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- cross-posted to:
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I think teaching people how protests work is pretty important praxis and is not talked about nearly enough.
Moderates and liberals tend to think of protest and demonstration as the same thing and anything that is not a demonstration is generally though of as bad or counterproductive.
Most of the populace simply doesn’t understand that blocking roads or getting arrested have strategic value. They consider the goal of every protest to be to raise awareness and support and to convince people like them ™️ that any given cause is worth supporting and that their support is all it really takes to a make change happen. It’s a very self-centered view of how political movement work and it seems unfortunately quite obiquitous.
They see a road block and think “that just makes you look bad” and the thought process ends there because now your movement isn’t worth supporting in their eyes. If you try to explain that blocking off roads is often done to cut off supply lines to financial districts or big corporations and put economic pressure on them or the politicians they donate to, they refuse to engage with the idea entirely or claim that it doesn’t actually work and the only way to protest successfully is to win over people like them even though they’ve probably never been to a demonstration, let alone a direct action event and if they did they’d probably do more harm than good given how ignorant they are on the subject.
We really need to educate people about protesting tactics, how they work, what they actually seek to achieve, and how different methods put pressure on different areas to get different effects and I think you probably can’t teach this to older generations but younger generations are capable of learning and we really need them to learn this.
Teaching people to think in terms of systems and take a structural approach when trying to change a system is paramount because, in the current state of things, the common belief seems to be if enough people wave signs from the sidewalk, things magically work out in the end.
Yeah, I’m with you on #3. A few random white people cementing themselves to 93N in Boston did ZERO to support BLM. Nobody was educated. People who were otherwise neutral on the topic got mad at BLM.
I think a little bit of “unnecessary” disruption is a good thing in protests so a group isn’t easily ignored, but if your ONLY outcome is to make enemies and alienate allies, you did something wrong. Nobody even remembered that the 93N thing was for BLM unless they were already invested in BLM.
Malcolm X had one small thing wrong. It wasn’t that “Silence is Violence” wasn’t true, of course it’s everyone’s responsibility to fight injustice even if we’re not minorities ourselves… It’s that he said the quiet part loud. When you push people to take sides, often they take the *other side *because of your actions, when they wouldn’t have dreamed of doing so otherwise.
I have a private theory that the establishment likes to promote protest tactics that they know will be counterproductive if their enemies apply them. Throwing paint at famous artworks is another of these. For some reason, activists especially in the US seem to eat this shit up and apply it enthusiastically.
I have never heard of Greta Thunberg getting arrested at a protest that is anywhere except at an office of government or industry that bears some direct responsibility for the problem. Punishing random commuters while self-righteously declaring that you’re helping was something other people came up with.
Exactly this. If your disruption can be LASER FOCUSED at your target, I think there’s an argument for it. I’m not on board with PETA-level animal activism, but I can understand and respect why they’d throw a gallon of red paint on someone’s fur coat. And if BLM protestors throw white paint all over police cars to protest how the law enforcement is “white-washed”, I would get it too.
But I’m pro-BLM. I used to donate to BLM-related causes. I got that money from my minority-owned job, and the black VP who had an interesting history of anti-racism gave a little rant about “those idiots chaining themselves to cement on the highway” when a BLM protest involved blocking off 93N…