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Middle of a weekend in approved areas. That accomplishes so much. Big “vote out the fascists” vibes.
“Let’s have all the thoughtcrime people gather in one place and one cluster of cell towers so we can keep track of them”
Yeah just mindlessly going thru the motions of the civil rights movement without studying how it was disassembled & the new tools the privatized state apparatus has is pretty suicidal imo
Yeah it makes me suffer immensely whenever PressTV does the Bernie SSandlers posting.
I’ll never understand this “protesting doesn’t work” talk. I’m pretty sure it’s just false, but I don’t know where it comes from. Just stay inside if you want. who the fuck cares? what are you exactly?
The group that keeps throwing these events is constantly telling people how to contact their congresspeople and what to say to them, and is gathering support for a strike on may day. at these events people are handing out flyers for their groups, zines, petitions. I met a couple who do a marxist quarterly, and an environmental group organizing more serious demonstrations.
It was great to get out and just chat with people and feel sane for a little bit. The reason it was on a weekend and with proper permits was to get as many people out as possible.
Protests work. History shows mass action forces change. This event however is not a protest. It is a parade. Parades (like other events BBQs, picnics etc.) have their place for morale and recruitment but they are not political weapons. Confusing spectacle with action harms the movement.
Real protest needs specific actionable goals. It needs a strategy for disruption that hits capital where it hurts. It needs a plan for escalation when ignored. It requires a solid organized base ready to act. This event has none of these. No Kings is not a demand. It is a slogan without a material target (and even if it was the fact it drops the kings label in countries that retain a monarchy really is kneecapping itself).
Contacting congresspeople accepts the bourgeois state as the solution. They serve capital. Begging them for change is a dead end. Permits mean the state approved your dissent. That is managed opposition. There is use here though. Meeting organizers builds networks and recruiting is possible. But calling this a protest pretends action is happening when it is not. It funnels revolutionary sentiment into harmless spectacle. It dissipates energy rather than concentrating it. Do not mistake spectacle for struggle.
Pretty much, we see this sort of thing happening every few years and people still don’t understand that protests on their own accomplish nothing. You have to build dual power to organize things like strikes and work stoppages. That’s what hurts capital. The protests come after that.
You have to build dual power to organize things like strikes and work stoppages. That’s what hurts capital. The protests come after that.
Yes, although protests can complement that process of building dual power, they don’t have to come afterwards. Like you’ve said, protests on their own accomplish nothing, yet they can still be an important way to gain awareness and introduce a broader range of people to these politics and groups involved.
I am speaking generally, I haven’t paid attention to these No Kings ones, but they’d surely be an avenue for fresh faces to meet socialist parties among all the spectacle.
Right, I agree with all that, my impression is that this particular form of protest is entirely performative though. They never seem to translate into actually building things like mutual aid networks, unions, or any other kind of permanent structures. It would be nice if people would start doing those things for a change.
Some are trying, but it’s a slow process going from toothless protests to a serious movement. It took decades for the civil rights movement to reach a point where people took it seriously. It took generations for union labour to gain legitimacy. We let the tools of community organizing and collective action rust away in complacency. It’s going to take time to reforge them.
I think it actively diffuses people’s political energy. Orgs like this weren’t effective back when they could organize strikes. Now there’s disunity between labor and activism, which are both riddled with opportunists, utter psychopaths if you’ve been in these movements Too much corruption, SSleazy informants everywhere ruining people’s lives in ways that are too odious to describe, deals with the ruling class aligning on foreign policy that eventually became their political goals. Now they’re just PR orgs that are financially dependent on a network beholden to the same entities as demokkkrats. In the alt media it is a bit more subtle but just as bad. Even when the messaging is good (it isn’t btw), they just tell you to sit around with your thumb in your ass about it.
A bunch of armchair defeatist rhetoric is definitely going to move the needle though? Networks built in the George Floyd era were critical for organizing anti-ice activity, but clearly that’s just coincidence.
If you don’t want to go, don’t go, but spare us the moral pretention and self-soothing nihilism.
I honestly think it’s a lot more effective on overseas populations and that’s part of why the CIA runs this shit. The whole free speech zone thing is great for cameras and looks a lot better than driving thru rural Minnesota, Wisconsin, New York, Washington, actually anywhere, it’s all awful
For sure, it’s a spectacle and it has been effective. I think the angle we should be taking on the left is to highlight how majority of Americans do not support what their government does, yet they have no means to effect change in policy. So, is this really a democracy, and does this form of free expression have any tangible meaning?
Yep exactly. There’s no backbone to these. It’s a weekend parade then back to brunch.
Please direct your punches upwards toward the powerful, thanks ❤️
take the light criticism though.
What, me? 🤨
Am effective protest needs to be disruptive. What essentially amounts to a big weekend block party really doesn’t accomplish anything. Some of these events today had speakers thanking cops or platforming Zionists, like what are we even doing here
The only ones out there today really doing things that matter were the real leftists in the crowds trying to educate folks and trying to make them realize that no part of this administration is an anomaly to the imperialist state, they’re just louder about their fascism.
At the very, very least these events could take place in the middle of the week without prior approval from local police or w/e. Disruption is what makes a protest even the slightest bit effective, and a weekend parade doesn’t do that.
Am effective protest needs to be disruptive.
What do you believe the (realistic) aim of the protest is mean to be? Its demand is obvious, but that’s different.
This is a sincere question, I don’t know the stated aims, if any. If its aim is to bring together concerned people and expose them to progressive groups, including socialists, then even a passive sanctioned protest can contribute to the labour movement.
It needs to disrupt the ability of the ruling class to extract superprofits and achieve its security & PR goals related to it by overwhelming key areas of production with sabotage, strikes everything, organized resistance needs to run in parallel with that, protect the cadre (in this case some may need to go overseas and use encrypted communication back like Hamas has), freedom of criticism + unity of action + disciplined full participation + leadership accountability, grassroots funding structure expanding into control over logistics and MoP, messaging platforms (the only thing these people have & misuse), membership based on adherence not twitter posting (what PSL literally does), overall centered around seizing power not running media ops & running candidates indistinguishable from “progressives” (liberals), so basically think the complete and polar opposite of the Amazon labor union & DSA. HAHAHA
It needs to [snip]
Yes, but that’s answering a different question.
When I talk to co-workers about our material conditions, my aim isn’t the immediate implementation of utopia. Our legs aren’t long enough to get there in one step.
You are doing bike rides for cancer. Your aim is to throw a demonstration, for an actual movement like I just described. e.g. Yemen. 1 million mfs out there for Ansarallah. that’s a real community event. Exaggerating but how about a city you ever read about thhe 1877 St. Louis general strike which grew out of the Great Railroad Strike? Shut down the city for a week as the workers seized rail depots & demanded an eight hour day. KKK elites founded the Veiled Prophet Society the very next year to reassert ruling class control & displace union parades. An illustration published in the paper to mark the first Veiled Prophet parade in 1878 depicted the “Prophet” in white robes, a mask, & a pointed hat while carrying pistols & shotguns. You need to have your militancy pre-prepared not just go for recruitment. If you do anything worthwhile they will kill you. You are not doing anything other than trying to accelerate your entry into the asset market & get people who already won help you. They don’t even really believe you exist, despite the evidence (I do without it). Your shit is a parade for old people and evil zillenials. Seizing power not massaging your language to get recruitment for donations for an NGO model. Structure. I have no interest, material or intellectual, in helping you convince grandmas who are financially enmeshed in the system of assets that churns a fair chunk of the impoverishment of the global south & will treat you to a completely blank-eyed look if you point it out. Or call the cops if you go too far. Hence the massaging of language you know uou have to do.
Why are you acting like this “movement” (shuffling around?) is suddenly building workplace soldiarity when we’re discussing the activist side of it? You’re the one deflecting from me pointing out the disunity between these causes & their status of being evil + led astray of simply accruing more leftover labor hours & buying into the asset market? That’s not just evil dawg it’s impossible. It’s being blown up with missiles rn, your hope of “organizing” for FDR treatment tough luck time for clasa war or nothing in like 20 years.
My optimism level: 6% (7% before PressTV resumed Bernie SSandlers posting)
If you want to punch powerfully, you need to build strength. Constructive criticism of your workout regimen is vital to that.
Imho getting people out on the streets constitutes putting in reps. Add to the protests as you see fit. Not everyone is going to be black bloc
Talk to any of these people about seizing power and they will call the cops
That what really show me how much of a waste these were. They had to get approval and only certain times and places. Fucking toothless. The maga and trump administration is laughing at us while they continue to move forward to turning us into a police state under a dictatorship of Trump.
a waste of what? your time? what else did you do today
Acting like you value you time and energy more than people you’re scolding to engage in utterly performative action is pretty rich
that doesn’t make any sense
Because you have no goals
If I am not wrong, the last time something similar happened, it was the No Global movement. Their main book was No Logo by Naomi Klein. The author became much more moderate since then. Or maybe she has always been someone like AOC.
@underpantsweevil@lemmy.world
Naomi KKKlein is a demon and ShocKKK Dokkktrine is SSlop. I would retitle this “why protecting your children from being genocided is a crime worse than genocide, that actually caused and justified the genocide, I am a very serious writer btw”. She is one of the worst products of OKKKuppy Wall SStreet. At least people forgot about Molly KKKrabapple
In Gaza and Israel, side with the child over the gun – The Guardian [2023-10-11]
I spent the evening in candlelight and tears with a dear friend who just learned that a close family member was among those massacred in Israel. I won’t name the kibbutz to protect her privacy but yes, it was unequivocally a massacre. [like all of them she has family links to active IDF]
We tried to explain the killing of this family member – a civilian with two kids – to our kids. [oh good just reassuring the reader she’s edukkkating the next generation of Zionists] We tried to do it in a way that would not fill their young hearts with fear and hatred for the people who committed the crime. That was hard enough, but possible. Harder for us adults is the fact that, in their desire to celebrate the powerful symbolism of Palestinians escaping the open air prison that is Gaza — which occupied people have every right to do [what a childish fantasy, she wants the Palestinians to just fly away and leave Al Quds to the Zionists, and she frames this as liberation] — some of our supposed comrades on the left continue to minimize massacres of Israeli civilians, and in some extreme cases [supporting Palestinian militancy = harmful extermism to her], even seem to celebrate them [open support of Palestinian liberation = supporting crime].
In fact these callous displays are a gift to militant Zionism, since they neatly shore up and reconfirm its core and governing belief: that the non-Jewish world hates Jews and always will – look, even the bleeding-heart left is making excuses for our killers and thinks that Jewish kids and old ladies [HUH?] deserved death merely by living in Israel.
For Zionist believers (I’m not one of them), [she thinks we’re buying this shit 😭😭😭 give me a break] Jew-hatred [ohboyherewego.png] is the central rationale for why Israel must exist as a nuclear-armed fortress.
And antisemitism (besides being hateful) is the rocket fuel of militant Zionism. [👏 It’s 👏 your 👏 fault 👏 for 👏 hating 👏 us 👏 for 👏 killing 👏 you]
What could lessen its power, drain it of some of that fuel? True solidarity. Humanism that unites people across ethnic and religious lines. Fierce opposition to all forms of identity-based hatred, including antisemitism. [HMMMM I wonder what laws she thinks we need to achieve stopping what we can infer scares her 🤔💭]
Yeah that sounds like someone trying to grapple with violence while stuck in idealistic thinking, ignoring the difference between settlers and indigenous, ignoring the history of genocide, ignoring international law that gives occupied people the right to liberation even if it’s violent, and flattening it to “I guess they just hate Jews”. Like bruh.
You could be scientologist and you’d be hated too if you’re committing a genocide, your identity has no importance or meaning to the oppressed, European style antisemitism never developed in west Asia, and this is clearly a reaction to being fucking genocided.
If they care about not suffering from the resistance they should join the resistance or leave. Otherwise they’re complicit in literal genocide. I don’t blame the children because they’re children, but fuck the parents genuinely.
Shock Doctrine was a fantastic piece of work.
Idk if she’s moderated, per say. Might just feel that way as the rest of the public has been recovered radicalized
