https://www.threads.net/@nprpubliceditor/post/DIhOEQQOyqP
EDIT: Also worth noting that the next nationwide protest date for 50501 is May 1st
I sent a note to the public editor a couple days ago suggesting that while it was nice that they went to a single protest in NYC, they are missing the trend, that attendance and rallies and protests have been growing, even in deeply red parts of the country. That upward trend should be newsworthy. No response so far…
News does not need to be sensational to be important.
News programs need to report what is important, not what they think will catch eyeballs
There is a balance to be struck. News has a few vital cogs in the machine that it cannot continue without. It needs reporters, editors, news to report, readers who are interested, and an income stream to keep it all running. It doesn’t need to be profitable, but it does need to be sustainable. If you only ever report stories that nobody cares about, you will not make enough money to be sustainable. If you only report sensation, you will become corrupt. If you over-report on the same subject, readers will become numb to what you have to say. So while you are correct, news needs to report what is important, they also need to consider how their stories will impact their readers.
The message is that peaceful protests that don’t involve property damage, and major disruption to business don’t warrant respect or attention in America.
Within a capitalist system no one is going to pay any attention until you distrust the flow of capital in one form or another: stop traffic so people can’t go to work, shut down businesses, strike, slow down at work, target a CEO home, call in sick en masse.
Why would anyone pay attention if you’re just standing in a park holding signs?
Boycott boycott boycott. The most effective methods are strikes. But we need a higher level of organization for that, something I’m not seeing
Give it time. Women’s Suffrage started pretty tame before the firebombs.
“Aren’t news worthy enough”
News can and does keep dragging the same worthless news articles whenever they want so this is a lie
being the largest protest in us history makes it kinda newsworthy….
Did 50501 send Katy Perry to space? Checkmate.
good point, a washed up celebrity going… well not even to space but… good point, that’s some riveting, important news
That’s like the entire purpose of a protests. How incredibly unethical of a journalist to even say something like this.
I love NPR but this stinks real bad. They should resign.
I love NPR but have been watching them slide right continually for most of my adult life. Then NPR outlets (not npr itself but still) took major donations from the Koch brothers.
:|
still probably the most factual news outlet but I temper my expectations.
Trump wanting to end PBS, NPR etc., calling them fake news does keep me supporting my local station tho.
I stopped donating when they aided the DNC in ignoring Bernie in 2016.
valid.
What a lazy hands-off way of reporting. What happened to walking in the crowd, interviewing protesters, interviewing innoconous passers-by, interviewing people that are hindered, …, and also getting a reaction/quote from whomever/whatever is being protested against? Instead they apparently want to just publish some photos. That’s not journalism, that’s photography.
Photography is journalism.
Scroll through the Pulitzer winning photographs, and know that some of them have literally changed history. Pulitzer winning photographs from the Vietnam War turned political opinion on the war itself: 1969’s Saigon Execution by Edward T. Adams, 1973’s Terror of War by Nick Ut. 1977’s The Soiling of Old Glory, was a key part in telling the story of what the state of the desegregation movement was at that time. 1994’s The Vulture and the Little Girl (actually a boy) did make a difference in spurring increases in both private and government/NGO aid, and tragically played a big role in the photographer’s suicide a year later.
There is a time and a place for words, for still photos, for video. Visual works like still photos are still incredibly important for journalism, especially coverage of things like demonstrations and protests.
I’m not against using photos in support of journalism, they absolutely make a difference, but photography alone is not journalism. Without a story, it’s just photography. Your examples seem to have all been part of a bigger story.
My opinion is basically reflected in that quote you used: “a key part in telling the story of”. While it was a key part, the photo alone was not the entire story.
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Libs are so sensitive, even this gets censored.
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We need to get more creative if not more disruptive. People are sign waving and gathering and occasionally there are special speakers, but it’s pretty much just an open air meetup. Images need to be bolder (not the photos, but the imagery) so organizations like NPR have more to be tell. This Easter weekend it would’ve been epic and very appropriate to have someone non-White dress up as Jesus, carrying the cross, and have people shout things like, “Vermin! Rapist! You’re poisoning our nations blood! Go back to Nazereth!” Depict the horrible rhetoric from the right that wouldn’t have made an exception for the Son of God because he wasn’t born here.
I also had an idea about a Nationwide effort to basically have a one-minute strike. One minute of doing absolutely nothing and everyone else would be quite freaked out by this, maybe even ask questions.
We can’t just make noise, we need to disrupt things.
We have been doing one day strikes.
One minute is nothing. One day is weak sauce but gets people in the habit of solidarity.
We need a week strike. Buy nothing, don’t go to work, nobody, anywhere in the country.
That would get their attention.
You mean the one day strikes where nobody was inconvenienced or even noticed because we just stayed at home and watched TV? A week long strike would be impactful but we need coordination and momentum. We also need noteriety. Simply not going outside for a week might not be noticed until a month later when economic numbers look funky.
A minute strike, in and of itself not super impactful economically, is incredibly easy to do and can be done wherever you are without impacting your own routine that much. When it happens though, in the moment, it should be a stark difference that nobody is moving or talking or driving. It’s also unlikely to get someone fired for doing it in the middle of a shift. If it catches on, it can roll into two minutes straight or one minute an hour.
It doesn’t have to be the only thing we do or the Pinnacle of what we do to fight back. I’m just saying, unless we can get 5-10% of the population to join in, particularly in red states, it will still be incredibly easy to ignore the protests.
From a total outsiders perspective (I don’t live in in the US) who has some experience in organising protests(doing so since I am 14, ran for a state rep. here,etc.): You need to find a more unified way of protesting. Yes,that can be creative,but the message has to be far more unified than it is currently.
To give you an example what I mean: I made the effort to look up foreign press coverage,some domnestic press coverage, social media and photos taken by friends of mine of one rather prominent protest location of the most recent ones.
So far I came across the following messages:
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Pro Palestina
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Pro Feminism
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Pro Ukraine
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Pro Supreme Court
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Pro National parks and environmental conservation
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Pro various, contending Democrats and some smaller Parties
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Pro Diversity
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Pro LGBTQ
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Pro Choice
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Against Deportations
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Against Supreme Court
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Against Trump personally
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Against the Reps
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Against science influence/budget cuts
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Against influencing universities
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Against Tate and Musk
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Against USaid Cuts
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Against US government cuts
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Against tariffs
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Against Milei
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Against Gun Violence
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Against Violence in Dafur
And surely a few more I am missing/forgot. Don’t get me wrong, the USA have a lot of pressing issues. But people will judge a book by it’s cover and while we all often pretend that the issue each one of us finds the most important IS the MOST IMPORTANT and anyone that doesn’t think the same is an idiot, we tend to not see the wood amgonst all the trees. Because there is one drawback in this stance: Everyone has it. And once you declare “this topic is the most important” the people who support the other 40 topics as the most important topics are alienated. Which leads to infighting, some not showing up, etc. (If this reminds you of Life of Brian, well, it’s a very factual movie in that regard)
But there is ONE main issue: The Trump government. While it can sometimes be useful to choose a cause that unites the people behind one even though that is not the main issue, these have to be choosen wisely. (Türkiye is one recent example: The problem is not that Imanoglu has been arrested. Nor was the problem about Gezi park back then. But it’s a cause that unites the people)
This needs to be done fast and much more coordinated and "reaching all areas of society " than it is currently visible. To give you an example: European Anti-Fascist protests are often formed by a coalition of trade unions, political parties (and we are talking not about “leftist” parties but parties than are rather “mid left”,e.g. Greens, social democrats, etc.), churches, sport clubs and similar social circles. Why do they bother? Because they all know if Fascism ever comes back it will get them all one after another. Just like it is now.
And yes, 50501 is a good start,but support is lacking - because of the “most important topic” issues.
This goes both ways: If on one side you need to talk about unification of people - but you do also need to shed the political groups that are not helping but actually hurting the main cause. To give you an example (and this is not taking a stance in the Palestina issue, it’s just a good example that came up today during an interview): If your protest is associated with a group that uses the Hamas triangle and sees the Palestina topic as the one and only topic worth protesting for, they are hurting the main issue, their own issue (with an USA in full flight Fascism that protects Bibi doing whatever he likes Gaza will be “a summertime stroll” compared to what will follow) and alienate regular Joe and Jane as well as give the opposing side verbal ammunition to fight the whole movement. (Why I did choose this example: During the protest I looked up a foreign journalist did interview a spoksperson of some group - who was very well trained and did, despite her young age and obvious nervousness, an outstanding job- and some idiots wearing the triangle similar to the yellow jewish star worn during the Holocaust, screamed in the camera and tried to sideline the interview because anyone not willing to listen to their (very much genocidal) monologues would just tolerate children being killed.
Now, imagine Jane Average,40, who is afraid that her brother in law,who is an legal immigrant, gets deported, has more and nore problems putting food on the table due to rising costs, is afraid that her husband is loosing his job over the tarrifs and how the world will be for her daughters sees this. For years Jane Average has been voting democrats,yes. But she didn’t go out of her way to do so. She is now considering going to a protest - the first one in her life.
But what are they actually protesting for? And aren’t they all idiots like the one she saw on TV? And,unknown to her, her friend Juliet Somebody is also considering. If she would hear from Jane that she is going,she would go as well…etc.
TLDR: Unify your message, shed idiots, get the whole society behind one cause.
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Yeah protest peoples homes and Fancy restaurant dinners idk golf courses…
Golf courses is fucking brilliant!
The symbolism is perfect.
This is brilliant - make the protests artistically interesting.
Most of the grown-up theater kids are already there anyway.
The main challenge will be making sure the message is still seen as serious. But I think your idea about showing how MAGA are on the opposite side as someone most of them claim to worship is brilliant.
I saw several old people last Saturday dressed like the Statue of Liberty… ? I guess we should have thrown red paint on them and called the local newspaper?
That’s actually not a bad idea now that I’ve written it out.
Seems to be more what is there to report on other than people pissed. There’s no clear organized message or demands. Everyone just rambling off their complaints. Needs more structure and leadership or it’ll wind up like occupy
If you want more people, you want less drama.
I want more change. To the progressive side. I want the fascists to go under.
Having more protests like the one from a couple weeks ago, where it was packed everywhere while having young and old, says a ton more than causing damage. The more drama, the more reason to send you to Guantanamo. Keep it peaceful and keep it huge is my very strong opinion.
I agree with you if press coverage is there. They’re not covering the protests because they’re not interesting, though.
That said, I’d call this lazy journalism. How about going out there to interview people? Start telling the stories of the people they talk with?
what really says a ton is somehow losing them money. like closing off a big highway in rush hour will probably get more attention (and possibly state violence). that would at least get them to consider listening.
I don’t know why we don’t just crash more legislative buildings
Everyone wants more change. Everyone wants the fascists to fail miserably because, well, they’re fascists.
The goal is to slowly steer the Exxon Valdez so it avoids the coastline and doesn’t capsize. In this metaphor, violence (even the stuff we allow them to start) will capsize the Valdez.
Demonstrations aren’t always about drama: they’re about the show of potential resistance as well.
Create something beyond your control. Something that does not need to be controlled.
Did you know, that on every train crossings there are phone numbers that you can call to let them know something is blocking the tracks?
It sure would be inconvenient and/or disruptive enough to protest near commuter train crossings and inform them it’s unsafe for them to operate their trains. Shut down commuter trains (in a safe manner) and you’ll probably get some headlines.
Bingo. You get a gold star and a book of matches. Styrofoam and gasoline friend. Styrofoam and gasoline.
I just saw someone who suggested golf courses. Fucking brilliant I think.
I say this in good faith, and I have a friend at NPR and I don’t hate them…
Should we protest at the news stations to make it easy for them to get pictures?
Seriously, would it work?
I have been saying this and I’m really glad to see others coming up with the same idea. News won’t come to us? Then we need to go to the news.
We need to march around their buildings, shout up at their windows, block access to their parking lots with our sheer numbers - make us impossible to ignore.
Isn’t fox news in new york? Make their little spectacles outside a nightmare!
It’s with doing anyway. They are the worst enablers of this madness.
My 2 cents. There isn’t a cohesive reason for the protests so reporting on it will be muddy. Devil’s advocate but it’s the same reason occupy Wall Street failed. The message got watered down. If the media can’t report on a clear, concise and unwavering requirement from the crowd then reporting on it is exceedingly hard to sell to the public.
If the media can report on Trump’s incoherent rantings and make that sound like anything more than hot garbage, then they can absolutely do the same for protesters with varying causes, who are nowhere near as incoherent.
I’d like the journalists to do a tiny bit of actual work.
Report on what’s happening, and do a rough headcount every now and then, report on the protest growing or waning.
It seems like journalists think they can’t write 50,000 protesters showed up because actually there were 62,490 so it would be disastrous misinformation and it’s better to post a picture, write “There’s a protest.” then forget about it.
Knowing how many are showing up each time matters. Knowing exactly how many doesn’t really matter.
American jorunalist talking about their proffessional ethics is like a serial killer talking about their empathy.
They do need to be covered, though. The world needs to see that many here will never bend the knee and accept anything less than a real democracy.
This is why strikes are more newsworthy: they disrupt things.
With a protest news will cover:
- That it happened
- What the protest was about / why it happened
- How many people were involved
After that, you’re basically done, other than maybe taking some pictures of interesting signs or costumes.
With a strike you get all the above plus:
- What services are disrupted
- What is being done to end the strikes
- What’s being done to mitigate the disruption
- What people who are disrupted feel about the strikes
The disruption part is key, because disruptions lead to other disruptions and that leads to a new story.
Look at the coverage of the trash collectors’ strike in Birmingham
- First paragraph: the disruption being caused
- Second paragraph: more about the disruption
- Third paragraph: what’s being done to end the strike
- Fourth paragraph: what the strikers want
- Fifth paragraph: what the strike is about
- Sixth paragraph: what the authorities are doing about the disruption
- Seventh paragraph: more about the disruption
- Eighth paragraph: more about what’s being done to end the strike
- …
Or look at the coverage of the transport strikes in Greece. Again, because a lot of things are being disrupted, there’s more to talk about.
Part of the reason that disruption is key is that there’s a long chain of side effects. For example, with the garbage strike there’s uncollected garbage. That has a side effect of attracting rats and other vermin. People worry that that might have a side effect of causing disease outbreaks. That might have an effect on the already strained public health system.
In addition, the more disruption, the more pressure there is to fix it. That results in various people passing the buck / blame to other people, which results in more news-worthy things to write about. You get conflicts between different levels of government. Conflict is interesting, so it’s something that makes the news.
A protest on the weekend that doesn’t really disrupt anything just isn’t going to get the same level of coverage.
11 days until May Day which would be the perfect opportunity for a really disruptive general strike. But, I guess Americans aren’t concerned enough about the state of their country to really disrupt anything yet.
Protests too can be disruptive. They don’t have to be just people along the side of the road, building, etc. For instance, here’s thousands of people blocking a freeway in downtown LA as part of anti-ICE protests in February
(Did get more media coverage indeed due to being more disruptive)
Organizing a general strike is also more difficult in the US with union membership being so comparatively low. Greece and the UK both have around double the unionization rate (~20% vs ~10%). Not impossible, and would be great to see, but protests themselves are a tool that can help get there. Help people see that people within your community are just a pissed as you are and you’ll have a lot more people willing to join in. Unions are some of the people organizing various protests too. They are able to drive membership up because of it
Protests that block key roadways are generally not received well. People are often mad that they’re inconvenienced and will use moral arguments regarding potential disruption of emergency services.
At least with strikes, most of who you’re fucking over is your boss and not the people you’re trying to have side with you.
Blocking roads is not the only method of disruptive protest. There are a lot more options than that. Everything from sit-ins to much more creative disruptions
For instance, one technique that animal rights activists have successfully used before is gluing hands to tables to protest various things. May sound silly, but it gets outsized attention on both traditional and social media. For instance, it’s been a factor to help get over 330 coffee chains to drop their non-dairy milk upcharge (including some major ones like Starbucks, Dunkin, Tim Hortons, etc.)
This is my hope, too, but it’s happening slower than I’d like. Enthusiasm for https://generalstrikeus.com/was strong at first, but has slowed significantly. It’s always on my protest sign “Signs a strike card!” My hope is that the protests will grow and develop into momentum for a strike… I’m not sure what else to do…
Thing is NPR should be promoting protests and gs
Why?
They just got defunded, for one. For another, the collapse of our government seems imminent?
How does that affect the newsworthiness of a protest? It seems like you just came up with two bigger, higher priority stories that they should be covering.
Because people need to rise up
So what they’re saying is… there’s another way to get their attention. Challenge accepted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_protests
We might need something more, because the Bush anti war protests didn’t do very much.
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NON-DISRUPTIVE protests don’t change anything. Typically, violent protests are risky and potentially counterproductive. They make it harder to recruit larger numbers and easier to justify a proportionate police/government response, further discouraging recruitment. It’s also just bad PR. People are stupid, and gullible. All it takes to turn people against your movement is to convince them you’re violent and dangerous, which again, bad for recruitment. One thrown brick, especially early on as a movement gains momentum and tries becoming sustainable long term.
Sometimes the thrown brick kicks off the movement, like Stonewall, but you can’t count on moments like that with planning. Those are powder kegs set to go off from a spark with decades, CENTURIES of fuel. And even then, the LGBTQ+ rights movement took decades of work and organizing and planning after the fact.
The most successful movements take a long time to build support and establish organization to commit supporters to disruptive actions. And it gets harder the bigger a country is, harder to organize and coordinate over greater distances and life circumstances.
BUT, once you get to that point, by katamari-ing fellow protesters with marches and days of action, getting larger groups to commit to an action organized within the movement, building social support infrastructure to maintain things, you can go further, organize more specific disruptions. Sit ins, boycotts, strikes, blockades, occupations, slow downs, vandalism, interrupting police/ICE operations, shop ins. There’s a lot of powerful methods of non-violent protest you can get up to if you’ve got the support and are coordinated enough.
The civil rights movement wasn’t just standing in crowds with signs asking nicely to have civil rights laws pass, they were breaking the law and interrupting the functioning of society. We look at other effective non-violent protest movements. Hong Kong’s coordination and disruption tactics were AWE inspiring, and would be effective here if we can get to the point of large scale coordinated disruption.
Actually, here’s the wikipedia page for tactics and methods used in the Hong Kong protests for anyone who wants to read it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactics_and_methods_surrounding_the_2019–2020_Hong_Kong_protests
What sticks with me, as it applies to organizing in the states, and the west in general, is the fundamental organizing principle of “Do Not Split”. There’s a lot of infighting and division among protest groups (much of which is intentionally manufactured to weaken said groups) on the basis of specific issues. Communist groups fighting Socialist groups over how society as a whole should be organized. Purity testing over individual belief systems rather than uniting over shared goals despite differences in approach. The fascists don’t have this problem. They’ll step in line with each other over their shared hate even if the details differ, and it’s why they’re WINNING…I mean, aside from all the inherited/exploitation gained wealth and power.
If you’re someone looking to join the 50501 protests, or are wanting to organize your own, maybe you’re unhappy with some of the methodology, remember this: DO NOT SPLIT. If you despise someone and they’re fighting the same fight as you, THEY ARE STILL YOUR ALLY. There is no greater cause than fighting fascism together.
May Day, May 1st, is the next major protest event. We are in the early days of this movement. Yes, we should’ve been doing it years ago, but the next best day to plant a tree is today.
Why would you point to the Hong Kong protests?
The Hong Kong protests were a massive effort, but also a complete failure.
They lost the city and are now under undisputed CCP rule. Hundreds of participants arrested, 0/5 demands met.
People have given up and a lot of them are just moving out instead. The only good thing is that some were able to move out.
Because their tactics are not why they failed, and they were a modern protest movement using sophisticated modern tactics to put up an incredible fight against a much bigger, equally modern enemy they could almost certainly never beat on their own, whose tactics and strategies we can appropriate and use for our own movement.
They were coordinated, smart, disruptive, fighting a panopticon mass surveillance military superpower with resources and political sway other superpowers would also struggle with. We hear about the underdogs winning because it’s notable. Underdogs usually lose, no matter how big their fight, and they were the underdogs, by a LOT.
We should absolutely take from the more successful civil rights movement of the 60s, Ghandi’s Indian independence movement, the Suffrage movement, but looking at stuff like the Hong Kong protests gives us a look at tactics and a general approach that can be used in the modern day to combat modern day oppression effectively.
You can do everything right and still lose. Hong Kong’s protesters did everything they could, went far above and beyond what a weaker movement could have managed. The tools and tactics they used shouldn’t be ignored just because they were beaten. They were powerful methods of disruption and resistance, ways to fight and protect the most people in the movement at once as possible.
Hong Kongers would not go the last step.
They chose not to make the city dangerous to the CCP. They chose to resist and disrupt gently.
How many men and women fit for fight lived in Hong Kong? A few million? They chose to fold, rather than commit to civil war. The protest never went that last step, to put their lives in the line to fight for freedom when it became clear the government would not budge to disruption and “resistance”. They chose life over freedom, and I expect most Americans will make the same choice. They’d rather accept Gilead and try to live with it, than die in the effort to stop it.
Could they have made the city dangerous to the CCP without inviting a proportionate (or disproportionate) military response? Protesters get violent and things start looking a lot more like Tienanmen Square. There was not the sort of external support to enable that sort of rebellion on the scale that would be needed to directly combat China. Because someone has to supply weapons, information, medical support, something they’d need help with but China would not.
They would have set themselves up to die for nothing. Not even their own freedom, they didn’t have the backing of their own government and the necessary resources that’d have required, and so would have to secure food, water, shelter, medicine, defences, security both physical and informational, on their own, at a bare minimum to even put forth a token guerilla warfare effort like that. Even the US had the support of France during the American revolution. These things don’t just happen because there’s the will for it. Non-violent resistance is not a compromise on violent resistance, it is a strategic decision.
If there’s not a solution to a proportionate military response to violent retaliation from Hong Kong movement, then it doesn’t matter if they fight and die for their freedom or not, they won’t be keeping it. Making the decision to kill and die for a cause that will collapse under the weight of its opposition is not an effective act of resistance, the force needed to scare off the CCP with violent retaliation did not exist in the Hong Kong protest movement. Like Russia with basically any and all prolonged military problems, China could afford to throw bodies at the problem until it went away, and Hong Kong, as organized and efficient as their movement was, did not have the material support to survive an onslaught like that.
But none of that matters to the bigger point, the tactics used, the anonymity, the discrete messaging apps and security protocols adopted by protesters, the decentralized organizational structure for direct, disruptive protest actions, the countermeasures against police force and tactics like using laser pointers en masse against helicopters and security cameras to make it difficult to fly, aim, or identify protesters, the counter measures against tear gas and protocols for dealing with it quickly, pre-arranged escape routes and ditching any markers identifying you as a protester before merging into crowds , burner phones, all tactics they used that were extremely effective at countering typical police tactics, and were methodologies we should be using when organizing our own direct actions. None of which were tactics that were necessary in periods before mass surveillance states were the norm.
Don’t like the implication that they were cowards or failures for choosing to live, when they chose to fight the best way they thought they could under the circumstances they were under. They certainly weren’t sitting on the internet asking someone else to do it for them, and they weren’t just standing around with signs chanting either (though they were also doing that, building support and solidarity is necessary).
If you’re willing to give up, then you’re willing to give up. I’m guessing Americans are willing to give up.
The rest of your fluff is lost in the weeds as history goes on.
I’m not. Don’t put words in my mouth.
Fighting without a plan for success is the same as fighting for nothing. In Hong Kong, there was no plan for success that could involve violence, strategically. It’s easy enough to say people somewhere else should kill and die for a cause you believe in, it’s another thing entirely to commit millions of people to doing so. They would have been treated as an invading army and far more than the active protesters would have been targeted and killed as “collateral damage”.
My actual perspective on it is that if I thought killing and terrorizing the CCP, or any authoritarian government like that would work, I would be here screaming from the rooftops to pile the bodies high. I have no qualms about dragging fascists out of their homes and butchering them like animals in front of their families, because that is the world they want to build for others, but you cannot commit to violence like that without a rock solid plan, a plan that would involve being able to count on non-combatants seeing violent action and sticking around or joining in. And even if that was the right course of action, this is not Ukraine being invaded by Russia, people getting their homes and cities bombed to pieces, you’d have to convince people that level of retaliation was necessary when the danger was in the form of powerful people signing documents making agreements out of sight. You have to CONVINCE people to do it. And then those people have to actually see it through.
And I’m NOT saying they’re even the main movement we should be taking lessons from, but to ignore the usefulness of the tactics they used that DID work, and not looking at what SPECIFICALLY DIDN’T work, at what caused them to fail would be FOOLISH. Take from the Civil Rights movement. Take from the Suffragate movement. Take from the Indian independence movement. There’s even lessons to take from revolutions that turned violent. The Boston Tea Party was a non-violent act of economic terrorism that cost the British government the equivalent of almost 2 million dollars. That’s the sort of thing we can do TODAY. But we are in the early stages of this thing, and the organizational infrastructure IS NOT THERE. That’s WHY we do the marches. To build momentum. To make each next step easier and easier to commit to, and to build communities and networks around protesting like this, making it routine and just another part of people’s lives so it can be done sustainably. We want them to be fighting us all day every day on every front without rest, and it takes a LOT of time to set something like that up, especially across an entire nation and ESPECIALLY one as big as the US.
I am unwilling to disparage and dismiss the intelligence, effectiveness, and effort of the Hong Kong protesters, or any protest movement that tries but collapses under the weight of their opposition. Unions used to be a stronger force in the US, until they were systematically destroyed by the forces we’re currently fighting. Would you say that of them because they failed and didn’t then choose to die fighting an enemy they couldn’t beat? I wouldn’t. I’d say survive until you can create an opportunity to fight again, better next time.
Because they tried.
At least they fucking tried. Just like this guy tried. With a couple of bags of groceries and woke the world up to what was happening.
They didn’t lay down and say come get me big daddy. They tried.
We don’t have any successful movements to emulate, or?
I mean, what’s next? Try to do like the opposition to the Nazis? Emulate their attempts to stop Hitler’s rise to absolute power?
Try something it’s better than the nothing you are doing now. All talk no action the 'murican way.
My fellow Canadians have stopped buying American goods and services and travelling to your country. It’s already affected your economy but you could give a fuck right. We’re buying guns and training. Joining mutual aid orgs. Fuck…we even had record numbers vote yesterday in advanced polls for our federal election.
General strike would shut your economy down pretty quick in turn stifling your regime but you wouldn’t get a paycheque and you don’t know your neighbors so they won’t help you. I guess that’s out too. I think I’m out of suggestions really. You’ve denied every single one is possible or even worthy of discussion.
I don’t know I guess you’re fucked. Enjoy the couch. See you in another thread later.
I’m not from the US.
I’m arguing that what you should learn from failed movements is to not copy what doesn’t work. That you should learn from other movements with more success, invent new strategies, use old reliable strategies, and push much harder and farther than those who failed.
Following the Hong Kongers’ example is to give up.
Peaceful protests are more likely to succeed. We need to get 3.5%
Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190513-it-only-takes-35-of-people-to-change-the-world
Just start with blocking some lanes during rush hour
I’m not saying that she is intentionally being shitty, but there is a good chance her board is. This is a deep dive in who is on the board of NPR from last year. Scroll down to see NPR specifically and notice the bolded or linked people and who they’re tied to.
