A coalition of civil rights groups expects the turnout on Oct. 18 will be even bigger than the first nationwide protest held in June, which by some counts was the largest in U.S. history.
there are a few proven options, but anything that impedes their property from working or the economy from spinning. the best part is our work makes it happen. socialists, communists and anarchists did a lot of it in the past and it works. it is important to read theory on how it is done.
closing important highways, impeding workers from getting to work will grind their profits to a halt. greta-style shutdowns of mining and oil operations. huge organized boycotts work in select circumstances. striking and refusing to work and spin the economy. providing but refusing to collect payment for essential services. building systems to reduce our reliance on theirs. among many other creative ways.
be aware though that they will make it violent if they need to to make you stop. you will have to be prepared to defend yourselves from escalating political, rhetorical, economic and of course physical violence.
also be aware some of the political, rhetorical and even economic violence can look like they are trying to help us. they are NOT. this is another reason why theory is important.
Thank you! We have to do it continuously! No one is willing to suffer now to have something better in the future. They would rather just boil in a pot like a lobster
As the other comment says, it is an effective tool. However, you’ve been told that protest creates change on its own, which it has never done. Our media and education fills us with stories of, for example, the civil rights and that protests worked.
However, that was backed with direct action. There were people stopping businesses from functioning, breaking laws, and some targeted violence. Without this it’s likely nothing would have changed.
We’re told the “right way” to protest is peacefully. However, that’s only the starting point. You get people to peaceful protests and then you organize them into groups who are willing to commit to more action. A lot of people won’t be willing to go that far, and they’re still useful in these peaceful protests, but these are a way to identify people who may want to take the next step.
That is stupid and absolutely not true at all. You’re nieve. Most people won’t take that next step until they have to. It means risking everything you’ve worked for, knowing that not doing so is risking something worse. Every person will have a different point, and that point hasn’t come for many.
You got me good. English is a fucking menace of a language and I used the wrong spelling of two words that sound the same. That definitely disproves my point. It’s not like you needed to make an argument to say that when you can just correct someone’s spelling, because surely that proves your intellect and makes you correct, without reason.
We disagree, but I can support my points. You can only attack my spelling. You should re-evaluate your stance if you don’t actually have a reason for it. You shouldn’t cut off potential allies because they weren’t first in line. Even after the Nazis took over there were new resistance fighters joining in. If your reasoning were true that wouldn’t happen.
We still have to build the base. If we want to talk about a nationwide work stoppage but we can’t even get 1% of people to a protest, then it won’t be effective.
It would be an effective protest if people did not stop protesting. People are just wasting their Saturday. What is effective is a strike. But, a strike doesn’t just end periodically. The strike continues until we get what we want. And yes, there are lots of risks
With respect, you don’t seem to understand how strikes happen. Strikes can only occur with organization and planning… People need to eat, they need to be assured that if they strike, everyone else will too, etc. And one way to kickstart that organization is to get folks together at a big protest to recruit them to the strike organizing cause.
With respect, I understand how a strike works. I understand that if you want something done you have to commit. What we are seeing now is completely unprecedented in US history. None of those people in power give a shit and none of those people will ever budge. It does not matter how much protesting you do it will not happen. The only thing that will happen is to completely shut down the country as citizens. Yes, food, rent, that is going to be a big issue. And if people are not willing to do that then we need to just accept our new fascist regime and figure out how to survive
My point is that protesting and organizing—you know, getting out into the real world and connecting with real people—is how you get to a shutdown of the system. Strikes don’t get organized on social media.
I mean, we need a nationwide action plan, and that doesn’t happen locally.
It actually can start locally. Let’s say, for instance, Chicago starts a single-day citywide strike. That demonstrates to other cities that it can be done; it bridges the imagination gap. Then maybe we have multiple cities in the midwest start striking. And perhaps soon, the east coast. And it spreads from there.
They really is just nothing we can do as citizens at this point. Get out if you can, or buy a gun.
Okay doomer. 😄
But seriously, I encourage you not to give up this early in the “game.” If you do, you are complicit with the authoritarians. Find your local people doing resistance work. Resist alongside them. Don’t give up hope.
Protesting and marches are still an incredibly effective tool. I think what you’re rightly pointing out is that communicative protests are not having many concrete effects in their own right, but that’s already a known factor.
Communicative protests bring people together, they give people a sense of hope, and they strengthen existing community organizers and groups by allowing people to be recruited into local efforts that do produce concrete actions.
For example, I went to the recent Workers Over Billionaires rally near me. I knew damn well that it wasn’t going to physically do anything to stop Trump, to harm billionaires, or reduce the power of the administration in its own right.
But y’know what I did see happening there? Hundreds of people signing up with a local group that helps immigrants safely make it to, and stay in, local public schools, and hundreds more getting advice on how to unionize their workplace, along with many people getting socialism-related literature, signing up to canvass for a local progressive candidate, and being given tons of stickers and pamphlets that will likely help promote a ton of other local progressive groups that all in their own way either concretely harm the administration’s efforts, or help people in the community with all sorts of socioeconomic problems.
And at the end of the day, I, along with many others, felt much less despair. And if you want a strong movement, you want people that have hope, and not hopelessness.
Sure, there’s a ton of very liberal people there wearing their “if the 3.5% rise up, dictators FALL” shirts thinking that communicative protests like that one will magically depose Trump if more than 3.5% of the population participates, but in the end, these protests have time and time again massively increased participation and funding going to groups that strengthen working class people’s power, and harm the administration’s efforts to harm all sorts of people, and that’s better than nothing.
You’re not going to get a 60 year old wine mom to go and break the windows of an ICE building, but you can get her to donate money to organizations that consistently file legal challenges, or encourage some friends to vote for a candidate that could eventually put much stronger legislative protections in place.
If you feel much less despair, you are fooling yourself. Belief that we are on the precipice of things getting better is a delusion. All of those politicians want you happily walking the street keeping yourselves busy. Thinking you’re doing something to help. Anything to keep the pitchforks in the barn while they bleed you dry.
Belief that we are on the precipice of things getting better is a delusion.
Did I say that?
Hope is not optimism. There is a significant distinction if you care to look up their definitions. It gives me more confidence that resistance is still possible, and gives others the courage to both do and desire the same, but it certainly does not make me pre-emptively expect the best outcome to simply happen as a result.
I do not believe that we are on the precipice of things getting better, make no mistake.
But simply being angry and hopeless does not produce change. And believe me, there is nothing more soul crushing than finally realizing the reason you’ve felt the way you have your whole life is because you’re nonbinary, after you’ve already surrounded yourself with tons of trans friends, then see an administration call them all terrorists, revoke their medical care they need to survive, and signal to neo-nazis and far-right thugs that they will do nothing to stop politically motivated violence against you and the people you love, while friends and people you work with are being threatened with violent black-bagging and deportation.
I do not “happily walk in the street”, I angrily organize with people in my community to get as many people as fucking possible dedicated to making ICE agents uncomfortable any time they appear, to get candidates in power with a goddamn spine, to stop the people I meet from ending their lives over this administration’s actions, and to give people who are minimally politically active a reason to start doing more.
We’ve already had people in my community transition from these hyper-liberal No Kings style protests into simply walking to ICE buildings and protesting there until late into the night, because they realize that people have their back. Blocking exits for deportation vans and making these thugs feel unsafe is something they would not have done otherwise.
I’ve already lost someone to suicide because of this administration’s actions. I’ve helped comfort many others. Even a communicative protest that had ZERO community organizing, charity involvement, or other forms of collective action like we’ve seen over and over again with these rallies would do good in my community, because it shows so many fucking people that there are people that will stand with them no matter how hard this world gets.
Any action matters. Anything to give people more hope is worth it. Anything that organizes people and gets them to take more concrete actions down the line is worth it.
I participated in the first. I wish a single person cared or a single thing changed.
Did you join your local resistance organizations who were recruiting at the protest, so you could continue the fight?
I signed up with a person there to get text alerts about the next meet up. Never got a text.
hit them in the money, they will notice you then.
How?
there are a few proven options, but anything that impedes their property from working or the economy from spinning. the best part is our work makes it happen. socialists, communists and anarchists did a lot of it in the past and it works. it is important to read theory on how it is done.
closing important highways, impeding workers from getting to work will grind their profits to a halt. greta-style shutdowns of mining and oil operations. huge organized boycotts work in select circumstances. striking and refusing to work and spin the economy. providing but refusing to collect payment for essential services. building systems to reduce our reliance on theirs. among many other creative ways.
be aware though that they will make it violent if they need to to make you stop. you will have to be prepared to defend yourselves from escalating political, rhetorical, economic and of course physical violence.
also be aware some of the political, rhetorical and even economic violence can look like they are trying to help us. they are NOT. this is another reason why theory is important.
Protesting and marches are no longer an effective tool. Times change, tactics need to catch up.
Especially not single day protests a few months apart.
Thank you! We have to do it continuously! No one is willing to suffer now to have something better in the future. They would rather just boil in a pot like a lobster
As the other comment says, it is an effective tool. However, you’ve been told that protest creates change on its own, which it has never done. Our media and education fills us with stories of, for example, the civil rights and that protests worked.
However, that was backed with direct action. There were people stopping businesses from functioning, breaking laws, and some targeted violence. Without this it’s likely nothing would have changed.
We’re told the “right way” to protest is peacefully. However, that’s only the starting point. You get people to peaceful protests and then you organize them into groups who are willing to commit to more action. A lot of people won’t be willing to go that far, and they’re still useful in these peaceful protests, but these are a way to identify people who may want to take the next step.
If they haven’t taken the next step so far, they aren’t going to take it
That is stupid and absolutely not true at all. You’re nieve. Most people won’t take that next step until they have to. It means risking everything you’ve worked for, knowing that not doing so is risking something worse. Every person will have a different point, and that point hasn’t come for many.
You can’t even spell naive, don’t accuse people of being it.
You got me good. English is a fucking menace of a language and I used the wrong spelling of two words that sound the same. That definitely disproves my point. It’s not like you needed to make an argument to say that when you can just correct someone’s spelling, because surely that proves your intellect and makes you correct, without reason.
Just because you say something, doesn’t make it true. We disagree. Goodbye.
We disagree, but I can support my points. You can only attack my spelling. You should re-evaluate your stance if you don’t actually have a reason for it. You shouldn’t cut off potential allies because they weren’t first in line. Even after the Nazis took over there were new resistance fighters joining in. If your reasoning were true that wouldn’t happen.
We still have to build the base. If we want to talk about a nationwide work stoppage but we can’t even get 1% of people to a protest, then it won’t be effective.
It would be an effective protest if people did not stop protesting. People are just wasting their Saturday. What is effective is a strike. But, a strike doesn’t just end periodically. The strike continues until we get what we want. And yes, there are lots of risks
With respect, you don’t seem to understand how strikes happen. Strikes can only occur with organization and planning… People need to eat, they need to be assured that if they strike, everyone else will too, etc. And one way to kickstart that organization is to get folks together at a big protest to recruit them to the strike organizing cause.
With respect, I understand how a strike works. I understand that if you want something done you have to commit. What we are seeing now is completely unprecedented in US history. None of those people in power give a shit and none of those people will ever budge. It does not matter how much protesting you do it will not happen. The only thing that will happen is to completely shut down the country as citizens. Yes, food, rent, that is going to be a big issue. And if people are not willing to do that then we need to just accept our new fascist regime and figure out how to survive
My point is that protesting and organizing—you know, getting out into the real world and connecting with real people—is how you get to a shutdown of the system. Strikes don’t get organized on social media.
I mean, we need a nationwide action plan, and that doesn’t happen locally.
They really is just nothing we can do as citizens at this point. Get out if you can, or buy a gun.
It actually can start locally. Let’s say, for instance, Chicago starts a single-day citywide strike. That demonstrates to other cities that it can be done; it bridges the imagination gap. Then maybe we have multiple cities in the midwest start striking. And perhaps soon, the east coast. And it spreads from there.
Okay doomer. 😄
But seriously, I encourage you not to give up this early in the “game.” If you do, you are complicit with the authoritarians. Find your local people doing resistance work. Resist alongside them. Don’t give up hope.
Protesting and marches are still an incredibly effective tool. I think what you’re rightly pointing out is that communicative protests are not having many concrete effects in their own right, but that’s already a known factor.
Communicative protests bring people together, they give people a sense of hope, and they strengthen existing community organizers and groups by allowing people to be recruited into local efforts that do produce concrete actions.
For example, I went to the recent Workers Over Billionaires rally near me. I knew damn well that it wasn’t going to physically do anything to stop Trump, to harm billionaires, or reduce the power of the administration in its own right.
But y’know what I did see happening there? Hundreds of people signing up with a local group that helps immigrants safely make it to, and stay in, local public schools, and hundreds more getting advice on how to unionize their workplace, along with many people getting socialism-related literature, signing up to canvass for a local progressive candidate, and being given tons of stickers and pamphlets that will likely help promote a ton of other local progressive groups that all in their own way either concretely harm the administration’s efforts, or help people in the community with all sorts of socioeconomic problems.
And at the end of the day, I, along with many others, felt much less despair. And if you want a strong movement, you want people that have hope, and not hopelessness.
Sure, there’s a ton of very liberal people there wearing their “if the 3.5% rise up, dictators FALL” shirts thinking that communicative protests like that one will magically depose Trump if more than 3.5% of the population participates, but in the end, these protests have time and time again massively increased participation and funding going to groups that strengthen working class people’s power, and harm the administration’s efforts to harm all sorts of people, and that’s better than nothing.
You’re not going to get a 60 year old wine mom to go and break the windows of an ICE building, but you can get her to donate money to organizations that consistently file legal challenges, or encourage some friends to vote for a candidate that could eventually put much stronger legislative protections in place.
If you feel much less despair, you are fooling yourself. Belief that we are on the precipice of things getting better is a delusion. All of those politicians want you happily walking the street keeping yourselves busy. Thinking you’re doing something to help. Anything to keep the pitchforks in the barn while they bleed you dry.
Did I say that?
Hope is not optimism. There is a significant distinction if you care to look up their definitions. It gives me more confidence that resistance is still possible, and gives others the courage to both do and desire the same, but it certainly does not make me pre-emptively expect the best outcome to simply happen as a result.
I do not believe that we are on the precipice of things getting better, make no mistake.
But simply being angry and hopeless does not produce change. And believe me, there is nothing more soul crushing than finally realizing the reason you’ve felt the way you have your whole life is because you’re nonbinary, after you’ve already surrounded yourself with tons of trans friends, then see an administration call them all terrorists, revoke their medical care they need to survive, and signal to neo-nazis and far-right thugs that they will do nothing to stop politically motivated violence against you and the people you love, while friends and people you work with are being threatened with violent black-bagging and deportation.
I do not “happily walk in the street”, I angrily organize with people in my community to get as many people as fucking possible dedicated to making ICE agents uncomfortable any time they appear, to get candidates in power with a goddamn spine, to stop the people I meet from ending their lives over this administration’s actions, and to give people who are minimally politically active a reason to start doing more.
We’ve already had people in my community transition from these hyper-liberal No Kings style protests into simply walking to ICE buildings and protesting there until late into the night, because they realize that people have their back. Blocking exits for deportation vans and making these thugs feel unsafe is something they would not have done otherwise.
I’ve already lost someone to suicide because of this administration’s actions. I’ve helped comfort many others. Even a communicative protest that had ZERO community organizing, charity involvement, or other forms of collective action like we’ve seen over and over again with these rallies would do good in my community, because it shows so many fucking people that there are people that will stand with them no matter how hard this world gets.
Any action matters. Anything to give people more hope is worth it. Anything that organizes people and gets them to take more concrete actions down the line is worth it.
I won’t lose another friend.
Thoughts and prayers…
Does the term “self-defeating” mean anything to you?
Yes but it’s not applicable in this case.
it never really was, for most situations. definetly not against open fascism.
I mean… were there other people present at the protest?
Probably at least one single person cares. Maybe a few married people too.
Hard to have a protest by yourself.
I don’t mean the people at the protest. Im fairly certain you know what I mean.