- cross-posted to:
- curatedtumblr@sh.itjust.works
- cross-posted to:
- curatedtumblr@sh.itjust.works
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.
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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.
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.
