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This weekly thread will focus on Protests, both effective and ineffective.
Over the past 15 years, we've seen more protesting since the 1960's in North America. Some feel they are needed, and some feel they are wasteful and silly.
Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):
- Have you ever taken part? What was it and why?
- What protests have you felt have been effective or ineffective?
- If you feel they are not effective in general, what would you rather people do?
- Have you ever had your opinion swayed by any form of protest? Please note that this could be either to the side of the protesters or away from their cause.
- How would you try to ensure a successful protest?
- Do you feel that violent protest is mostly uncalled for? If not, how do you know when you need to escalate things?
- Just for fun, what is the absolute worst protest you've ever heard of?
I've done some some protesting in high school, but it was mostly dumb school decisions and most of the seniors joined in. It's easy to protest when that basically means a ditch day. Hell, people that didn't care at all joined in just to bail on class, so I don't really think it counts.
Other than that, I've just done some for local politics which are often more effective than business or federal protests because the local people need to live near you and pissing off your neighbours is a lot more stupid than pissing off a nebulous "them" located elsewhere.
That being said, I feel most modern protesting is done poorly and doesn't do much currently beyond being a 30-second blip on the 24 / 7 media machine.
I've spoken about it before, but the currently popular street- or bridge-blocking protests I feel are among some of the most misguided - mostly because they don't target. Please note that I'm not talking about things like French protests where they happen to organize and there's so many people present that they have to block off streets in front of government buildings. Not at all. Those people know how to fucking protest.
For example, if you're protesting a war (like several recent ones), why wouldn’t you, say, protest the factories where the weapons are made or buildings where executives meet? I don't mean they should just hold up some signs outside, but blockade those businesses in. Stop the parkades from functioning.
Maybe find out who their major shareholders are and publicly shame them. Dig up dirt on them. Harangue them online. Hacktivism. Do anything you can to stop them. Hell, find the neighbourhoods that those shareholders live in and blockade those. If it's a war protest, protest at the schools that their children go to letting them know their rich parents are murdering people overseas.
You have to stay pissed off, and not let them wear you out because protesting like this is fucking hard and isn't just a fun afternoon outside with friends like some of these other ones.
And, again, the targets are wrong because there is no target.
A street- or bridge-blocking protest is like protesting the food in a prison cafeteria by beating the shit out of your cellmate, and then calling them complicit because they ate food yesterday. What the hell are they supposed to do about it? And do you think a recently beaten cellmate will be more or less receptive to your cause after?
Bridge / street blocks are not creative, don't get people present on your side (quite literally the opposite), presents safety risks, may delay emergency vehicles, wastes natural resources, and don't change minds of those who hear about it on the news. Same with the stupid "pour soup / oil on a piece of art" shit I saw repeatedly. A throw-away headline seems to be the goal, but it accomplishes next to nothing.
... which just means you have to get creative. Target. Those. In. Power. Make life fucking hard for them.
Protest threads on Lemmy often reek of this attitude I see frequently of "It's a deeply stupid and astoundingly flawed thing to do, but I'll defend it to the death because it agrees with my politics!" Great. You support them. In some cases, I do too.
But how about we actually do something?