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.
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.
You’re the kind of lib the post is talking about.
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.
Damn right we are. You can’t shame someone into being convinced of a wrong statement.
I’m a lib and I’m proud!
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.
It’s effective at ensuring gay kids get to grow up.
How much financial damage should be done in order to justify a road blockage?
The morons in my country managed to do it on a road leading to a major hospital. 0 strategy, just glue yourself to a random fucking road
Yes, but it’s important to understand it as burning goodwill to do so. And it’s also important to understand that the most effective protests disrupt those with power and garner sympathy from others. ACT UP managed that. They disrupted the medical establishment that was ignoring our deaths and did so while portraying us as a sympathetic people dying in pain after caring for our dying friends.
Disruption without point is ineffective. A pre planned three day strike without the will to move to an indefinite one isn’t effective.
ETA: I guess my point is that disruption is a powerful tactic, but without strategy you’re doomed. Pure demonstration is a popular strategy because it’s low risk, but the reward is shit. A strategy that tries to use the right tactics at the right times to ensure that their next move is even more effective or leaves them better than they started is how you win. Look to the black civil rights movement for good strategy and you’ll see it. They got so good at strategy that later some of the most effective strategists of the gay liberation movement were black people who’d been involved in their civil rights movement.
I remember Extinction Rebellion blocking roads in the UK. There was a woman with a disabled child in the car. She pleased with them to let her through and the protesters said their cause was more important.
I think protests like this cause more harm than good.
Even extinction rebellion state these tactics need a rethink.
Does it increase awareness of climate change, sure. Does it polarise the population and turn more people against protests/the cause?
Yeah you let the person in immediate need through.
But I’ve seen it be effective. But as I’ve said you don’t do it randomly. It’s a key component of striking actually. You block entrance into an area. But yeah it’s everyone’s favorite tactic because while it’s not low risk it’s not gonna get you terrorism charges like dropping some thermite into a coal fired power plant will. But that thermite is a self executing protest. Green energy is cheaper to build and maintain, it only becomes more expensive when compared to existing power plants when you still have to build it.
Extinction Rebellion is just more noise, to make its supporters feel like they’re doing something while they’re in fact entirely counterproductive. Similar to PETA. There are better organisations to support, who are working hard on these important causes.
We had bus drivers protests. They were not allowed to strike because “essential service”, so instead they publicly announced that they would “forget” to check people’s tickets.
Effectively they gathered people’s sympathy while distributing profits. That was effective!
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.
“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.
That’s stupid as fuck. You don’t need to snottily educate people on why the dumb shit you’re doing has complex implications beyond the visible annoyance to the regular person. You need to find a way of protesting that has that regular person go “Fuck yeah! Let’s do this shit!”.
You’re exactly why this post exists and you refuse to see it
You’re exactly why posts like mine exist and you refuse to see that.
See? I can do it too.
“I know you are but what am i” tier response cx
Yes it is, because that’s the level you’re reducing it at.
You claim to know better, to predict how the situation will turn out, but then you jump in it anyway just so you can say “I knew it!”.
I too know how to throw a tantrum in the middle of a supermarket aisle because mommy and daddy aren’t buying me what I want, hoping that if I annoy everyone enough, they’ll cave in.
But unlike other kids, I also know it doesn’t really work that way. I don’t know how to do it better, yet I understand that way isn’t working. Do you?
The post doesn’t argue the point adequately though, it basically just implies people who think these protests are useless are ignorant. It’s completely pseudo intellectual, there is no argument made here. Stop pretending there’s some great wisdom lost on us when we point out how obvious it is that this is pissing people off and hurting your cause.
We’re not ignorant, we just disagree. On the contrary, it takes quite a bit of ignorance to brush off criticism of how harmful these protests are when it’s happening right in front of you.
And what do you probably that hasn’t already been tried and failed?
Why go for new things? Just do the same thing the other side does, but do it better.
The other side has the entire backing of the oil and gas industry, as well as the growth of capitalism itself. The other side is on the side of the massively dominant ideology and economy system.
And? If that’s such an insurmountable problem, why even bother?
So your solution is to give up?
I don’t have a solution. But I know that aggravating the situation for the wrong people isn’t at all helpful.
Let’s say you have a cold. You’re dizzy, nose is stuffed, throat is scratching and shivering like hell.
Then somebody shows up and yells into your ear “Hey, you should do something about that!”.
Will that help you? No. It will only add a headache on top of all the other issues.
because not fighting means getting killed, being marginalized, getting the groundwater poisoned, losing rights, getting put into concentration camps, etc? its not complicated. lots of people don’t have the luxury to just not “bother”. they aren’t blocking roads cuz they like it, people who do direct action can get put in fucking prison. they’re doing it because they don’t have the choice to sit on the sidelines and whine about how annoying protests are.
like, for real, do you think the people who built the civil rights movement didn’t hold meetings on this exact thing? that they didn’t talk about blocking roads and airports? that they didn’t do sit-ins and other kinds of direct action? like, if you think this is stupid as fuck, you must think a great deal of the people who built and participated in the civil rights movement were pretty fucking stupid, because they were doing this shit, and it was against the law, and it was the law that broke first.
I think people need to adjust to the times. Just because it worked for people in the past doesn’t mean it will work again now.
Times change, people change, tactics change.Governments and corporations have studied past protests and never stopped looking for ways to break them apart.
Without the means to counter their updated forms of interference, those old, rickety forms of protest will only fail.
I never said to stop protests and demonstrations. I said to do them differently or to do them better.
i’m sorry, but you really aren’t in a position to be saying anything about how effective these strategies are. direct action continues to be a huge part of basically every modern social movement up to and including the largest protests in history. if you aren’t open to learning those reasons, you have no grounds to contest their efficacy.
I thought we were getting to the blowing-up-oil-pipelines stage, especially now that Law Enforcement in Florida is attacking mutual aid organizations.
Someone did shipping lines, multiple countries want to intervene and label them (x backed terrorists)
While genocide is happening countries were like (well i cannot do anything about that - i cannot even say the word ceasefire)
Saboteurs will always be labeled terrorists, even if they are careful and don’t cause casualties, but that’s more about terrorist being a derisive term instead of being a technical military term. (Terror warfare is attacking general civilian population to reduce morale – contrast attacking military installations or factories that figure into the war effort. Terror weapons, for example, those that are too inaccurate to be used against hard targets, but are effective in terror attacks, such as railroad guns or the V1 flying bomb and V2 rocket) NATO engages in terror actions all the time.)
Part of the psychological operations strategy of states is to assert that non-state actors are illegitimate by fiat, even if they are militants formed from civilians and refugees who’ve been displaced or decimated by state action or state policy. Typically, a state has to be forced to bargain with non-state interests since it motivated from oligarchical interests to not.
This is one of the reason Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t want to see the legitimization of a Palestinian state, since then he’d be force to negotiate with them as equals rather than just massacre civilians as vermin. He disregards the legitimacy of the Palestinian people much the way the German Reich disregarded the legitimacy of the Jews and Romanians.
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.
Can’t wait for public opinion?
The entire point of protesting is changing public opinion to your side!
no, its to achieve your goals. this is fundamental to the idea of direct action. you’re doing stuff. you aren’t trying to build support for helping homeless people, you’re going out there and feeding them. you aren’t waiting for people to legalize desegregation, you’re defying segregated public space. you aren’t begging public officials not to build an oil pipeline in your home, you’re chaining yourself to equipment.
if you confine protesting only to convincing bystanders to be on your side, you’re just saying the only way to win a just future is to be popular. what consolation is that to the marginalized? to those who have never enjoyed widespread public support, and can’t expect it to solve their problems?
if you think protests are only to alter public opinion? you don’t know very much about protesting. direct action has been part of protests since the beginning.
Direct action may include activities, often nonviolent but possibly violent, targeting people, groups, institutions, actions, or property that its participants deem objectionable.
Nonviolent direct action may include civil disobedience, sit-ins, strikes, and counter-economics. Violent direct action may include political violence, assault, arson, sabotage, and property destruction.
Well I guess we’re both right
These are some super disappointing comments :c I would’ve thought a more lefty community would understand what protests are about. But nah apparently if you fighting for your rights ever interferes their lives, you and your cause are bad and you should feel bad
Yeah. Those people are all talk. Show me someone blocking roads and I’ll show you someone who’s trying to do something besides complain and play victim. What? Should the protesters quit and join the chorus of “why won’t anybody do something” like all the rest?
Call them misguided or inefficient but don’t call them shit if you’re not gonna nut up and do it better.
Buncha couch critics. Go back to yelling at people on the great British baking show and pretending you know how to do their shit better too.
Why is the only possibility for you to either get on the roads or do nothing? The criticism is that road blocking is an ineffective form of protest, not that protest as a whole is stupid.
I work in IoT by the way, and I’m directly involved in programming small computers that increase fuel efficiency in heaters. In other words, if climate change is your primary concern, you shouldn’t be inconveniencing people indiscriminately, because there’s risk of stopping someone like me who’s actually doing something that addresses the problem in a productive way.
I’m hardly close to the most important job that you’d be inconveniencing, just the most ironic one. These protests are certainly inconveniencing nurses on their way to their patients, lawyers on their way to their clients, families coming home to meet up for the first time since Christmas. Not to mention emergency workers being held up during active emergencies. This has all happened, and it’s happened way more than any goals achieved by the protests.
So no, we’re not all talk. I think most of us here giving pushback are all trying to better the world in our own way, and these protests are a consistent impediment to that, across the board. In fact, I would say anybody who bothers to take the time to say how stupid they think these protests are are doing infinitely more good than road blocking protestors, simply by virtue of maybe getting someone to stop that stupid shit.
That’s not the only possibility brother. I just asked if people think it would be better if they gave up. But I’ll bite.
I bet your job is great but are you saying you’re doing more for the climate? Like you think the protestors (we can focus on the climate change ones like you said) would be more effective doing day jobs to make heaters use less fuel or equivalent? Do you think you generate more political pressure and attention and conversation doing what you do? Or that it’s people’s heaters that are a really significant part of the issue?
I mean if you’re taking the “you’re blocking important people” angle I’m really sorry but… Yeah. That’s kind of the point isn’t it? Like. I think most of us follow what they’re doing with the art destruction and road blocking and stunts, right? It’s not a popularity contest (clearly lol) but a sacrifice to keep these issues generating attention and pressure. And yeah let’s just say for a second that they’ll block an ambulance carrying someone who will die if they don’t reach the hospital --just as a device to exemplify a situation-- that is unquestionably bad, but you should genuinely account for the fact that these people truly believe the world will end over the climate crisis. They probably wouldn’t be putting themselves and others at risk if they didn’t think it was literally the end of the world. And to be fair they might be right. It’s going to look pretty fucking silly down the road when the planet dies even more and people are still pissy about people protesting the wrong way. I know I’m going to remember every warning and protest and attempt to stop the inevitable when the power grid fails at 120 degrees or whatever and people start really dying. You know. Where I live. not just in Texas.
Anyway, hit me with some effective alternatives that achieve the same goals without making anybody upset.
The important person you’re blocking is your future ally.
You want an alternative? Find a fossil fuel executive’s car and block that in. Block the entrance to an oil refinery, or a trash incinerator. Sit in the lobby of the corporate office of Exxon-Mobil. Find an unimpeachable member of your movement, like Rosa Parks was, and use her to garner sympathy for your cause when she gets persecuted for something everyone agrees is wrong.
Blocking random roads and calling it protest is like calling a knocked over paint can “Modern Art”. You’re just pretending you know what artists do and everyone can tell.
I’ve learned to treat comments that start with “what those people don’t understand…” With a little bit more skepticism than others. I find that if your opening move is to imply that not believing your ideas shows ignorance, then chances are really high that you don’t have much confidence in arguing your case by its own merit.
Economic pressure can be a strategic move, sure. But, the road block has been largely indiscriminate, and the goal seems to be to create as much disruption as possible. Where’s the strategy in indiscriminate disruption? In fact, the corporations you advocate against are probably least hurt by shit like this, because it would be such a comparatively small hit than everyone else.
You are far more likely to inconvenience someone just trying to get by, or someone with something person and time sensitive going on than any corporation you’d like to “pressure”. They don’t feel this, they don’t think about this. You’re not disrupting corporate supply chains, you’re inconveniencing regular people.
That doesn’t even get to the fact that road blockages are extremely dangerous in emergency situations, and you’re putting far more lives at risk than your own by going out there.
If you are genuinely interested in taking a structured approach to protests, then I strongly suggest you start thinking of some other methods.
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.
“Idiots will think you’re just assholes” doesn’t mean we think you’re just assholes. It means, if you’re doing something for an audience, you have to give a shit about reaching that audience. Half of that audience thinks libraries are communism. Aim lower.
Blocking the road to a factory, or indeed to a financial district, has obvious impact in-itself. Blocking a highway for one day just pisses off random people. For a day. You wanna fuck up traffic for most weekdays out of a month, yeah hey maybe some of them will consider public transit. Maybe. But more likely they’ll just clog alternate routes.
A campaign of slashing tires on giant pickup trucks would also piss off random people, to a much greater extent than any form of blocking traffic, but its impact would be obvious, immediate, and lingering. It is an asymmetrical attack that prevents choices the movement is against. Unlike playing human speed-bump at a four-lane intersection. People will still think you’re assholes, but they’ll also consider buying a sedan instead.
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?
That feels like click bait since it doesn’t say what a protest is or does.
Imagine typing that much and not getting to the goods.
For folks wanting further reading on a similar vein to this Peter Gelderloos book “How nonviolence protects the state” goes into further detail about what he thinks is and isn’t effective protests. Given the title of the book you can assume he takes quite an extreme approach but makes a good argument I feel. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-how-nonviolence-protects-the-state
Where can I learn? Many communities I’m in have a TOS they have to abide by.
Where to learn how to protest? I’d look into the great ones of the modern age: The Indian Independence, US Civil Rights, and Gay Rights movements are all good examples of effective protest movements.
There’s no way the Olympics go without a strike in France, it’s the biggest opportunity ever
It’s France, that’s a very safe bet
