May be phrasing it wrong, but I look at actions like Labor rights, Pride, Civil Rights, Black Panthers, etc. where actions of protesters felt much intense and made more of an impact in actually changing things vs now where there are protests but it feels like it constantly falls of deaf ears.
Have we just not hit that breaking point yet? Have we collectively been beat down so hard? Or have we forgotten how to truly fight for rights? Or… am I just completely off the mark and missing something else?
The powers that be have no fear of ignoring protestors any more. Or education presents civil rights protests as peaceful and effective, that all we need to do is raise awareness and show solidarity and oppressors will relent. Education speaks of the black panthers, but doesn’t go into depth on how they were the armed wing of the movement.
So now today we’re protesting because we don’t like what’s happening, but what is the consequence to the power hungry? If the protests get anything approaching non peaceful, or even if they just want to, those in charge can escalate to military actions.
We also don’t have a clearly defined win condition. What is going to make things better? When do we stop? Is the goal just to raise awareness to get people to vote for a change in 1-4 years? Or are we looking for something more immediate?
Finally how far are we willing to go? If I’m not willing to die for it, or to risk my current comfortable life style, can I ever really push hard enough against current conditions? They’re willing to kill to keep their power, am I willing to kill to pry it from them?
They don’t fear us because they know we have so much more to lose than they do. We are not yet playing a game with equal stakes.
I don’t have a solution to this, so I’ll at least keep doing the peaceful thing, because it’s better than doing nothing.