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?
They were successfully beaten down. More specifically, the ORGANIZATIONS were beaten down. The most successful protest movements weren’t people spontaneously showing up in the streets. They were the culmination of the efforts of community organizing. There was planning and they had people they could rely on and who relied on them. But things like unions and the Black Panthers were violently destroyed.
Now protesting is atomized like everything else. A protest that forms by posting to show up somewhere at some time on social media with signs is a collection of individuals rather than a group. If you’re just surrounded by strangers you don’t know, are you going to be able to take more radical actions?
That’s not to say none of the more serious/organized protests are happening though. There were those water protectors who tried to stop that pipeline. There were the rail worker and dockworker strikes. I don’t know how organized it was, but it was heartening to see the LA protests start out by actively protecting people being targeted by ICE. And perhaps there are more that just didn’t get any media attention. But in any case, you see how hard they try to crack down on those. But sometimes they can succeed.
Because the political and economical situation is extreme.
Too many people’s idea of activism now is to rant on social media and downvote all the bad thoughts. “I’m raising awareness!”
I was gonna say something similar. The amount of “activists “ that have never set foot at a protest is astounding. Most of the recent protests have been full of geriatrics reliving the past glory of the 60’s. Then the young people that do show up are nobody to look up to or admire, they are usually uneducated about the subject and have a plethora of mental issues or only there because they have a huge unrelated chip on their shoulder.
Also, the protestors of the past in my city were always well dressed professional people with a clearly defined goal. Currently, it’s just trust fund babies mad at daddy pretending to be anarchistic in their $3800/month apartment burning down the poor part of the city they don’t live in because they are mad at Trump and ice.
Successful protests have clear policy objectives; also work from home and the lack of large factories that can be shut down by walk outs means that the collective bargaining is slightly weaker in places like USA.
Someone just set off a bomb in front of a politicians office in my province. Not confirmed but fairly certain that was a protest.
Pride turned more into a celebration rather than a protest in recent years with the capitalization of it, but due to recent regression I can imagine it going back to more intense protests in some towns at least now.
Depends where you live but most of the time the government does try to keep even controversial protests pretty light with the excuse of keeping people safe, but there’s always more extreme action that people take, it maybe just doesn’t get shown as a “protest” per se.
The big, well reported protests were the result of decades, nay centuries, of protests.
Sit-in protests were common.
Rosa Parks was, by far, not the first Black person to be arrested for keeping her seat.
Hundreds of thousands of workers died or were hurt in preventable dangerous workplaces and labor protests.
It is hard and costly to go against the government.
People are organizing in their communities to patrol for ICE and respond to ICE raids, which is quite a bit like the Black Panthers “cop watch” and community patrols.
I know it’s not like when protesters burned down a police station in 2020, but things are happening.
It always takes time. Even when everyone knows that they would win if they just step up to the plate as one unified people.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tdIK3JFIWNI
If we all break “the rules” together, they can’t get all of us
“The revolution will not be televised”
It’s a phrase I hear a lot in leftist spaces. Effectively, you have to be aware that publicizing these things is a great way to get them shut down.
The work is being done locally, and quietly. Advertising these events in public spaces like this one will very likely lead to them not getting off the ground due to infiltration or oppression
There’s a second factor at work, which is that the institutions targeted by more “extreme” actions also don’t want those actions publicized.
Consider an action like the one depicted in “How to Blow Up a Pipeline.” If they don’t have a perpetrator in cuffs, the oil company and the cops would not want to admit the action happened at all, because it makes them look vulnerable.
It’s probably at least partially something adjacent to survivorship bias. The most remarkable actions of the past that “survive” to the present to be retold are the ones that were most impactful.
But all of the current protests you feel are not as impactful help build a foundation for the more impactful ones.
I think the the other issue is reporting of events is split into thousands of sources. Just like with media there is no longer a shared conversation between everyone. Back in the day. If Walter Cronkite talked about it everybody knew about it. But know everything is fractured into their own subcultures and to extent their own realities.
Another domain where big tech is not helping organise… They boost hatred not just for engagement and ads, but so masses don’t organise against those technothieves
Shame.
Those now in power, and Trump especially, have none. They don’t even understand the concept. And it’s been embraced by his hyenas.
Used to be, when the general population became aware of atrocities, and that they were committed against innocent people, they refused to continue to support those who had done wrong. Now Trump waves it in their face like a banner and they follow him
Used to be,
Consider Nixon resigning over Watergate, which would be small beans today.
This all started with Wilson and his Southern Revisionist cohorts. They changed the law in 1874 illegally. Had that clause not been eliminated, Wilson and by extension the modern GOP and “Police,” wouldn’t have had immunity from prosecution, which is what the 1871 Congress intended when they passed Federal Statute Section 1983. Also Qualified Immunity would be recognized as the unconstitutional and illegal bullshit mealy mouthed lawyering that it is.
Holy smoke! This is huge!
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.
Desensitation, perhaps. Informations flows more freely now, you hear protests/riots/rebellions everywhere, it just feels “standard” nowadays.
I’ve seen so much conflict on the news from all around the world. BLM in the USA, Hong Kong anti-extradition, France retirement age increase related protests, Serbia peaceful protesters getting blasted with an energy weapon (yes the governement used an actual energy weapon, its not a conspiracy theory), “Freedom” Convoy in Canada, UK Xenobophic Race Riots, Syrian Civil War, Invasion of Ukraine, Israel-Palestine conflict and war crimes, etc…
Conflict just became “normal”.
The black panthers were constantly organizing within their communities, and bringing actual weapons and shows of force against the state. The state imprisoned many of their leaders, and killed Fred Hampton in his sleep. That’s why they were actually having an impact. Because they were willing to risk their LIVES over it, and they didn’t ever stop. I don’t really see that happening anywhere now.
Not yet, maybe.
I think that part of it is that the authorities are confident that we can’t do much. In the 60’s, wide scale protest that was not a preamble to a riot was rare. In recent times, everyone expects things to go off peacefully and just come to an end at some point. This plays directly into their hands, and they are confident that we are toothless.
Peaceful protests will do fuck all when the white house rhetoric is that a large percentage of the population (anybody who doesn’t support Trump) are literally enemies of the state.
Liberals do not understand this for some reason, but peaceful protests only work with at least the THREAT of violence, unless you live in a country that actually cares about representing the people. Which America does not.
In the words of Anton LaVey, they are addicted to the “good guy badge”. They’d rather die feeling morally clean than get their hands dirty to save their country, neighbors, and values. The liberals I hear judging people for violent protest the most are the ones who are privileged enough to have not personally felt the consequences yet.
In my opinion, it is a grotesque cowardice to admonish people for fighting for their lives just because you don’t have to.
Exactly. I totally agree. It’s absolute bullshit.
They stormed capital hill lmao
That wasn’t a fucking protest. Give me a break. There’s a difference between a riot, an insurrection and a protest.
That was literally a right wing protest about an election result. Protests aren’t always good. All those words you used have broad overlap and generally things escalate from protest to riot to insurrection.
Coup attempts aren’t protests and neither are riots and all the gaslighting in the world won’t change that. That an event can change from one thing to another is meaningless to that fact.
Gaslighting isn’t real and you’re fucking crazy
Really? Because it seems to me the only difference is what your preferred media decide to call it.
