The Women’s March on January 21, 2017 was one of the biggest protests in US History. It did jack all. The US gov’t has been taken over by anti-Consititutional, anti-American, anti-law Republicans at all 3 branches. Going to a protest has about the same impact as typing outrage on Lemmy. It’s not pessimism, it’s reality. Until masses are seriously prepared to get violent, we are fucked. Personally I’m just getting the fuck out and watch it implode into Gilead.
Comment on YSK: There's a protest today at noon at your state capitol.
gift_of_gab@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Jesus Christ I don’t think I’ve ever seen a posts comments so full of reasons this won’t work.
You guys don’t even need your media to dissuade you, you just convince each other not to do anything.
sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz 4 weeks ago
PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 4 weeks ago
Interesting how you skipped over the BLM protests, which were literally 100 times larger than the Women’s March, and resulted in significant changes to the exact thing they were protesting, which had previously been a basically unchangeable fact of American government and society.
There’s also Euromaidan, which toppled a corrupt government, with about 4 times the attendance of the Women’s March.
the_crotch@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
There were hundreds of BLM protests over the course of several months. This needs to be a sustained effort or it’s going to die on the vine
PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 4 weeks ago
100% agreed. That’s why I was lecturing the person who was depressing support for them, and saying that protesting in general wasn’t effective.
SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social 4 weeks ago
It’s going to take sustained effort over time, so… don’t start? I’m struggling to find the logic here.
gift_of_gab@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
The Women’s March on January 21, 2017 was one of the biggest protests in US History.
I didn’t say protest, I said strike. They are not the same thing. Protests require Centrists and ‘moderates’ to care enough to join them. Strikes are meant to directly impact Capitalism. Going to marches every night for a week doesn’t hurt business owners, but a week of strikes loses them money in a big way. With sympathy strikes you can get the capitalists fighting each other. With a General Strike all of the lines-go-downward and they’ll freak out.
Until masses are seriously prepared to get violent, we are fucked.
Guess which step precedes that?
Get the fuck out in the streets, prevent cars from getting places, block entrances, cause consumers to avoid places, then they’ll start paying attention.
God it’s so fucking frustrating watching your older brother whining there’s nothing they can do when there are provable things they’ve done in the fucking past that have worked.
Look at the Pullman Strike. Seventy people were killed by cops/military, the strikers still won and it was a massive, historical win for American labour laws.
jj4211@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
The thing is if everyone said “fantastic! This will be huge” and the actual protests are underwhelming, well that serves to confirm the false narrative that a very small minority of people are upset.
Declaring high expectations and delivering low is a path to undermine your cause. Waiting until after the fact to explain why sounds like making excuses rather.
The protest in my region was like maybe 50 people. I don’t think this is because people are broadly happy, it’s because as many many people pointed out, this was poor planning. The optics of pulling off a huge protest in only a week would have been amazing, but just impossible in the real world.
gift_of_gab@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
as many many people pointed out, this was poor planning.
So fucking organize it better then.
Jesus this American shoulder-shrug-why-do-anything-if-it-isn’t-perfect is so frustrating to watch.
The thing is if everyone said “fantastic! This will be huge” and the actual protests are underwhelming, well that serves to confirm the false narrative that a very small minority of people are upset.
But nobody did, they just said “this day this time go protest in your capitol”.
The optics of pulling off a huge protest in only a week would have been amazing, but just impossible in the real world.
It was a protest across the entire country, and it can be done again, and again, and again.
Seriously do you guys even need opponents? You just give up and convince each other to not do anything unless it’s perfect and then sit back and watch your neighbours get put in camps, declaring that you sure don’t agree with those actions.
p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 weeks ago
Even if it was a huge protest, the psychopaths in charge will walk over their backs and casually walk into the capitol.
Protests don’t do shit because you cannot convince people who don’t feel emotion to suddenly care about your situation. They only care about self-enrichment, power, and self-preservation. Do you have enough political capital or leverage to influence a politician?
Maybe if you threaten their sense of self-preservation, you might cause them to notice.
jj4211@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Maybe if you threaten their sense of self-preservation, you might cause them to notice.
I think that’s really the unstated point of large protests. You get hundreds of thousands of people being present and obviously angry, but “peaceful”, you have to be doing the calculation of how many of those are on the brink of something more if their voices are not heard and things proceed or even accelerate.
Of course, on the other hand we are dealing with an administration that thinks an ethnic cleanse of Palestinians to set up a resort city sounds like a safe idea, so not sure there’s anyone really thinking about the risks.
p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 weeks ago
we are dealing with an administration that thinks an ethnic cleanse of Palestinians to set up a resort city sounds like a safe idea
Right. Psychopaths.
How do you force psychopaths to care about somebody else’s POV? You can’t!
SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social 4 weeks ago
Haha, that happened in 2011 with the Wisconsin Act 10 protests. It was literally the most peaceful thing you ever saw in your life: singing, chanting, mutual aid stations, pizza, people on their goddamn hands and knees cleaning salt and sand off of the floor of the Capitol in the evenings.
And the Republicans were cowering in pants-shitting terror! (I mean, more than their usual.) The governor would enter the Capitol through the utility tunnel from a nearby state building. One legislator was terrorized by scratches on their car, and got the State Patrol to investigate the attack. (The SP concluded that the perpetrator was a stone kicked up by the wheels.) I know people who got arrested for having cameras in the Assembly chamber.
Bunch of craven idiots, the lot.
PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 4 weeks ago
I wonder why a bunch of people might be jumping onto social media, spreading pessimism and suspicion about protests and discouraging people from attending.
horse_battery_staple@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I expect you’ll he hearing a lot of crickets.
PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 4 weeks ago
Some of them are downvoting me for asking them the question.