May be phrasing it wrong, but I look at actions like Labor rights, Pride, Civil Rights, Black Panthers, etc. where actions of protesters felt much intense and made more of an impact in actually changing things vs now where there are protests but it feels like it constantly falls of deaf ears.
Have we just not hit that breaking point yet? Have we collectively been beat down so hard? Or have we forgotten how to truly fight for rights? Or… am I just completely off the mark and missing something else?
Someone just set off a bomb in front of a politicians office in my province. Not confirmed but fairly certain that was a protest.
Pride turned more into a celebration rather than a protest in recent years with the capitalization of it, but due to recent regression I can imagine it going back to more intense protests in some towns at least now.
Depends where you live but most of the time the government does try to keep even controversial protests pretty light with the excuse of keeping people safe, but there’s always more extreme action that people take, it maybe just doesn’t get shown as a “protest” per se.
Because everything that’s happening is obviously bad to the majority.
The big, well reported protests were the result of decades, nay centuries, of protests.
Sit-in protests were common.
Rosa Parks was, by far, not the first Black person to be arrested for keeping her seat.
Hundreds of thousands of workers died or were hurt in preventable dangerous workplaces and labor protests.
It is hard and costly to go against the government.
“The revolution will not be televised”
It’s a phrase I hear a lot in leftist spaces. Effectively, you have to be aware that publicizing these things is a great way to get them shut down.
The work is being done locally, and quietly. Advertising these events in public spaces like this one will very likely lead to them not getting off the ground due to infiltration or oppression
There’s a second factor at work, which is that the institutions targeted by more “extreme” actions also don’t want those actions publicized.
Consider an action like the one depicted in “How to Blow Up a Pipeline.” If they don’t have a perpetrator in cuffs, the oil company and the cops would not want to admit the action happened at all, because it makes them look vulnerable.
Shame.
Those now in power, and Trump especially, have none. They don’t even understand the concept. And it’s been embraced by his hyenas.
Used to be, when the general population became aware of atrocities, and that they were committed against innocent people, they refused to continue to support those who had done wrong. Now Trump waves it in their face like a banner and they follow him
Used to be,
Consider Nixon resigning over Watergate, which would be small beans today.
People are organizing in their communities to patrol for ICE and respond to ICE raids, which is quite a bit like the Black Panthers “cop watch” and community patrols.
I know it’s not like when protesters burned down a police station in 2020, but things are happening.
Desensitation, perhaps. Informations flows more freely now, you hear protests/riots/rebellions everywhere, it just feels “standard” nowadays.
I’ve seen so much conflict on the news from all around the world. BLM in the USA, Hong Kong anti-extradition, France retirement age increase related protests, Serbia peaceful protesters getting blasted with an energy weapon (yes the governement used an actual energy weapon, its not a conspiracy theory), “Freedom” Convoy in Canada, UK Xenobophic Race Riots, Syrian Civil War, Invasion of Ukraine, Israel-Palestine conflict and war crimes, etc…
Conflict just became “normal”.
The powers that be have no fear of ignoring protestors any more. Or education presents civil rights protests as peaceful and effective, that all we need to do is raise awareness and show solidarity and oppressors will relent. Education speaks of the black panthers, but doesn’t go into depth on how they were the armed wing of the movement.
So now today we’re protesting because we don’t like what’s happening, but what is the consequence to the power hungry? If the protests get anything approaching non peaceful, or even if they just want to, those in charge can escalate to military actions.
We also don’t have a clearly defined win condition. What is going to make things better? When do we stop? Is the goal just to raise awareness to get people to vote for a change in 1-4 years? Or are we looking for something more immediate?
Finally how far are we willing to go? If I’m not willing to die for it, or to risk my current comfortable life style, can I ever really push hard enough against current conditions? They’re willing to kill to keep their power, am I willing to kill to pry it from them?
They don’t fear us because they know we have so much more to lose than they do. We are not yet playing a game with equal stakes.
I don’t have a solution to this, so I’ll at least keep doing the peaceful thing, because it’s better than doing nothing.
It’s probably at least partially something adjacent to survivorship bias. The most remarkable actions of the past that “survive” to the present to be retold are the ones that were most impactful.
But all of the current protests you feel are not as impactful help build a foundation for the more impactful ones.
I think the the other issue is reporting of events is split into thousands of sources. Just like with media there is no longer a shared conversation between everyone. Back in the day. If Walter Cronkite talked about it everybody knew about it. But know everything is fractured into their own subcultures and to extent their own realities.
Another domain where big tech is not helping organise… They boost hatred not just for engagement and ads, but so masses don’t organise against those technothieves
The black panthers were constantly organizing within their communities, and bringing actual weapons and shows of force against the state. The state imprisoned many of their leaders, and killed Fred Hampton in his sleep. That’s why they were actually having an impact. Because they were willing to risk their LIVES over it, and they didn’t ever stop. I don’t really see that happening anywhere now.
If we haven’t hit the breaking point yet, then we never will. These protests CAN’T be civil. We need widespread civil disobedience all across the country, and especially in D.C.
I think that part of it is that the authorities are confident that we can’t do much. In the 60’s, wide scale protest that was not a preamble to a riot was rare. In recent times, everyone expects things to go off peacefully and just come to an end at some point. This plays directly into their hands, and they are confident that we are toothless.
Peaceful protests will do fuck all when the white house rhetoric is that a large percentage of the population (anybody who doesn’t support Trump) are literally enemies of the state.
Liberals do not understand this for some reason, but peaceful protests only work with at least the THREAT of violence, unless you live in a country that actually cares about representing the people. Which America does not.
In the words of Anton LaVey, they are addicted to the “good guy badge”. They’d rather die feeling morally clean than get their hands dirty to save their country, neighbors, and values. The liberals I hear judging people for violent protest the most are the ones who are privileged enough to have not personally felt the consequences yet.
In my opinion, it is a grotesque cowardice to admonish people for fighting for their lives just because you don’t have to.
Exactly. I totally agree. It’s absolute bullshit.
A few things come to my mind on why.
- We aren’t fresh off of WW2 when a large portion of the planet was personally affected, extremely sensitive and aware of the impact government overreach can cause.
- We aren’t bored, we have all these highly refined dopamine injecting options, maybe not nefarious in nature but keeps many of us docile and complacent.
- Extremely effective propaganda to muddy the waters on what’s actually going on and what a united peoples opinion even is.
- Globalization of the money, I believe on the grand scheme, the money players are softly united behind the scenes and not backing one side or the other but playing the middle ground class war. So no big money to support a cause.
But should it be extreme? I reckon it should be effective instead. Whether effective means awareness, resignations or something else is a conversation that varies a lot from context to context.
Yeah, better not disturbe anyone when you are doing your awareness “protests”…
Those do work better. Antagonising the people whose support you rely on to effect change is a horrible strategy, the more of a disturbance protests cause to the average person, the less likely said average person is to be supportive.
Only this strategy has literally never worked. Your rights were secured by people who caused all kinds of disturbances. And in the first place anyone who still hasn’t taken a side is a fascist in denial or will never take a side.
I was mad that the government was disappearing people, but then a protest made it so I couldn’t drive where I wanted to.
That’s a vast oversimplification of the thought process and emotions that’s going on there and an extremely uncharitable one at that (most people have their own lives to worry about, it’s usually less “I can’t drive where I want to” and more “I have to get to work”), but essentially yes. That’s the reality you have to work with.
Of course, but the metric you choose for “effectiveness” is critical. In the current situation the metric must be “removal from office”.
Americans are brainwashed to believe that there’s only one particular and specific way to protest, and beyond that all you can do is kill people.
They haven’t yet realized that there is a huge swathe of options in between, and it requires no organization or depending on others, and no violence against anyone. You can just quietly do stuff. Probably less risky than doing anything publicly in a country with ubiquitous surveillance and the law no longer matters. Protests are great for showing the level of public support for a movement, but if the government doesn’t represent the people their effect will be minimal for producing real change.
There currently is no cost for ventures into fascism. Make it so expensive they’ll think twice next time (if there is a next time.)
You can just quietly do stuff.
Like what?
