I was having this discussion with a friend of mine yesterday, talking about how US citizens managed to positively move marijuana legislation in a better direction…I think this is a good example…

NORML was a major player in changing political and social attitudes about marijuana. They’d stage major demonstrations that were more than just performative. They’d hand out leaflets with information. Gave you the contact info for your reps to put the pressure on them. There was merch for fundraising. The atmosphere at those demonstrations was electric - people were happy to be a part of the movement.

And here’s the most important part: they never let up. Not until they started hearing sincere conversations happening in congress. Not until states started changing their attitudes. And all this in the days before social media was ubiquitous.

NORML’s approach is a great model to follow to effect positive change - change that the people genuinely want.

When I see, for example, the No Kings demonstrations, I have to ask if their follow-through is as effective. Do they encourage people to continue to engage with their government after they go home? In addition to the anger at the current situation, are they also generating excitement about what could be? Because if it’s just periodic protests with silence in between, that’s not going to be as effective.

Let’s be clear - our government didn’t get this bad overnight. It took decades of silent fascist creep to effect a gradual shift. It’s not going to get fixed overnight either. Make those demonstrations loud, festive, informative, and make sure they echo for months after the fact, until the next one. Raise funds for the cause by selling shirts and hats and stickers people are proud to wear. Sell the message. Let it be known that the message is for all Americans, even the ones you hate for voting this shit into existence, because those are the hearts and minds you have to change.

It can be done. It might take decades but it can be done. It’s been done before, in way worse environments than this.

And hey, if it helps, even in the backwater red counties I drive through, I see way less enthusiasm for this garbage than I did even just two years ago. I feel like that’s not insignificant.

I’m not in or from the US. In my country people didn’t rebel when camps were built, when people were disappeared, when they were sent to war. The world used to think that something was especially wrong with us. Turns out the average person in every country is just too poor, too exhausted, too distracted to oppose the fascists. We sit still and hope that we’re not next. If you introduce the hardships slowly enough people will not complain.

My advice is ‘Rot the system from the inside’. Be extra slow, be really inefficient. Be obtuse. Have your work gear break often. Make small mistakes. Be stubborn. Appear stupid. And if you want to gather and organize: Don’t gather in one location, gather in many locations, but gather. Don’t meet with the purpose of politics, but start with mutual aid, neighborhood support, hobbies, … Maybe don’t call your organization anything like “Anarchist Antifa Violent Liberation Front” but go for “Neighborhood Support Club” and remain accessible to all who are not total arseholes. Now it’s about getting shit done - anything on the scale of growing vegetables to Luigi that isn’t writing yet another manifesto. Be kind to another.

Probably balkanize.

Get off their asses and actually vote?

Just kidding, that’s too much effort for waaaaay too many people apparently.

Probably a better fit for !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world

Rule 6, no?

Rule 6: No US Politics

Yeah general strike is the only power US citizens have.

we migrate to a location where we can get sensible people together in a location.

This has already been happening for quite some time. People move to be around others like themselves. It’s why northern Idaho has been taken over by far-right newcomers, and why so many LGBTQ folks move to places like Seattle or greater Boston. Hell, the Free State Project has been actively trying to pack New Hampshire with libertarians for almost 25 years. The result of this self-segregation is stark political boundaries with easily-identified in- and out-groups. But we’re all still part of the same overall nation, so there’s a distinct political split and culture war politics take center stage. Hence our position.

Then we can rebel against the for profit system by protecting each other with weapons, food, community.

History tells me that secession by force is a losing proposition.

I don’t have a good solution. It’s tempting to organize and try to make peaceful secession a palatable political outcome, though that’s a long and difficult path with a lot of vested interests in the way.

Whatever happens, it’s going to be really bad because people are trapped in their social media/right wing media ecosystems.

Historically what happens to shake that up is war.

PTO from work.

Dox your local representative. Their family, their friends, their employees. Make sure every meth head in your county knows the name, face, and address of the man or woman that took away their food stamps or kicked them out of their home.

Make their voting base as scared as they try to make us. Every minority should form an armed militia in their community.

Make it impossible to police. Cops don’t have to do their jobs, the supreme court said so give them a bigger incentive to not do it. If every brown person they see has a rifle and walkie they’ll just keep driving. If ever white guy that passes pulls over and starts filming and shouting, they’ll stop pulling people over.

Don’t stop there, get involved maliciously. Run against your mayor, your governor, your congressman. It doesn’t matter if you can win, just refuse to let them talk about anything they platform and shout over them with the vulgar accurate truth. No news would dare sensor a live debate where a candidate calls the mayor a cunt for supporting trump or says full chest that he’ll have every Nazi in the city charged with treason.

If the rules are only there for us, quit playing by them.

Nothing.

Sane Americans are already doing well are mildly inconvenienced. They aren’t agonizing about politics everyday. That’s what insane people do.

“Rebel” bwhahaha. Lemme guess, you just turned 14?

You need to read some history, like “The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire” and Machiavelli.

Go build your own socialist/communist compound - you can do that in the US (generally, unless you piss off Hillary). Because no one’s ever thought of any of this before. (Yes, that’s sarcasm).

You’re also espousing ideas that would require a lot more of the population to get onboard with. And while life may not be “perfect”, I’ll be damned if I’m giving up any of what I do have for your pie-in-the-sky idealism.

Humanity has been on this path for thousands of years - go read the Code of Hammurabi to see exactly how little is different today from 7000 years ago.

It sounds to me like you’ve never worked on any large project - of you had, you’d know there are a million things that can’t be predicted, and that’s with much smaller agendas.