- People every time a post about protests is made: “This will accomplish nothing.”
- Those same people when asked what they’re personally doing since they talk like they know what will and won’t work: “Also nothing.”
- (Bonus points for the ones who say violent uprisings are needed, but are not violently rising up themselves. Double bonus for “well I don’t live in the US.”)
Protests aren’t the solution on their own, they’re a step in the process of people getting to the point of doing something about the situation they’ve found themselves in. You can’t fix a problem if you don’t first acknowledge and accept that it’s a problem. Stop crapping on people for protesting. Instead, encourage them to use that energy to take things further. And if you know so much about what will actually work and are going out of your way to tell people what they’re doing isn’t going to work, maybe you should be doing the thing you claim will work so you can lead by example instead of armchair directing.
A term I’ve been using is ‘activation’. people who are in the early stages of activation attend protests - more often attendance is more activation. This eventually evolves into active participation in support networks, vigilante counteraction, or legal resistance like journalism and similar activities.
Protest attendance is the start of most individuals’ activation, and we can’t knock that starting place if we want greater numbers participating in the counteraction apparatus going forward.
Yeh the other step is actual violence. Not condoning or promoting it.
Just saying that has to be the next follow up if they’re not listening to he protests.
Remember, if your organization is big enough to organize a general strike, the feds are there and watching. Watch your back
recall that the FBI infiltrated the civil rights movement and more even before we had a police state empowered by the Patriot Act surveillance and AI data collection.
I have zero proof, but I suspect that they are actively disrupting all attempts at organization. This is based on the history of CIA and FBI; we never know what they are doing currently, we only know a tiny bit of what they have done in the past.
Maybe I’m paranoid.
One of the organizers of Standing Rock was framed and turned in by their partner of like 3± years, iirc. The fbi offered them ~$2000 and so they planted a gun in their partners belongings before a camp raid.
Remember kids, anyone can become a tool of the state if put in the right position
Evidence is there that they are doing that, at the very least the consistent effort to not only divide but also demoralize through deliberate propaganda. It’s why you see so many people on Reddit, Lemmy, or any other social media being downright pessimistic about what protests can accomplish or build into. They’ve already lost to the propaganda, so what’s going on now immediately gets written off by them as futile. They are exactly where these orgs want them to be: at home, isolated, writing dumb little comments on the internet that only serve to pull the crabs back down into the bucket. That kind of stuff is infectious to others and makes people opt to view organizing as ineffectual.
Paranoid has proven to be downright reasonable
What was that one phrase again? Something like “there are two kinds of conspiracy theories: antisemitic woo and declassified CIA documents”
Your wallet is your strongest voice in the eyes of this administration. Think carefully about where you spend your hard earned money.
A single day of avoiding Walmart and Amazon is not meaningful if you give them your money tomorrow. Find local businesses that deserve your money and spend your money with them instead.
Buy less and buy better quality items that last longer. Reduce consumerism and give homemade gifts or experiences instead of more junk nobody needs. Use lending libraries, swap groups, and other methods to reduce your contribution to the economy, which is frankly the only thing the American government really is interested in.
And hats off to the person who successfully organizes a general strike. I’m cheering you on from Canada.
I remember how fast Jimmy Kimmel was back in the air once people starting attacking the bottom line. The biggest thing a capitalist society and its oligarchs fear is the threat to its money.
I’m not going to be first in line to start doing something that actually fucking matters, but you bet your ass I’ll be third.
protests and direct action present an opportunity for everyone to go at once. it’s just up to you guys to take it.
Why is it always a general strike? Why not a rent/mortgage strike?
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Not opposed to both, but I’d argue a rent/mortgage strike is more feasible. It could literally be started tomorrow if it was organized already. The only action for people to take at that point is to stop paying, and don’t pay until the problems are fixed. Could even weaponise our homeless population by encouraging them to take up residence in empty homes.
Where as a general strike takes time to build up resources, and generally requires a strong union backing, and the people actively putting effort into organizing. They also need to spend these resources for food, and generally living until the strike bares fruit. So it requires people caring about organizing, and saving, more than the rest of the stuff they have going on in there lives. It’s also a much bigger first step towards civil disobedience, which is a harder sell.
On the other hand, focusing on a rent/mortgage strike builds up our resources by keeping more of them in our pockets, and weaponizes apathy/greed for civil disobedience as all we have to do is *stop paying *. Making it a much easier selling and starting point. Bonus, it can still find a general strike as an escalation after a couple/few months and still help build up organization.
no kings has no leverage and no power and no stamina and no guts. are the police attacking them in the streets? i personaly see these kind of protests as controlled off gassing. you have a large amount of people who would under other circumstances be pushed into actual action, thinking they make a difference doing this, allowing the system to functionally ignore them.
without the media on your side these protests do not work. and the media is captured, and neither side wants to see this stop
Are you recruiting there for an org that wants to do something that matters?
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/40568556
Or are you gonna let the Liberals get all the photo ops?
getting arrested is a good sign. the news talking about it on wensday would be more of a good indication
‘actual action’ beyond protest tends to get nasty quickly. I’m glad the left wing isn’t lowering themselves to the level of, say, the capitol attacks.
The just way will take longer but it’s the only way to effect real change.
A strike would be a good middle ground though.
you say it will “takes longer” as things have been getting worse not better is a weird stance. these protests have been unsuccessful in their goals, not having a goal was the first failure. and there is a lot that can be done before the need to storm the capitol. but you are already poised to reject anything beyond protest. so you are in reality happy with the status quo
I’m not happy though I’m not directly involved as I’m not American (though I am affected of course). But there’s a limit to what you can expect here. The MAGA’s are a cult, protesting won’t touch their hard core and pushing them harder will cause escalation.
The only way these walls will come down is talking, not fighting. And they’re burning up inside now with this Iran war that’s deeply unpopular even with MAGA. Unfortunately they did manage their goal of making everyone forget the word Epstein though 😔
By protesting and being reasonable you chip away at their fringes, the people that are kinda on the fence. Anyway that’s my take.
And like I said, strikes are a good idea too, anything non violent really.
incorrect. reasoning with a cult does not work. protesting will not effect their decisions in the slightest, and worrying about escalation has always been a moot point. they manufacture escalation at their pace. they do not need a reason. but forcing escalation it’s the point. the iranians have been more effective at changing the heart of magats by making life for magats directly harder. not a single protest has changed their mind. and so in order for this to stop, life has to start getting harder for everyone.
And are you actively organizing to change that? Or are you just providing an example of OP?
are you?
Yes. I’m a member of a number of local mutual aid orgs and other groups that I started working more closely with after my home state was invaded by ICE.
if that is true, then you should know what’s effective and what isn’t.
what concrete things did the no kings protests achieve so far?
If you’re writing off all liberals then your view makes sense. At our no kings the Brown Berets showed up to protect those you are spurning. Many years ago I attended a UFW march that was also protected by the Brown Berets and it shocked an out of town liberal white woman who compared the union march to the Nazis. These people tend to only see aesthetics so the march is a good opportunity to make unusual alliances. That’s the concrete achievement of my local Marxist-lennist org, but that probably doesn’t make sense to the terminally online.
here’s my own comment from just yesterday about this:
plus this is the perfect opportunity to organize to go literally talk to them. if not us, fascism will find a way to, like we’ve seen in the past so often. not all of these people are militant irreducible libs.
your misdirected assumptions and condescending tone are definitely not convincing me or anyone.
my point is: what concrete things did the liberals on the protests actually achieve so far yet? what would you do to make it more effective?
I think liberals doing trust exercises with marxists and others from different political leanings is the effective part.
The first comment / response or whatever that I read in there does a better job of expressing my opinion on this than I ever could.
“It’s building the muscle. You have to get someone to show up one day before you can get them to show up often, or every day, or for the long haul.”
Really the same goes for so many of the organizations running the events. They’re local orgs, local people with different levels of experience (mostly very little) with organizing at this scale. It takes practice and time to get good at these things. It takes time to find volunteers and train them.
Contrary to what some of the comments implied, most of these events aren’t planned/operated by paid professionals, not that paying for professional help is inherently a bad thing anyway. There’s top-level guidance and coordination, that kind of stuff generally requires dedicated teams (aka paid employees) due to the time and skill requirements for those roles. But on the local level, it’s volunteers all around. And the real planning, the hard work, is virtually all done locally by those volunteers.
i don’t agree at all. the reason is that the people who go to these will argue that they are making a difference and fight against what comes next.
these are not even having the police interfere so you know no one cares at all. school children have a walk out criticizing israel? police show up with chemical weapons and shoots people point blank with less the lethal rounds. go to a no kings and police is directing traffic.
no these protests are a distraction to make people think that nothing more has to be done, and they did their part.
and then on tv the largest mass protest in history is a foot note to trumps birthday party. so no.
we’ve seen no kings 1 & 2 change diddly squat, so obviously we’ll do the same thing a third time with the high hopes that nothing will change too!
Guy that is attending the useless no kings protest
You want actual change? Look at Europe on how to protest. I’m sorry for you Americans, but you got yourself in this, you gotta dig yourself out. Trump will NOT care about the o kings protest, and it’ll fade from the news within two days tops. It. Is. Not. Enough.
Protest 24/7 for months on end until the fucker is gone
Have strikes everywhere, indeed, because that it the only way you’ll get his attention and get this administration to understand that it’s over
It’s very easy to say but you need to understand there are no labor protections in the US. Any protest during work hours result in termination.
Then get fired, all of you.
A company can’t fire all their employees, just go all protest
They only have to fire a few and the rest will fall in line quickly. This is why retail workers don’t have unions.
Everyone is stuck in the consumer/labor loop. One missed check is all it takes to send you to the poverty hole. Even more challenging if you have kids.
I support general strike. But I understand why people aren’t ready to do it yet. Until starving is less scary than the alternative, it’s going to be hard for them to risk that.
also known as striking.
Yes, let’s look at Europe.
The USA is comparable to all of the EU in size, much larger than France, UK, Germany, etc. combined.
Has all of the EU ever been able to organize? France is smaller than California, one US state out of 50.
I’m sorry for you Europeans, but why do you keep supporting and enabling the USA? You continue to finance the very war machine that oppresses you (and us). Stop buying US products and stop using the US Dollar for international trade.
Go on strike yourselves and boycott, you are the experts eh? But you won’t bother, you will continue to provide our government with billions while saying “pity that”… and then complain when the USAs boot is on your neck.
Re people from the USA… MLK and peace only did so much. We need less peaceful MLK protest and more Black Panthers-style protesting. Peaceful protests are worthless alone
Stop buying US products (and using US services, I presume)
That’s… why I’m here (on Lemmy instead of Reddit), using Tutanota instead of Gmail, Vivaldi instead of Edge/Chrome, Linux instead of Windows…
But I understand your sentiment, and acknowledge I am not doing as much as I could.
A better point might be that we might have better labor organizations and protections in place that we at least partially take for granted, that need to be built, fought for, or their lack compensated for before Europe-style movements are viable.
And what better place to meet people near you who might be interested in organising and willing to put at least some time into it than the local Fuck This Government convention?
Has all of the EU ever been able to organize? France is smaller than California, one US state out of 50.
No, but you can’t compare the EU to the US that way. We’re not EU citizens in our minds. We’re French, Germans, Polish etc. There’s very few cases where we have such a need to protest together. We don’t view ourselves as the EU people (most of us at least). And yes there were protests here today too.
And yeah the French basically invented protesting. Hardly a day goes by that some union isn’t on strike there :) They invented the yellow vests too.
Go on strike yourselves and boycott, you are the experts eh?
If you’re talking about the French then yes I would consider them the experts for sure 🤭
Stop buying US products and stop using the US Dollar for international trade.
This is in fact exactly what is happening here. It’s a slow start but big ships need time to turn. Once they’re turned however the momentum is great. There’s lots of websites with recommendations for EU alternatives, and lots of people and businesses are making plans. It’s a growing movement.
It’s not even about how you protest, it’s about what you use protests for. You can have the best protest ever, longest strike imaginable, whatever. If you don’t have the organisation to have coherent changes and then act upon them, nothing matters. No kings, huh? What if by a stroke of magic, Trump gets scared of your rally and tries to appease the public or whatever. What’s the terms? No kings. Well, he’s not a king, he’s the president. Problem solved, continue as you were.
Just because the poster doesn’t take action, doesn’t mean they are wrong.
Sure, but do you see the hypocrisy in pointing one how little one form of resistance helps while participating in one that helps even less?
they are about equal levels of effective, tbh
No kings protests get media attention. How are your “nothing works” social media posts helping anything?
Wow, media attention! Perhaps they are gonna run a strongly worded letter on the dashreel at the bottom edge of the screen!
Newsflash: the media is in line, and in love, with the war.
You’re right. Better to be a keyboard warrior on a small reddit alternative.
Newsflash: No Kings isn’t about the war, but it’s interesting that the distraction is working on you.
Media attention is rarely a good thing
When you want public awareness of your movement it is.
so what?
what kind of policy change did you accomplish last time with all that media attention?
take some criticism instead of straw manning.
what kind of policy change did you accomplish last time with all that media attention?
A number of substantive local policy changes as well as growing mutual aid networks as more people became aware of the movement. There is no magic wand to be waved here. It will take on the ground organizing in every city and getting that word out to grow the movement
What kind of policy change have you brought about by being a keyboard warrior?
Take some criticism instead of straw manning.
Physician heal thyself
Narrator: they aren’t
The No Kings Marches are just a prelude. Imagine all those millions of people participation in the upcoming general strike . Then imagine those millions turning to violence. Imagine them armed.
you know, the americans are always going on about their 2A rights, but i don’t see them overthrowing tyranny when it’s present.
Just a suggestion, but becoming armed before becoming violent might be a better order of progression.
LOL what country do you think this is? “Becoming armed”? Bro this is America.
except the ones who have traditionally fought against the right to bear arms is the same people protesting. they need to be armed, and they need to protest with their arms, same reason a government will parade with their weapons
Bro this is America
yes, and my point still stands
Lol, good point, but I was speaking more in a general sense, not just this country.
That might be the more logical progression, but logic rarely comes into play in these things.
In fact, being armed before it’s time for violence is often a bad thing.
But when it is time, anything at hand can be a weapon.
Paris housewives once marched on Versailles and decapitated several guards with kitchen knives after they opened fire on the crowd.
You can make nearly anything into a weapon or a musical instrument. Remember that, and you’ll always be safe, and entertained.
A primary exception is the marshmallow. Pretty much useless for either.
Someone’s never forced 20 marshmallows down someone’s throat and it shows
You don’t know me.
Note that the person criticising the original is also not active in organising a general strike. It is permissable to hold opinions without being obliged to act on them.
Yes. But the moment you release your opinion out on the wild, we’re allowed to ridicule you for them.
Of course you can. I’m just saying that the criticism is stupid in this case. I mean, I think that fusion power would be a good thing, but fuck me for not working 24 hours a day on a PhD in nuclear physics.
But that’s more like having people talk about how we should do nuclear and renewable power, and you coming along complaining people should be working on developing fusion power instead because fission power just won’t do anything
Not it isn’t.
Arguing that fission power won’t do anything is objectively incorrect.
Arguing that a general strike would be more effective than weekend rallies alone is objectively correct.
Your analogy is not analagous.
Beyond that, arguing against doing something is not the same as arguing for doing something else, in addition to /or/ instead of the original something.
Arguing that fission power won’t do anything is objectively incorrect.
That’s an opinion, regardless of whether it’s true or not. The analogy is analogous because I’m taking the same actions and statements, applying them to analogous topics in a different field. Dismissing that because you believe your beliefs to be objective fact is just dishonest.
… Fission power works.
It generates energy.
This is objectively true.
That is not nothing.
If you were being hyperbolic, well then your analogy is not analagous because one end of it is hyperbolic.
That is true, however this is not about the acting, it’s about hypocrisy in the traditional sense. OC is essentially saying “we have the same goal and I set an easier plan and I’m currently following it, while you are criticizing my plan, making up a way harder one, saying I should follow that one while not following either mine or your plan at all.”
It’s like when you are working in a supermarket, restocking the shelves and your coworker is just sitting on a chair watching you, and after a while he says “this is useless, you should rather do some cashier work, people are waiting” while eating candy.
Yeah sure he might be technically right, but this is extremely out of line.
Why should I listen to you? You’re not actively involved in organizing a general strike either.
You’ve opened this Pandora’s Box my friend there’s no closing it again now. It’s not being actively involved in organizing a general strike all the way down.
Yeah if you’re not actively involved in organizing a general strike you don’t get my vote. And since there are not any candidates meeting that criteria, I’m staying home on Election Day.
Don’t believe me? There’s 10 of millions of US citizens who will be doing the same thing!
Checkmate /s
Yea I’m really bad at organizing but I damn well know it has to be done by someone with the skill to do it.
I disagree about it being permissable. If anything it makes you a hypocrite and undermines the appearance of intelligence and empathy, alike. The complaint is also misguided and simply wrong. Saying nothing will change is absurd. Things are already changing. These rallies raise awareness for everyone. You can’t have a general strike until you get everyone to agree to it.
Yeah that’s the pot calling the kettle black. Infighting between groups who manage to effect 0 change.
They ain’t wrong though. And you arguing with them is no better than them arguing with you about this.
Could be a person not living in the USA, Max.
Us foreigners also have opinions on what’s happening in the US, because it affects us too, but we have no way to affect change in the US, other than our boycotts.
IDK Russia did a good job swaying the US public opinion and spreading propaganda.
I was gonna say I bet a lot of the accounts complaining about these protests are Russian bots
you guys simply cannot take criticism can you
American exceptionalism. They are the best country ever! Therefore, the way they are doing things is the best way it could possibly done, nothing could possibly be done differently, and anyone saying anything to the contrary must be foreign agents trying to undermine the best country ever!
