I said “hell yeah fight the power bro”.
At mine the lead organizer spoke about their commitment to non-violence and in the very next breath thanked the local cops.
🤮
I was already nauseated by the sea of Amerikkkan flags so that was more than enough for me. At least there was a [small local org] table to exchange contact information with.
I was one of about 5 speakers at our local one. About 5,000 attendees. I called police hogs and told the audience to read Mao. The emcee followed up my speech with, paraphrasing, “As a schoolteacher, the emphasis on political education really appeals to me”. The leader of our local indivisible org sent me a message later thanking me for the speech and calling me a “true leader”. Some of the libs are alright.
That’s great to hear!Yeah! I feel like some people are too quick to count out the libs. Where there are willing ears it is every Communist’s job to teach. I’m not saying I think I made any real difference but just getting the ideas out there and leaving people with a positive interaction with Socialism certainly can’t hurt. Just be friendly, patient, and explain, explain, explain. Practice your arguments and understand where the friction points are with your interlocutors to help better advance your ideas. Your goal should always be to convince them that they are already a Communist at heart, and that your only goal is to help them express their ideas better in the future.
I’m in a less-active corner of a major metro area and went to the event closest to where I live instead of one where major socialist contingents were planning to be - partially to get the lay of the land in my new neighborhood, partially to avoid transportation costs. It looks like what I really need to do is go to the bigger events and form / join a working group that focuses on my city. Most people here that I’ve talked to are anti-police but I guess they all went to a different protest yesterday. I should have been at yours!
Yeah - a lot of NK protests are put on by church groups and County Dem groups and end up reflecting more conservative ideas. But even then, I’ve spoken to some of those people and while many do just kind of suck, at others the organizers actually do have pretty alright politics but just have the “I don’t want to alienate my less radical anti-Trump neighbors” brainworms. I think the key, again, is calmly and in a friendly, helpful tone explaining to them that their fence-sitting is alienating people who they agree with even more.
I don’t want this to come off as tone policing, though. Sometimes people are shitheads and need to be mocked and flamed. A few minutes after my speech I was petitioning for a local anti-Zionist independent candidate and I ran into some old Karen-ass removed who didn’t want to sign because she supported the Zionist Dem he was running against. She just rubbed me the wrong way so I loudly told my fellow petitioner “She doesn’t want to sign, she thinks bombing Palestinian children is good” and walked away as she was yelling at me lmao. But I also recognize that was not an effective use of my political speech but something I did for me, as a little treat.
🥰
I had some luck handing out literature and striking up conversations
Plus, I think they appreciated when a guy drove up and started screaming pro-ICE stuff, I just walked up and said “Have a blessed day, we love you!” and confused the hell out of him so he left
I like that the regional orgs are using it as a platform for entryism in the same way that they do with most other street protests over the past few decades. It’s at least people in a place.
Yup
A lot of them want to do stuff, but don’t know where to start
If even 1 out of 5 people I handed pamphlets to show up at the org meetings, I will have done something amazing
I just walked up and said “Have a blessed day, we love you!” and confused the hell out of him so he left
Thank you for your service.
The libs love it when I match hecklers’ energy, but respond positively
I learned back in the early online game days that people don’t know how to respond to loud kindness or weirdness when they’re expecting hostility
My favorite way to get under people’s skin in CSGO was a bind “say :)”
I had people rage quiting with just a few smiley faces as a response to their crying and screaming
😌
@Civility@hexbear.net get in here and smiley face these big beautiful posters. It isn’t the same if I do it.
❤️
🥰
I was out of town visiting friends but we went to a local suburban protest. Very white and lib, but the organizers let me have the megaphone to give speeches and lead chants. Got some socialist messaging in, led a free Palestine chant that people got pretty into, and a black guy led a chant of “when I say fuck, you say ice” until his voice gave out. Talked to a retired teamster at his first protest. There are worse ways to spend an afternoon, but now my voice is fried from yelling
Lots of Lib lameness for sure.
But my sign, held by my kids, reminding people to never cease talking about the Epstein Files got a lot of pics, thumbs up and encouragement to the little ones. We had another mentioning Cuba and the War with Iran.
Also had a handful of uplifting/energizing conversations with comrades. One handing out flyers about the Cuban blockade; another who had a Fred Hampton quote on a placard (which led to a heightened conversation in a packed coffee shop about the core problem being capitalism), and another with a woman wearing a rabbi for peace shirt carrying a Palestinian flag and a wearing a Tax The Rich winter hat.
I was loathe to go, being such a predictable, milquetoast Neoliberal Dem Party brunch crowd of Trump hyperventilating. But glad I did. Just to take the kids to see another world being possible and to seek out and engage with comrades.
I hear policies are already changing because of that and Democrats are really going to impeach Trump this time for reals. The Genocide is going to stop, Israel cut off, troops pulled, and the funds redirected to infrastructure improvements and universal healthcare.
I even hear Democrats owning their mistakes and saying sorry to the country.
Really proud of you guys. Way to sign it out! Changed the world.
Honestly that was mostly my doing. My sign said:
“really impeach Trump this time for reals. Stop The Genocide, cut off Israel, pull the troops, redirect their funding to infrastructure and universal healthcare, own your mistakes and say sorry”
A lib I’m talking to reference this book as a way to show these protests are doing something meaningful:
https://www.ericachenoweth.com/research/wcrw
Then linked to this article:
Direct quote when I said these protests are useless:
“but that is an excellent book. Should you actually be interested in effective revolution… that book has a century of global civil resistance analysis breaking down what tactics work best and which are less effective or, worse, tend to bring forth even more authoritarian leadership than that which is trying to be overthrown (spoiler: it’s when violence is included. When violence is present, it succeeds less than half the time when it’s nonviolent, and when it does succeed, it results in more authoritarian regimes following the resistance efforts than when it’s been nonviolent). Strongly recommend the read.”
If you think they’ll actually do it, offer to read their book if they read The Jakarta Method.
That’s a pretty good retort. I might have to try that.
Protests are not useless but only doing protests is useless. There are quotes from Marx and Lenin about participating in politics to show that liberal democracy is a sham and that the entire system needs to be overthrown. Protesting can be an organizing and radicalization point within that context of raising class consciousness.
These protests however are useless because there are no real demands, there is no mass movement or organization at work, they aren’t even consistently done, and there is also no threat in any capacity to the system as a result. At the end of the day what is really being accomplished other than liberals blowing off some steam?
Yes yes you know what I meant.
Are you talking to my mother?
Ok this got a good laugh out of me.
I’ve been trying to change my outlook on the whole thing tbh. I think it was good for community (which the US desperately needs) but there’s not going to be any action coming from protests led by cops
