The only reason we have 5 day work weeks, 8 hour workdays, overtime pay, benefits, workplace health/safety/environmental regulations, unions, health care, paid time off, vacations, etc. is because our grandfathers and great-grandfathers busted heads, and got their own heads busted, fighting corporate goons in the streets - and WINNING!
Those heroic workers would be ashamed at what their grandchildren have let the Sociopathic Oligarchs have done to America. They fought hard to keep those psychopaths under control, and we not only let them up, we helped them take full power.
grandfathers busted heads, and got their own heads busted, fighting corporate goons in the streets - and WINNING!
No one won anything. The massive militant strike actions in the USA in the early 20th century usually were losses. Wins tended to be pyrrhic, with the company cleaning house a couple months later or simply reversing the won benefits.
Things were brought to a head by the depression. The solution was simple, the most militant leaders were arrested, reforms were done to buy off the less militant, and the anger was channeled into marching all of us off to war (with the support of the non-militant collaborationist unions, of course).
Reasonable men adapt themselves to their environment; unreasonable men try to adapt their environment to themselves. Thus all progress is the result of the efforts of unreasonable men.
I think it’s worth pointing out that calling these riots isn’t really appropriate. When we think of riots, we think of unfocused, unplanned, unmanaged, etc. Highly organized protests sometimes wind up turning into riots because capitalists use violence, but it’s not the norm.
Super This:
Organized, non-violent protests are not riots. They are people, in mass, using their freedom of speech to complain about something.
A common issue is that some people, either within the protest group, or outside instigators, will then prod the protest into violence in order to discredit it. Two examples:
- Police using rubber bullets/tear-gas/pepper-spray to disperse a lawful gathering. This escalates and adds tension. Not everyone is prepared to weather abuse to stay non-violent. Gassing a peaceful protest is going to make at least some of them really mad and is a pretty trivial way to turn a peaceful protest into something else and remove it’s message, making it just a “riot.”
- Agitators claiming to be within the group, but who are actually against, it performing actions such as property damage or violence in order to discredit the whole event. If a non-violent march is walking down a street and some dick throws a rock through a store window and steals something, the whole march is called a riot by the media.
It’s important that if you are involved in a protest that you stay calm despite what is thrown your way. The protest is the message and fighting back during that event is only harming your message. Please do things like capture pictures/videos of people inciting violence, of police using crowd control on peaceful protesters, of generic unfair treatment; but during that event, the goal is to be calm. Afterwards, you can take all your grievances to the medias. If you’ve been harmed during a protest, find a lawyer – many will work pro-bono for cases like this and if your first pick doesn’t… fuck 'em: Name and shame – and then fight back after the event, when you have legal standing.
Your grievances are real. Your pain is real. The people in power will use every trick to discredit your issues. Don’t give them ammo.
Labor movements in the 19 th and early 20th centuries also literally organized riots, where the express purpose was to destroy property. It used to be a legitimate protest strategy against the owning class.
The most sociopatic “winners” of the current system will always laud whatever was done to establish the system in which they get so much and decry anything that might overthrow or even meaningfully change that system.
Those who have a more empathic view of things, even when they too are considered “winners”, have a different posture if they think the current system isn’t working well for most people because they don’t think only about personal upside maximization at any cost for the rest.
As it so happens, caring for more than just “me, me, me” is what distinguishes leftwingers from rightwingers.
So this is a great way to spot fake leftwingers in or seeking positions of power and wealth: no matter how “progressive” their words are in general, when it comes to the current system they’ll display exactly this kind of hypocrisy of being against any kind of actions that will change the current system whilst lauding the very same kind of actions when they installed the current system, since their one true drive is “What’s in it for me”, a rightwinger’s motivation.
Violence is the only answer, and until youre ready for that nothing will change. Extreme violence is the only answer.
Not entirely. As they say, there’s a different between being peaceful and being harmless. Sometimes the threat or implication of violence is just as or more effective.
You’ve got to seize the means of production, of course in the US that means getting on a plane.
Global capitalism makes seizing the means of production a global effort no matter where you are, which is why nationalism is main the tool for maintaining capitalism
This is literally every country.
“OUR REVOLUTIONARIES WERE HEROES”
But also: “Don’t y’all even dare thinking about overthrowing the current system. Violence Baaad!”
Which is why we will always need heroes.
Why is this yellowed like it’s been in a smokers house for the last 15 years?
I think it’s a picture of a monitor.
Someone spilled water on their phone and now the meme is moldy
memes from the 80s
40s
80s got that 40 years of smoke to get it ripe and yellow
Your back hurts too asshole!
Red light filter?
Screenshots can be affected by the overlay.
This is why you use your phone’s built-in blue light filter, rather than a 3rd party app that just slaps an ugly red hue over your entire screen.
Built-in filters don’t show up in screenshots, and more importantly, don’t filter pure black, so your OLED screen still looks good with it enabled.
some phones dont have a built in blue light filter my old phone didnt have one had to use a 3rd party app
Yep, generation loss is a killer.
unreasonable? it is generally categorized as criminal
and being trans can make you a criminal; what’s your point?
Violence isn’t the answer!
The answer is… checks history book
wait not that one… starts flipping pages
uhh if you hang on a second uhh furious page-flipping
Has this been aged? Lol looks like sepia
Cursed
It’s just UV damage from exposure, nbd.
People really need to stop leaving their memes out in the sun.
Yes, because it’s long been true and people didn’t fucking listen. Now my country doesn’t even really have liberal democracy, and people are still himing and hawing about disruption being bad and lawbreaking being bad
I was just trying to make a pithy joke about the discoloring
The Internet has made people too easy to divide and conquer
I’m suddenly reminded of this quote:
“Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.”
– Douglas Adams in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Phhh that’s exactly the kind of behaviour I’d expect with a user from leminal.space!
Bahh! Bloody Trekkies stirring the pot as usual, go back to your Spock Base and phase some Vulconions!
Yep. Creating division amongst the common class, so they fight each other, instead of those in power who are the real criminals.
Remember to thank your local anarchist for the 8 hour work day.
Personally I wish they’d rioted a bit more because frankly I’m usually done by about 1:00 p.m.
I’d say it was more the union organizers than the anarchists. There was a lot of overlap. But not all labour organizers were anarchists. It could even be argued that the anarchists hurt the movement more than they helped it. Some of the anarchists like August Spies were attempting to disrupt the status quo, but were trying to do it relatively non-violently. He even refused to show up to speak at the rally if workers were told to arm themselves. On the other hand, August Spies was part of the labour/anarchist movement that wore military uniforms and marched around with muskets, so it wasn’t like he was completely non-violent. Around the time of the Haymarket affair though, he was less radical than some of the anarchists, who were expressly violent and wanted to start a revolution using bombs and guns.
The fact someone threw a bomb gave the police the excuse to crack down on the anarchists. The crackdown prevented the aims of the protesters from being achieved. But, the fact that the justice system hanged the anarchist leaders led to them being seen as martyrs. That made them famous, which made May Day famous, which eventually did help lead to the 8 hour work day. Would the 8 hour work day have been achieved faster without the bomb being thrown? It’s hard to know. The immediate result was a major setback for the cause, but the long-term result of the overreaction to that bombing was a contributing factor to the 8-hour workday eventually being achieved.
Dude! You need a YouTube channel.
The State only respects power. If a group of people show that they have more power than the State, change can happen. However, what is power?
Power comes in many different forms.
There is economic power which is showcased through strikes and boycotts.
There is democratic power which is showcased through the ballot box.
There is soft power which is showcased through the lobbying, and speeches.
There is non-violet power which is showcased through protests, marches, and sit ins.
There is violent power which is showcased through physical violence such riots.While, the populace has access to many different forms of power. The State is limited to either soft power or violent power. Depending on the State, soft power might not even be contemplated.
Riots are just one form of power for the populace to exercise.
This feels really insightful, and I wonder if there is a source other than ShaggySnacks.
Can anyone expand on or contradict this comment? I honestly want to hang it in my house so my children can see it and understand they power they have.
This feels really insightful, and I wonder if there is a source other than ShaggySnacks.
Sadly, no source. It’s something I’ve observed. I can’t recall any time a State changed it’s position on an issue simply because it was the moral thing to do.
There are other forms of power such as legal (using the Courts), culture, morality, etc.
The examples above aren’t exhaustive, for example having allies in the State does help with change, which is means running for office in an a democratic system.
