this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2024
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I attended my first protest thirty years ago. Modern activists need to be more clever. Learn the law so you know how to circumvent it. Turning things up to 11 just gets you discredited as “radicals” in the media. It’s a fruitless attempt at awareness that will just get you charged.
How old were you back then? These kids awake to a world fucked up by the older generation. They try to take every step that comes to their mind to steer away from desaster. What is your personal input in that task? Criticism. Well done. Go out and teach them, if you're so clever.
I do. When I attend a protest, I share my knowledge and experience. First rule is keep it safe. Second is keep it legal. Third is keep it together. Fourth is keep it heard.
The key to a successful protest is knowing the law and planning around it before organizing.
Have you successfully protested before, and can you link me to such a success?
Oooh, oooh, I got one.
I went to multiple protests after the Iraq war and got my Iraq war-supporting government to immediately plummet in support and lose the next election. It was nice. No harmed irreplaceable monuments that I remember. The marches I attended were entirely peaceful, as well.
Many times. I determine success as being heard without being hurt. Protesters shouldn’t be injured or prosecuted if they’re following the law. Wrongful arrests happen when officers want to end a protest, but those charges are easily dropped. I’ve never experienced that personally, but some of my friends were charged at Occupy in 2011.
In that case, perhaps we have different metrics for success
That’s fair. Be safe out there.
Oh, spare me that rhetroric. Protestors in the 90s and especially the 2000s felt just as disenfranchised. That's how you end up protesting in the first place. And those were the nice ones. The stories my parents could tell you about the 60s and 70s.
It's not like "don't be an idiot" is a struggle only now. I was in protests back in a different millenium where the smart ones were already standing in front of cops and bank windows to stop the idiots from throwing rocks at them and spoiling the whole thing.
The despondent "you just don't get it" online discourse is pretty new, though.
You get it. I saw some bad shit at the Oil Wars and Occupy protests.
It’s all one action. We need to keep it together for the clarity of message. Even more now in some states where one bad actor won’t just end a protest, but get everyone charged.
And beyond getting charged it's the optics. I am from a place where you're less likely to get shot by police and where serious charges are not likely to come from protesting (at least back then, it has gotten worse). But even then the marching orders were that if cops charge or disrupt the protest that's good optics, if the protestors riot unprompted that's bad optics, which should be pretty straightforward to understand.
Absolutely. The people you need to reach are outside of the movement. Performative radicalism is immediately discredited by your target audience, and only praised by those who are already supporters of the cause.
Radicals need to exist in order to make the less-radical activists look reasonable by comparison. Otherwise they just get painted as radical no matter how milquetoast their protest is, and the Overton window moves away from their cause.
That’s one opinion.
A protest should be speaking to those outside of the cause. Many see radicals as arrogant performers, only gaining the attention of those already in the fold, and discredited by those outside of the cause. It can drive the people we are trying to reach further from the cause.
And when they complain about it it provides the opportunity for those supporting the cause to explain it to them.
Disrespectability politics!
https://medium.com/@viridiangrail/introducing-disrespectability-politics-50f6e2622ce4
First of all, this is great and deserves its own thread.
Second, there's a fatal flaw: authoritarians and capitalists (same difference) are predisposed in favor of fascism, and that's why the behavior of fuckwads like Trump keeps getting free passes and attention. When leftists try the same thing, they get ignored, censored, COINTELPRO'd, or even just straight-up murdered.
In other words, it's a good strategy and should work, all things being equal, but all things are not equal and that makes it a high-body-count strategy (even if there's no better one available).
You do realize that the UK has been illegally criminalizing lawful protests? You do realize that the media does not give a flying fuck about what is legal or illegal or how illegal something is, when painting activists as "radicals" or even worse "terrorists"? In Germany people who glued themselves to the streets were compared to the RAF terrorist organization that planted bombs, abducted and assassinated people, that hijacked planes and committed many armed bank robberies.
What is legal or not does not matter. What is moral or not does not matter. What is true or not does not matter. You have a far right authoritarian government that subverts the rule of law at every possible moment, aided by a fascist media conglomerate that will spread dramatized desinformation against any progressive cause while covering up the very real crimes of the government and aligned groups.
I’ve read that protesters were getting harassed and arrested in the UK, but I honestly didn’t know it was that bad. I’m so sorry to hear that. Thank you for informing me. That’s very important context. It completely changes the situation if you’re facing criminal charges regardless of your actions.