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1999 Seattle is a great example of this. Anti-globalization became part of mainstream media vocabulary, the organization saw enormous cost overruns, and another conference has not been held in a US city since.
It also achieved Martin Luther King and Gandhi style aims - pissing off the kind of people that reveal the violence of the system in situations where complacent people can more easily recognize it and sympathize with the oppressed. The city has settled with over a hundred activists, and a federal jury ruled that demonstrators’ fourth amendment rights had been violated.
This is actually a perfect example of what I meant as good activism. Blocking the diplomats trying to get to their let’s-fuck-up-the-world meetings, even if it basically brings the city to a standstill, was definitely targeted at the people who are causing the problem. It interferes directly and effectively with their ability to do their evil work. I think random commuters who are caught up in it and can’t get to where they’re going, honestly understand immediately that there’s something bigger going on. They may or may not agree with the protests and that’s fine, but for the most part they won’t see the protestors as directly their enemies.
If you’re just blocking some random highway at some random time, the chances are very small that you’re going to derail the WTO’s agenda in any way. The chances are guaranteed that you’re going to punish a bunch of people who are just trying to pay their rent, and they’re going to see it as exactly that. Their reaction (and its justifiedness, and the value of your action in the first place in terms of punishing the guilty parties) are going to be way different.
If you wanted to find out the route Mitch McConnell takes to work every morning, and block it every single day, that to me would sound like a wonderful step in the right direction.
This reminds me of a while back, when I learned that Mary Molony, an Irish Suffragette, went to a speech by Winston Churchill and rang a bell every time he tried to talk, leading to the cancelling of the event. The place I read it didn’t give sources, so I went digging for verification before I shared it.
It took a while, because variants of this story have been shared for a while, and something that became apparent was how hated Suffragettes were in their time; people were pissed at Mary Molony for spoiling their opportunity to hear a great orator like Churchill speak.
The ambient level of vitriol surprised me because whilst I knew the Suffragettes were unpopular because they were trying to change the system, I had grown up hearing names like Emmeline Pankhurst and Emily Davison in a positive manner from my mum (who wasn’t well educated). Realising this drastically reshaped how I viewed the purpose of protest; before, I might have been more likely to argue along the “winning hearts and minds” angle, but now I’m on board with what the OP says.
(Some original sauce for the Mary Molony thing, because it’s great and to not include it when I’ve mentioned it would be rude)
Photo of the newspaper headline
Newspaper text found beneath the photograph
A SPEECH SPOILED: MISS MOLONY’S SUCCESSFUL INTERRUPTION OF THE LIBERAL CANDIDATE.
On Monday, when Mr. Churchill was addressing a meeting of workmen during dinner-time at a large factory, Miss Molony, an Irish Suffragist, appeared on the scene in a carriage, and began to drown the speaker’s voice with a hand-bell. She declared that the Liberal candidate should not address an open-air meeting in Dundee until he had apologised for some recent remarks about women politicians. For some time Mr. Churchill struggled good-humouredly against the bell, but at last he gave up the effort in despair, saying, “If she thinks that is a reasonable argument she may use it. I don’t care. I bid you good afternoon.”
I am one of these people this text is throwing shade at.
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I don’t think that pitching these as an either-or thing is accurate. You can disrupt the functioning of the economic machinery, while also getting a whole bunch of “undecided” commuters pissed off at you, and doing the latter can undo some of the good effectiveness of the former in accomplishing your goal.
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Persuading the general public to take climate change seriously is absolutely an important task. This high-minded contempt for the opinions of the general public because they’re not as informed as the golden child who is writing this text, and the reader presumably, is counterproductive.
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I’m not convinced that a lot of these freeway shutdowns actually are damaging the interests of the planet-destroying ruling classes who according to this they are targeted at. Greenpeace did some great stuff with directly disrupting whaling ships. It stopped some certain number of whale hunts, it got great publicity because it was clearly directly targeted at the people causing the problem, and it demonstrated some very genuine courage and commitment. I think it was effective. If someone started doing some version of that to e.g. Shell Oil, that would sound great. I don’t know that much about it, but I suspect that the ultimate economic impact of blocking the freeways on Shell Oil’s bottom line is nonexistent.
I’m not trying to be some armchair jerk throwing shade at the people out there trying to make a difference. But yes I don’t agree with this.
I’m not convinced that a lot of these freeway shutdowns actually are damaging the interests of the planet-destroying ruling classes who according to this they are targeted at.
The planet destroying ruling class continues to rule and destroy the planet because comfortable middle and upper class citizens support the status quo.
If you make the comfortable citizens uncomfortable, that puts social, political, and financial pressure on the ruling class to change their policies so the protesters go away.
What you’re missing is, if you work for a capitalist corporation, if you vote for corporate capitalist friendly policies, if you pay taxes, you are part of the system. You are the support for the planet destroying ruling class. Hurting your interests hurts them too.
So yeah, if protesters block a freeway to a major financial district, and a whole bunch of corporate drones commuting to the headquarters of major banks and energy companies and PR firms can’t get to work, that does in fact hurt the planet destroying ruling class. It hurts them because their corporate drones are that much less productive. And it pressures them because their corporate drones send complaints up the ladder to upper management and the politicians that support them.
Think of it as trickle up economics.
If you make the comfortable citizens uncomfortable, that puts social, political, and financial pressure on the ruling class to change their policies so the protesters go away.
Or, to punish the protestors or make them go away. That’s a much less labor-intensive pathway back to comfort than is changing the policies. And, if you’re unbothered by a lack of support or agreement from the general public, there won’t be anyone to replace them.
So yeah, if protesters block a freeway to a major financial district, and a whole bunch of corporate drones commuting to the headquarters of major banks and energy companies and PR firms can’t get to work, that does in fact hurt the planet destroying ruling class.
How much impact to their bottom line has been seen in their quarterly reports?
If you’re unbothered by the idea of needing to convince any currently-unconvinced people to join with you, then how would that impact ever increase above its current level?
And it pressures them because their corporate drones send complaints up the ladder to upper management and the politicians that support them.
You think that the people you made late for work are lobbying their bosses to stop destroying the planet so the protestors will go away and they can be on time for work again, and those bosses are listening, and that’s the avenue by which we’re going to stop climate change?
I’m not trying to be cynical or critical. Good change I can get behind and I feel guilty that I haven’t been doing much to make it happen myself. But you’re not convincing me that this is the way.
Here’s the thing. There are two ways to stop protests: repress protesters or change policies.
As cynical as I am about the average American, there is a limit to the level of violence against protesters the country will tolerate.
So of course the inconvenienced middle class will demand their masters stop the protests. And of course their masters will turn to state violence and police power.
But if the protesters are brave enough and committed enough and refuse to back down against violence, we’ll see the same thing as happened in the civil rights movement: people see the commitment of the protesters and come to support their cause, and people see the level of violence deployed against the protesters and out of guilt and shame demand their masters find a peaceful solution.
(This is why the American right wing is trying so hard to normalize violence against protesters and convincing people (like you) to blame protesters for making violent repression necessary - so they can use violence more freely before public opinion turns against them. Just so you know.)
You think that the people you made late for work are lobbying their bosses to stop destroying the planet so the protestors will go away and they can be on time for work again, and those bosses are listening, and that’s the avenue by which we’re going to stop climate change?
Yes. Exactly. Being late for work one time won’t change anyone’s mind. But when there are ongoing protests, ongoing unrest, when the middle classes are inconvenienced and disrupted over and over again and those darn stubborn climate protesters won’t stop no matter how hard the police beat them, well, then you might see a demand for genuine change.
I have been on a train with a bunch of other corpos heading home after a company event when an indigenous protest stopped the train on its tracks. We started out quiet, but the debates that happened in that cabin over the cause of the protesters got really heated. Some people were just shocked that anyone would agree with the protestors after they were making us, the corpos late.
It was a stark example about how maybe I’m part of the problem.
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