I think teaching people how protests work is pretty important praxis and is not talked about nearly enough.
Moderates and liberals tend to think of protest and demonstration as the same thing and anything that is not a demonstration is generally though of as bad or counterproductive.
Most of the populace simply doesn’t understand that blocking roads or getting arrested have strategic value. They consider the goal of every protest to be to raise awareness and support and to convince people like them ™️ that any given cause is worth supporting and that their support is all it really takes to a make change happen. It’s a very self-centered view of how political movement work and it seems unfortunately quite obiquitous.
They see a road block and think “that just makes you look bad” and the thought process ends there because now your movement isn’t worth supporting in their eyes. If you try to explain that blocking off roads is often done to cut off supply lines to financial districts or big corporations and put economic pressure on them or the politicians they donate to, they refuse to engage with the idea entirely or claim that it doesn’t actually work and the only way to protest successfully is to win over people like them even though they’ve probably never been to a demonstration, let alone a direct action event and if they did they’d probably do more harm than good given how ignorant they are on the subject.
We really need to educate people about protesting tactics, how they work, what they actually seek to achieve, and how different methods put pressure on different areas to get different effects and I think you probably can’t teach this to older generations but younger generations are capable of learning and we really need them to learn this.
Teaching people to think in terms of systems and take a structural approach when trying to change a system is paramount because, in the current state of things, the common belief seems to be if enough people wave signs from the sidewalk, things magically work out in the end.
Blocking a road doesn’t affect anyone’s supply lines enough to affect any change. If it did there would be much harsher laws and penalties when some fuckhead is on their phone and gets in an accident disrupting traffic flow.
If by kind of lib you mean capable of recognizing a flawed argument, guilty as charged. Blocking a highway puts zero pressure on politicians and has no meaningful affect on corporations. They will just use it as an excuse to increase prices to cover the cost and sustain the increase after the protest is over.
The issue with many protests in America is that they aren’t prolonged or widespread to the degree that they would produce the level of disruption necessary for supply chain effects. This post assumes that disrupted operators would roll over though and capitulate to the demands of the protestors, but that’s a pretty bold assumption as well in a country that where corporations would rather pay for union busters than give their workers a pay raise.
I do think that there are different degrees of value. Blocking the roads is certainly a much less effective tactic than blockading a harbour right as coal ships are trying to leave or blocking the direct entrance/exit to a specific place of business.
But that doesn’t mean broader action is completely useless. In some cases it’s honestly the best thing you can possibly do (this example comes to mind as a brilliantly targeted action despite the thing being blocked being a whole major road). In others, it’s the simple fact that office workers do contribute to the economy, and you’re damaging the economy, which frustrates the elite.
Exactly! Blocking roads is a good protest against a city. If you’re targeting a business target it. If you’re targeting a specific action make that action massively inconvenient. Damaging oil Derricks for example. And run PR while you do it or you’ll get popular support to crack down on you. You can’t win a fair fight against the United States government. You just can’t. But you can reduce their will to fight hard while you make certain actions inconvenient.
there would be much harsher laws and penalties
Some states prosecute blocking a road or any other infrastructure by protesting as TERRORISM and at least one made it legal to drive into protesters on purpose if they’re blocking the road.
How draconian do you need the police state reaction to become before you realize that disruption WORKS?
Reactionary legislation being proportional and rational, of course. Draconian laws prove that being gay near children is effective at… something!
It’s effective at stopping kids from voting for republicans when they grow up because they’re not afraid of gay people.
“But have you considered that I benefit personally from protecting the status quo, and these protestors are trying to change that?” -some suburbanites
But for real, I need to get more involved. I’ve been to many demonstrations, but never a protest.
i’m all for blocking relevant roads. but if your movement just throws themselves onto any intersection without being able to explain how blocking this specific one is relevant, your movement needs better planning.
But then you are risking an actual reprecussion for your actions, and would have to deal with consequences of several really pissed of corporations with a recipe about how much money did your actions costed them in damages, that would be pretty hard to wriggle yourself out of.
Which is exactly why (proper) protesting isn’t easy to do in the slightest, and you have to really believe in the cause to resort to such things. And that is how it should be. It’s also why you only end up with with random people blocking inconsequantial roads or ruining glass-protected paintings. Because they want attention, they want to feel good that they’re doing something, and protesting is the edgy thing to do that nobody understands. But at the end of the day, they want to go back to their instagram so they can post about it, instead of dealing with the consequences.
If you resort to such a drastic action, and protesting definitely is a drastic action, at least the kind the post is talking about, you should sacrifice something other than your free time and a pocket change in fees, otherwise it has no value. That’s why demonstrations held at a weekend or holidays feel so cheap, if you aren’t even willing to take your time off for it, whats the point?
I wouldn’t for most of them. So I don’t attend. But all these “feel-good” demonstrations and protests are only succeeding in undermining the grave nature of protests and demonstrations, to the point where no-one really needs to take them seriously.
This is an interesting bit of writing, drawing that distinction.
It seems focused on what a protest isn’t, could do with more on what it is. What does it look like to think systemically when you turn that into action?
I sense some mighty strong projection going on here. The writer comes off like they believe they’re correct without the need for any question, completely sure of this idea, for which they provide zero evidence. They then go on to call anyone who disagrees with them ignorant, infantilising and diminishing the opposing point of view before the reader has had a moment to make up their own mind. Meanwhile, the intended audience is being spoon-fed hate and gobbling it up. This is what division looks like. They make you hate your neighbors and demand action from you against them, after all it’s what’s right: you’re a grown up and the opposition needs to be parented. This is the tone that makes sure you never gain power, because you don’t believe in moderates, and you downright hate progressives.
they’re kinda right though. the things this person is saying aren’t new. the principles of direct action were instrumental in the success of the Civil rights movement, and many other activist movements throughout modern history. i’m really not sure where you think this person is coming from, though, with the whole “spoon-fed hate” thing. they’re a leftist. a socialist or an anarchist, something of that flavor. the action they’re demanding is action against climate change, against bigotry, against capitalism. or at least, i don’t really see many people who aren’t somewhere around that headspace talking about “praxis” and “direct action”. they kinda come off like a smartass to me, but the point they’re getting to is something pretty fundamental to organizing effective movements, and they’re talking about it because tons of people aren’t aware of the theory and politics that has grown up around making changes in society.
like, just for history’s sake, in the SCLC, the org MLK lead during the civil rights movement, Selma, among many other things, was organized by James Luther Bevel, the SCLC’s Director of Direct Action and Nonviolent Education. he turned out to have sexually abused his daughters, so uhhh… not a great dude , but if you look at his wikipedia you can see how instrumental he was to the civil rights movement as it is known today, and how the idea of direct action was foundational to that movement and its success.
You’re referencing well planned and executed protests. They picked their targets and actors to garner sympathy from the public.
The difference is that the original post is claiming that any protest anywhere is just as valid. It isn’t. Blocking random roads does nothing but turn people who just want to get to work against you. They aren’t agents of Capitalism moving to oppress us, they’re your neighbors and the people you want to be turning to your cause.
By all means, if you’re agitated about an issue to protest, please do. Block a road, maybe. But be damn sure you pick the right road to block.
i’m not really seeing any claim that “any protest anywhere is just as valid”. they’re talking about educating people on the strategic value of civil disobedience and direct action. that is important for any social movement that wants to succeed.
Blocking random roads does nothing but turn people who just want to get to work against you.
this isn’t true. it can turn people against you, for sure. that isn’t the only thing it does though. it can delay the construction of an oil pipeline. it can disrupt the logistics of an industry. like, the activist’s dilemma is important, taking care to recognize the PR of what you do is important, but direct action is about doing the thing you want done, rather than waiting for public opinion to turn.
if you are an indigenous activist trying to keep an oil pipeline from poisoning your water, or the government from leasing your land to corporate agriculture, it doesn’t matter if people are “on your side” or not. you need to stop the fully legal process that is guaranteed to make your people suffer, knowing that nobody but you and your people are historically likely to defend your home. there are so many situations where just waiting for public opinion to turn isn’t gonna stop the thing you want to stop.
