I thought a general strike was in the works for May 1st?
One-day strikes are the same as one-day protests. Good visibility and networking but no actual pressure on their own. Ideally a general atrike would be “indefinite until our demands are met” but the US doesn’t have enough class unity or social safety net for that right now.
And it’s no kings.
Note that the person criticising the original is also not active in organising a general strike. It is permissable to hold opinions without being obliged to act on them.
Yes. But the moment you release your opinion out on the wild, we’re allowed to ridicule you for them.
Of course you can. I’m just saying that the criticism is stupid in this case. I mean, I think that fusion power would be a good thing, but fuck me for not working 24 hours a day on a PhD in nuclear physics.
But that’s more like having people talk about how we should do nuclear and renewable power, and you coming along complaining people should be working on developing fusion power instead because fission power just won’t do anything
Not it isn’t.
Arguing that fission power won’t do anything is objectively incorrect.
Arguing that a general strike would be more effective than weekend rallies alone is objectively correct.
Your analogy is not analagous.
Beyond that, arguing against doing something is not the same as arguing for doing something else, in addition to /or/ instead of the original something.
Arguing that fission power won’t do anything is objectively incorrect.
That’s an opinion, regardless of whether it’s true or not. The analogy is analogous because I’m taking the same actions and statements, applying them to analogous topics in a different field. Dismissing that because you believe your beliefs to be objective fact is just dishonest.
… Fission power works.
It generates energy.
This is objectively true.
That is not nothing.
If you were being hyperbolic, well then your analogy is not analagous because one end of it is hyperbolic.
Saying marches change nothing is hyperbolic as well.
That is true, however this is not about the acting, it’s about hypocrisy in the traditional sense. OC is essentially saying “we have the same goal and I set an easier plan and I’m currently following it, while you are criticizing my plan, making up a way harder one, saying I should follow that one while not following either mine or your plan at all.”
It’s like when you are working in a supermarket, restocking the shelves and your coworker is just sitting on a chair watching you, and after a while he says “this is useless, you should rather do some cashier work, people are waiting” while eating candy.
Yeah sure he might be technically right, but this is extremely out of line.
Why should I listen to you? You’re not actively involved in organizing a general strike either.
You’ve opened this Pandora’s Box my friend there’s no closing it again now. It’s not being actively involved in organizing a general strike all the way down.
Yeah if you’re not actively involved in organizing a general strike you don’t get my vote. And since there are not any candidates meeting that criteria, I’m staying home on Election Day.
Don’t believe me? There’s 10 of millions of US citizens who will be doing the same thing!
Checkmate /s
Yea I’m really bad at organizing but I damn well know it has to be done by someone with the skill to do it.
I disagree about it being permissable. If anything it makes you a hypocrite and undermines the appearance of intelligence and empathy, alike. The complaint is also misguided and simply wrong. Saying nothing will change is absurd. Things are already changing. These rallies raise awareness for everyone. You can’t have a general strike until you get everyone to agree to it.
Could be a person not living in the USA, Max.
Us foreigners also have opinions on what’s happening in the US, because it affects us too, but we have no way to affect change in the US, other than our boycotts.
IDK Russia did a good job swaying the US public opinion and spreading propaganda.
I was gonna say I bet a lot of the accounts complaining about these protests are Russian bots
you guys simply cannot take criticism can you
American exceptionalism. They are the best country ever! Therefore, the way they are doing things is the best way it could possibly done, nothing could possibly be done differently, and anyone saying anything to the contrary must be foreign agents trying to undermine the best country ever!
Remember, if your organization is big enough to organize a general strike, the feds are there and watching. Watch your back
recall that the FBI infiltrated the civil rights movement and more even before we had a police state empowered by the Patriot Act surveillance and AI data collection.
I have zero proof, but I suspect that they are actively disrupting all attempts at organization. This is based on the history of CIA and FBI; we never know what they are doing currently, we only know a tiny bit of what they have done in the past.
Maybe I’m paranoid.
Evidence is there that they are doing that, at the very least the consistent effort to not only divide but also demoralize through deliberate propaganda. It’s why you see so many people on Reddit, Lemmy, or any other social media being downright pessimistic about what protests can accomplish or build into. They’ve already lost to the propaganda, so what’s going on now immediately gets written off by them as futile. They are exactly where these orgs want them to be: at home, isolated, writing dumb little comments on the internet that only serve to pull the crabs back down into the bucket. That kind of stuff is infectious to others and makes people opt to view organizing as ineffectual.
No you’re not paranoid. However, the point of surveillance is not to repress, but to make us afraid to act (panopticon and stuff). Not everything could be done through organization; but not system shift could be done without. A strong solidarity network is something that could people to act by other mean, help them to get inform on industries by people being exploited by those industries. And of course building international solidarity.
Depending of your country or your affinities, you could even join an union under a pseudonyme
One of the organizers of Standing Rock was framed and turned in by their partner of like 3± years, iirc. The fbi offered them ~$2000 and so they planted a gun in their partners belongings before a camp raid.
Remember kids, anyone can become a tool of the state if put in the right position
Paranoid has proven to be downright reasonable
What was that one phrase again? Something like “there are two kinds of conspiracy theories: antisemitic woo and declassified CIA documents”
- People every time a post about protests is made: “This will accomplish nothing.”
- Those same people when asked what they’re personally doing since they talk like they know what will and won’t work: “Also nothing.”
- (Bonus points for the ones who say violent uprisings are needed, but are not violently rising up themselves. Double bonus for “well I don’t live in the US.”)
Protests aren’t the solution on their own, they’re a step in the process of people getting to the point of doing something about the situation they’ve found themselves in. You can’t fix a problem if you don’t first acknowledge and accept that it’s a problem. Stop crapping on people for protesting. Instead, encourage them to use that energy to take things further. And if you know so much about what will actually work and are going out of your way to tell people what they’re doing isn’t going to work, maybe you should be doing the thing you claim will work so you can lead by example instead of armchair directing.
A term I’ve been using is ‘activation’. people who are in the early stages of activation attend protests - more often attendance is more activation. This eventually evolves into active participation in support networks, vigilante counteraction, or legal resistance like journalism and similar activities.
Protest attendance is the start of most individuals’ activation, and we can’t knock that starting place if we want greater numbers participating in the counteraction apparatus going forward.
Yeh the other step is actual violence. Not condoning or promoting it.
Just saying that has to be the next follow up if they’re not listening to he protests.
The No Kings Marches are just a prelude. Imagine all those millions of people participation in the upcoming general strike . Then imagine those millions turning to violence. Imagine them armed.
you know, the americans are always going on about their 2A rights, but i don’t see them overthrowing tyranny when it’s present.
Just a suggestion, but becoming armed before becoming violent might be a better order of progression.
LOL what country do you think this is? “Becoming armed”? Bro this is America.
except the ones who have traditionally fought against the right to bear arms is the same people protesting. they need to be armed, and they need to protest with their arms, same reason a government will parade with their weapons
Bro this is America
yes, and my point still stands
You didn’t get the reference. I don’t think you picked up what I was putting down.
oh, the music video. that’s a whole ball of critique against the american system, and gun culture. but it still is what it is
Lol, good point, but I was speaking more in a general sense, not just this country.
That might be the more logical progression, but logic rarely comes into play in these things.
In fact, being armed before it’s time for violence is often a bad thing.
But when it is time, anything at hand can be a weapon.
Paris housewives once marched on Versailles and decapitated several guards with kitchen knives after they opened fire on the crowd.
The first comment / response or whatever that I read in there does a better job of expressing my opinion on this than I ever could.
“It’s building the muscle. You have to get someone to show up one day before you can get them to show up often, or every day, or for the long haul.”
Really the same goes for so many of the organizations running the events. They’re local orgs, local people with different levels of experience (mostly very little) with organizing at this scale. It takes practice and time to get good at these things. It takes time to find volunteers and train them.
Contrary to what some of the comments implied, most of these events aren’t planned/operated by paid professionals, not that paying for professional help is inherently a bad thing anyway. There’s top-level guidance and coordination, that kind of stuff generally requires dedicated teams (aka paid employees) due to the time and skill requirements for those roles. But on the local level, it’s volunteers all around. And the real planning, the hard work, is virtually all done locally by those volunteers.
i don’t agree at all. the reason is that the people who go to these will argue that they are making a difference and fight against what comes next.
these are not even having the police interfere so you know no one cares at all. school children have a walk out criticizing israel? police show up with chemical weapons and shoots people point blank with less the lethal rounds. go to a no kings and police is directing traffic.
no these protests are a distraction to make people think that nothing more has to be done, and they did their part.
and then on tv the largest mass protest in history is a foot note to trumps birthday party. so no.
Your wallet is your strongest voice in the eyes of this administration. Think carefully about where you spend your hard earned money.
A single day of avoiding Walmart and Amazon is not meaningful if you give them your money tomorrow. Find local businesses that deserve your money and spend your money with them instead.
Buy less and buy better quality items that last longer. Reduce consumerism and give homemade gifts or experiences instead of more junk nobody needs. Use lending libraries, swap groups, and other methods to reduce your contribution to the economy, which is frankly the only thing the American government really is interested in.
And hats off to the person who successfully organizes a general strike. I’m cheering you on from Canada.
I remember how fast Jimmy Kimmel was back in the air once people starting attacking the bottom line. The biggest thing a capitalist society and its oligarchs fear is the threat to its money.
This is a pretty valid thing to say in the US.
Too many people think that just protesting is enough for any change they want to be effected. We don’t get taught about things like labor struggles.
Oh yeah, lets argue amongst ourselves. That always works.
no kings has no leverage and no power and no stamina and no guts. are the police attacking them in the streets? i personaly see these kind of protests as controlled off gassing. you have a large amount of people who would under other circumstances be pushed into actual action, thinking they make a difference doing this, allowing the system to functionally ignore them.
without the media on your side these protests do not work. and the media is captured, and neither side wants to see this stop
Are you recruiting there for an org that wants to do something that matters?
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/40568556
Or are you gonna let the Liberals get all the photo ops?
getting arrested is a good sign. the news talking about it on wensday would be more of a good indication
And are you actively organizing to change that? Or are you just providing an example of OP?
are you?
Yes. I’m a member of a number of local mutual aid orgs and other groups that I started working more closely with after my home state was invaded by ICE.
if that is true, then you should know what’s effective and what isn’t.
what concrete things did the no kings protests achieve so far?
If you’re writing off all liberals then your view makes sense. At our no kings the Brown Berets showed up to protect those you are spurning. Many years ago I attended a UFW march that was also protected by the Brown Berets and it shocked an out of town liberal white woman who compared the union march to the Nazis. These people tend to only see aesthetics so the march is a good opportunity to make unusual alliances. That’s the concrete achievement of my local Marxist-lennist org, but that probably doesn’t make sense to the terminally online.
here’s my own comment from just yesterday about this:
plus this is the perfect opportunity to organize to go literally talk to them. if not us, fascism will find a way to, like we’ve seen in the past so often. not all of these people are militant irreducible libs.
your misdirected assumptions and condescending tone are definitely not convincing me or anyone.
my point is: what concrete things did the liberals on the protests actually achieve so far yet? what would you do to make it more effective?
I think liberals doing trust exercises with marxists and others from different political leanings is the effective part.
‘actual action’ beyond protest tends to get nasty quickly. I’m glad the left wing isn’t lowering themselves to the level of, say, the capitol attacks.
The just way will take longer but it’s the only way to effect real change.
A strike would be a good middle ground though.
you say it will “takes longer” as things have been getting worse not better is a weird stance. these protests have been unsuccessful in their goals, not having a goal was the first failure. and there is a lot that can be done before the need to storm the capitol. but you are already poised to reject anything beyond protest. so you are in reality happy with the status quo
I’m not happy though I’m not directly involved as I’m not American (though I am affected of course). But there’s a limit to what you can expect here. The MAGA’s are a cult, protesting won’t touch their hard core and pushing them harder will cause escalation.
The only way these walls will come down is talking, not fighting. And they’re burning up inside now with this Iran war that’s deeply unpopular even with MAGA. Unfortunately they did manage their goal of making everyone forget the word Epstein though 😔
By protesting and being reasonable you chip away at their fringes, the people that are kinda on the fence. Anyway that’s my take.
And like I said, strikes are a good idea too, anything non violent really.
incorrect. reasoning with a cult does not work. protesting will not effect their decisions in the slightest, and worrying about escalation has always been a moot point. they manufacture escalation at their pace. they do not need a reason. but forcing escalation it’s the point. the iranians have been more effective at changing the heart of magats by making life for magats directly harder. not a single protest has changed their mind. and so in order for this to stop, life has to start getting harder for everyone.
This person could be French. They know how to bring the state to heel, and they share their experiences for those clearly in need of learning Americans. But they have to leave organizing to the people who are actually involved.
I don’t know why people have this illusion surrounding French people when they’re actively electing fascists and calling antifa a violent group of terrorists, while having their government give a minute of silence for the death of an actual nazi (like, actually posting on twitter that he loves Hitler -kind of nazi)
French people know nothing, they stopped understanding protests and revolts after Napoleon started shooting civilians with cannons and have been licking the boots of dictators since then. It’s no wonder that a bunch of them collaborated with the nazis back in ww2, and it’s no wonder they’re collaborating with the new nazis now.
I agree people (Americans?) are idealizing the french in this regard. But you’re yourself misinformed.
Napoleon did shoot royalists with cannons in 1795, when he wasn’t yet in power. It didn’t stop the 1830 or 1848 revolutions happening, nor the 1871 commune. More recently the 1968 protests were accompanied by a general strike which did scare the hell of many people.
What we need is a pragmatic and informed assessments of events so that we can decide what might work and what won’t. National stereotypes and prejudices should be discarded.
French people get taught in schools that (pseudo-) dictators like Louis XIV, Napoleon and De Gaulle, are the best kind of leaders and that France would be nothing without them. The president of France himself implied very strongly that he believes France needs a dictator, and he got reelected after that.
Clearly, protests that happened after the French revolution were not enough to do any meaningful change in the long run, as proven by the state of France now. Most people see protests as a nuisance, violent protests as terrorism, and antifascism as a hate crime. This antidemocratic wave got heavily promoted by Napoleon and De Gaulle, and the fact that these two are seen as heroes in France shows the perception that French people have.
There’s a reason why protests like the recent ones against Macron basically did nothing, despite being amongst the biggest protests of the past decades: most of the population is hostile to protests and revolts, and supports the idea of a fascist government
You clearly don’t understand anything about French politics, and these overgeneralizations you’re making don’t prove otherwise.
The French government is currently divided three ways, with no coalition able to achieve a governing majority. They’ve been in a stalemate since their last election. That’s why they’re not able to get anything done, for better or for worse.
Attempting to characterize the entire French government and the entire French people as one thing is extremely ignorant. There’s plenty of dissent in France, and plenty of discontent.
Every country glazes its own image in schools. That doesn’t mean everyone in the country falls for the brainwashing.
Also, De Gaulle led the French resistance, helped the Allies kick the Nazis out of France, and led France during the period of denazification after the war. What part of that makes him a dictator, in your eyes?
What are you even talking about?
Macron has been doing whatever he wanted for the past years. He’s changed completely the political norm of France, brought the vision if the left from a normal party, to the evil antisemitic violent terrorist party, while normalising the far right so much that now most right-wing parties all blend together and say the same fascist crap.
France has, since Macron, been “dropping out of democracy”, according to the international federation for human rights. That’s not just a little stalemate here.
The fucking government gave a *minute of silence for a nazi terrorist that died after attacking people, while being watched by cops who saw them initiate the attack and intentionally did nothing. What more do you want? You’re waiting for them to do like in the US and have the government do nazi salutes?
De Gaulle ran away from the war to hide, took advantage of the french resistance, sabotaged resistance operations led by the communist resistance because he hated communists, loved colonies, and changed the whole government system to make it give more power to the president. He ignored the population, lied to them without giving a shit, encouraged violence in algeria, and the only actual good thing that he did (preventing the US and UK from stealing and invading France) was out of pride, and doesn’t compensate for anything else. But history is indeed written by the winners.
The French people brought down three monarchies after Napoleon fired those cannons.
Yes, and that didn’t revive democracy. Or prevent king macron
Just because the poster doesn’t take action, doesn’t mean they are wrong.
Also how do you know they are not taking action? Maybe they are not posting updates for the feds to screw over any work they’ve done.
Sure, but do you see the hypocrisy in pointing one how little one form of resistance helps while participating in one that helps even less?
they are about equal levels of effective, tbh
No kings protests get media attention. How are your “nothing works” social media posts helping anything?
Wow, media attention! Perhaps they are gonna run a strongly worded letter on the dashreel at the bottom edge of the screen!
Newsflash: the media is in line, and in love, with the war.
You’re right. Better to be a keyboard warrior on a small reddit alternative.
Newsflash: No Kings isn’t about the war, but it’s interesting that the distraction is working on you.
Media attention is rarely a good thing
When you want public awareness of your movement it is.
Congratulations, everyone’s aware. Now what?
so what?
what kind of policy change did you accomplish last time with all that media attention?
take some criticism instead of straw manning.
what kind of policy change did you accomplish last time with all that media attention?
A number of substantive local policy changes as well as growing mutual aid networks as more people became aware of the movement. There is no magic wand to be waved here. It will take on the ground organizing in every city and getting that word out to grow the movement
What kind of policy change have you brought about by being a keyboard warrior?
Take some criticism instead of straw manning.
Physician heal thyself
What kind of policy change have you brought about
a full day’s reduction in our workweek over here.
enough about the strawman and deflection though, can you be specific about these local laws? what local policies have you improved with not one, but three earth shattering record breaking massive protests? what are the demands you are pushing for?
I’m not going to be first in line to start doing something that actually fucking matters, but you bet your ass I’ll be third.
protests and direct action present an opportunity for everyone to go at once. it’s just up to you guys to take it.
