
And just to be clear, I’m not judging people who only go to protests and then go home. That’s fine too. The whole point of activism is to do the best you can, and if it just means showing up on a weekend for 2 hours, that’s fine. Other people will see you, they will feel your support, and they will feel motivated to keep working toward whatever they were advocating for in the first place. That is the real point of protests.
Its your interpretation that I am saying “protest dont work.” Again, as if you feel some doubt in their effectiveness and are in denial. The point of my post was to comment on the protesters resolve.
Okay, so reading your title again, you are saying: people that only go to protests on their day off (and don’t engage in any other type of activism), think that protests don’t work. Is that accurate?
It has to be, right? If they felt they could truly effect change, looking at this world, they would be out there day in and out.
Counterpoint: People need to eat and pay rent, and those things don’t go away just because you’re protesting the latest bullshit the government is up to.
Last I checked, under authority rule food and housing becomes pretty scarce.
I would tell you what courage means if I thought it might help you.
Like it or not, with this government shutdown, the democrats are showing more courage than all of us.
I would tell you what courage means if I thought it might help you.
Someone offers a counterpoint and your first impulse is to insult?
If you took it as an insult im sorry… I just didn’t want to get all preachy.
I look up to people like mlk but I could never match up.
I look up to people like mlk but I could never match
Just remember what MLK did and preached: non-violent protest.
he may have advocated non-violence but he did not condemn violence. he understood it as an inevitable and necessary response under continued oppression. please don’t whitewash him.
we are not going to protest our way out of fascism. i hope we all know there is much more to be done.
You could have voted your way out of fascism. Perhaps nonviolent protesting is worth a try?
Im not saying be violent. Im saying be committed. Sacrifice something.
Lol at someone telling you to believe in your cause and you snub your nose at them.
They’re snubbing their noses at you because you’re gatekeeping what it means to be committed to a cause. People need to keep their jobs out of responsibility and necessity and you are telling them it’s not good enough. You’re posing a false dichotomy about what it means to be committed. When the protest is over, they still need to pay bills.
Their snubbing their nose because they cant imagine a world where they have to do something beyond the bare minimum.
You can call me a gate keeper but the gate is wide open.
Yes, yes, I have to pay bills they have to pay bills we should all do are best not to disrupt the system and be compliant with our owners.
Except the literal social contract, the bill of rights, is under threat but god forbid we band together and keep the goverment out of ours houses and take back from the bank that which always belonged to us.
Same
Me personally, I believe protesting doesn’t work without mass violence against those in power against your protest.
You think 4 billion people sitting peacefully in a park with signs and chants affects trump at all? Fuck no.
You show up with 200,000 angry fuckers with guns on his doorstep, and NOW he’s thinking about doing some kind of change.
United Health Care was planning on ending it’s coverage for anestesia. Now you’d have to pay, and pay a LOT. The business plan was "Pay us shitloads of money that you can’t afford, or feel the knife cutting you open during surgury. Your call.
Then Brian Thompson gets shot. Literally the next day United Health Care announced they would not follow through on their previously announced ceasure of anestesia coverage. They would remain covering it. Why? Because the board of suits asked “Am I next?”
Now ask yourself. If Luigi just held a sign in a park, and Brian Thompson were still alive, would you be able to afford anastesia today?
I generally agree, but how is that different from Jan 6?
That was 2,000 people showing up on Congress’ doorstep to do damage.
I’m don’t mind being a hypocrite when it’s for the working class, but I hope we have a better argument than “it’s good when my team does it.”
I mean quite literally, yes. There’s a lot of things that are justifiable against an evil that aren’t against a good. Now people’s opinions on what is good differ, and that’s a dangerous thing that needs to be considered. But yeah, violence is acceptable against authoritarianism and not acceptable against democracy.
The difference between treason and a revolution is which side wins at the end.
Just make sure you’re enough people doing it.
how is it different? it isn’t and that is fine. because you are treating leftists as some kind of side or team when in reality far left “extremism” is largely in response to authoritarian violence and fascism. it is a reaction to oppression, it isn’t an aimless violence or a way to enforce your ideology on to others.
it is different because we have the moral high ground here. have some respect for your beliefs and agree that you are right. we are on the right side of history and we have to act like it or we are going to fucking lose.
have some respect for your beliefs and agree that you are right.
That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t question/interrogate them.
If you are the light, if your enemies are darkness, then there’s nothing that you cannot justify.
History is full of people who’ve done horrible things because they were convinced of the Righteousness of their cause.
*points in MAGA’s general direction*
I show up to my local protests and do firearms training (just in case,) but that doesn’t mean I’m going stop thinking about where the line should be drawn.
Nonviolent protests work fine, great even, they just have to be disruptive. The Civil Rights movement was largely nonviolent and got results because they striked, took up commercial space so commerce couldn’t operate, and gummed up the works so productivity stalls. The suits won’t care about violence either if they have ways of escaping, they only care about direct impacts, be it directed violence or economic harm.
Yea, the way I see it, it’s most effective to focus on removing power, and in a capitalist society money is power. You could try enacting change through violence, but the remaining people in power will still have the money to better protect themselves from violence, which just escalates the violence. If protests focused more on economic disruption, they’d be directly affecting more of the people in power than killing any individual while simultaneously reducing what power they do have, pushing them to concede to demands.
Every single attempt at that form of protest has been met with ridicule and harsh condemnation. Think just stop oil, XR. They literally tried to stop people from buying petrol or using it. Could you imagine what the economic impact would be if half a city stopped buying fuel.
I think you can do a peaceful protest and still have it be effective, as long as it’s disruptive. Strikes are a good example. Rich people care about a protest as long as you can threaten their bottom line
Then Brian Thompson gets shot. Literally the next day United Health Care announced they would not follow through on their previously announced ceasure of anestesia coverage. They would remain covering it. Why? Because the board of suits asked “Am I next?”
This is not an accurate description at all. It was delayed in only select states, but they still followed through with that change for a vast majority of states. The only policy change brought by Thompson’s death was that UHC execs hired better security details.
Isn’t UHC being sued by its investors because they made policy changes that benefitted the insured instead of the investors after Brian Thompson’s death?
The story I remember is that the people working for uhc weren’t denying cases that they should have been.
yeah but movements take time to build. BLM had almost a decade of build up before 2020.
Obviously we need to speed run this but also things start “somewhere”. The police assaults and response to the BLM protest of 2019 and 2020 did more to radicalize normies than anything has previously. Like, more people understand the contradictions of this country than ever before
I think the term “protest” is what throws people off. Protest can encompass a lot of different actions, including showing up to a park on the weekend. But when a lot of people hear “protest”, they imagine more direct action. They imagine people directly interfering with the fascist’s agenda.
These seem more like rallies to me. The point seems to be less about interfering with the fascist administration and more about stretching organizing muscles, building networks and strengthening the resolve of millions of people around the country. Reminding them that so many of their friends and neighbors care enough to show up too. These aren’t direct action in the same way but I think they still serve an important purpose.
We are building a web of trust and solidarity for the days ahead. Things will get worse, we are not even a year into this administration and I don’t think the gloves have really come off yet. These protest or rallies or whatever you want to call them will help us be ready. When the time comes there will be organizers and volunteers and millions of people ready to step together and fight for what we believe in. But first, this.
And while that slowly forms, the government is disappearing thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands. That’s not acceptable.
We need to stop them now, even if we have to get violent for them to listen to us
People also believe the earth is flat. What’s your point?
