/r/50501 Mirror

Protest does work to a degree. But there is a dialectic change in that quantity begets quality when it becomes resistance.

Lots of good feedback here. Not much to offer. But I’ll help out where I can. I came from Reddit. Deleting my Reddit accounts.

I am boycotting instead. Also, not American.

I watched a news program from 1968, it was special coverage of the Democratic National Convention. There was a Vietnam protest, and the jackboots came and started to beat the protesters. Later that night, members of the DNC held a vigil for those beaten earlier.

Luigi got more done in a minute than all the thousands of protesters over the past 30 years.

Yep, pretty much sums up how I feel as an older millenial. The fact that Donald Trump has now won twice....I am just waiting on Merica to learn the hard way. I will be protesting as well. Its still better than nothing.

I think there is hope. The movements you mentioned are all recent or were very short lived. Fourteen years elapsed between brown vs. board of education and the civil rights act of 1968. women’s suffrage in the us was a battle that raged from the declaration of independence to 1920, nearly 150 years. i think that we are seeing the first reversal of BLM progress. the me too movement definitely caused some change, but the fuckers are naturally fighting back. there will be more protests and more reversals before real change sticks. the arc of history bends slowly, but it bends. every time you protest, you help keep hope alive.

Peaceful protests stopped really accomplishing anything once the ones being protested learned that there's no long term consequence to just ignoring peaceful protests. Not only that protests in the past were far more strategic. You'd use Rosa Parks because she's got the marketable image when the cameras are out. You had sit-ins. You had well organized boycotts. You had people willing to sit in a county jail for being disruptive.

I went to a protest last month. What I heard reminded me of college. Spent like 40 minutes listening to the DJ talk about how music and activism have always gone hand in hand and how later in the day please stick around to listen to music of liberation. Art is commentary. It is rarely the driver of action. Listening to music isn't going to plan out a boycott and organize weekly/monthly meetings to plan out and continue motivating boycotts.

College campus students like to do silent protests on campus to people that agree with them and/or do symbolic stuff like lay on the ground and draw chalk marks around them or place duct tape on their mouths. Zero stakes, zero risk on a college campus, zero weight to these attempted symbols and of course the lack of organizing regular meetings to further operate. Protests have to evolve into professional/pseudo-professional organizations

And all the peaceful marches from MLK Jr. Elsewhere there was still Malcolm X, Black Panthers, Communist Party, Fred Hampton and his collection of people putting aside their racism and sexismm for shared labor/economic interests, and of course then there was MLK Jr being assassinated and a week of countrywide riots that sped the Civil Rights Act of 1968 through congress and the white house

The Tesla protests are good though. It needs to keep being hammered for years to come that Tesla cars are garbage and support garbage and portray an image of garbage. Continued exodus from X to BlueSky or Mastadon is good. Reddit to Lemmy is good. All things that hit rich people if enough people do make the move. If only there were good movements to get off Facebook and Instagram. Stuff like not buying Kentucky whisky/bourbon is good. Buy Canadian or overseas whiskey. Until American brands take a stand, buy foreign and make it known why you buy foreign

France protest good. Do like France do! Hope always.

BLM protests were actually very effective

My thing is I literally don't have the time. I'm primary income for my household, my kids eat up whatever sick time I have, and these protests, as far as I've seen, are never on the weekends. There's the 'economic blackout' ones I participated in, but it's not like those are making an impact to these companies that have hordes of resources to keep them afloat. Idk man. I don't want to be the reason our democracy fails, but I don't want to be one of the idiots just sitting around on their ass either.

I think both parts are right, but maybe more balanced. If millennials could afford to protest AND thought it was effective, they would.

I actually like the “no economic activity” protests, but they are possible for me because of my privilege. Not everyone can just not work or buy things, especially when on paycheck to paycheck.

Money talks right now. It would take collective action and new movement to break folks out of their slowing inertia. They’ve shoved a lot, and like you said, results have been mixed. We got a lot of change, but now the Sisyphean boulder is rolling back down the hill. :/

I'll get bombed for this but oh well.

Remember this when you see all of those "boomers made this happen by accepting X,Y, & Z."

They all had lives, children, etc, and the policies/administration weren't even 1/10th as stupid and shitty as what we see now.

And no, I'm not a boomer. I just think that argument (which I've seen many times) is ridiculous. We're all trying to do the best we can, just like they did.

*Bernie Sanders is not a democret

I’m old enough to have lost friends in college for protesting the second Iraq War.

Americans are trash and if they want to act like trash I clearly can’t stop them.

Yea im not interested in the opinion of a cryptobro that says taxes are theft like this duckhunt fellow...

Speak for yourself.