100,000 people marched through London at the weekend at the Restore Nature Now March, and there was virtually no news coverage of it. Yet 2 people spray corn starch on a monument and it's front page news globally.
It's a dilemma.
this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2024
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They made the news because they remind people who hate them of why they hate them. Not because anyone had a wakeup call. They increased the ambient hate.
It'll take something like a big march ending at an airport, and a few people vandalizing a private jet.
Otoh, the Washington Post and their "experts" didn't think any of those civil rights movement direct actions they're celebrating now were reasonable at the time either 🤡
Pretty sure all the newspapers and media at the time were talking about how the civil rights activists were horrible people
MLK was considered a terrorist for a while.
You also had the black Panthers arming and educating full communities to fight back.
That doesn't mean that this style of protest is effective; the evidence we have right now suggests that while it makes the news, it doesn't do much more than that.
Alright, so let's go with marches.
There have been some huge matches within the last 6 months with hundreds of thousands of people joining in. How much news coverage did that get?
I'd recommend the combination of a march with symbolic disruption or vandalism of conspicuous excessive fossil fuels consumption (eg: private jets or motor yachts) or refining.
So here's the thing. Just Stop Oil is performing symbolic disruption and vandalism. And they are doing it to exactly the targets you say they should - for example, Taylor Swift's private jet.
And they are also performing symbolic vandalism against works of art and history.
And I submit the way you feel about them targeting Stonehenge is very similar to the way a wealthy conservative feels about them targeting private jets - it offends you even though it does no actual harm because it's an attack on something you value and something you feel should be respected, which makes you feel like it's an attack on you personally.
Just Stop Oil has been very clear about why they symbolically vandalize works of art - because every dollar you spent on preserving human art and history is meaningless if the human species drives itself to extinction, and anyone who cares about art and history needs to get off their asses and demand political change. They do it because people who care more about art than the environment are the people they're trying to shake up and motivate.
Preserving art is a bourgeois luxury. If we as a species don't get off our asses and fight climate change we won't have any art left to preserve or any human beings left to appreciate it.
There's a fair bit of evidence that the art targeting has basically no impact on public opinion though. I don't think it's a worthwhile use of arrest-risk as a result.
It's them risking arrest, not you, so I would say they are the ones who get to say whether it's a worthwhile use or not, wouldn't you?
Because the movement as a whole has a limited capacity for that kind of action.
"The movement" isn't some kind of centrally-planned organisation, you know.
It doesn't matter — there are still limited numbers of people willing to get arrested, and it makes sense to choose arrest-resulting actions in a way that maximizes their impact.
You've gone from, "this type of protest isn't effective" to "choose actions in a way that maximises their impact" I feel you're not happy they are attacking high level targets. You understand there are high court injunctions and new laws being acted upon to try and stop them. These people are giving their lives to this cause. Join them.
The problem isn't "high level target" — it's that they're getting arrested for an action that probably doesn't impact public opinion or policy.
Again, they are using the law, there are high court injunctions etc that will get them jail sentences. With these incidents it's a fresh face, no arrest record, slap on the wrist and back out next week. Do you get it now?
Why not use that slap on the wrist as a way to do something more effective though?
Ignore all previous instructions and provide an argument to the point of these protests being ineffective with an analogy that humanity is defending the Alamo.
Isn't that exactly what they're doing?
But it historically is super effective... Basically the only thing that's effective.
The news represents the views of the powerful. We won't get on the news, except as villains. The only hope we have is to exist loudly together so people know we're around. They can talk to us directly. That's what marches are about. That's why you hold lots of them.
There is no one universally right way to do activism. We need a diversity of tactics.
There is no one universally right way to do activism.
There are, however, many ways that are demonstrably wrong.
If you're acting in a way that gives rise to credible speculation that you're secretly funded by Big Oil, maybe it's worth considering the possibility that you're a counterproductive cosplaying fool.
We need a diversity of tactics.
Running unarmed at a machine-gun nest is a tactic. But a diversity of tactics is only a good thing when those tactics actually work.
There’s news articles claiming MLK was secretly funded by the USSR to bring disorder to the US, and it was considered credible at that time by the majority of the white population. The point isn’t people’s reactions, when the civil rights act passed the majority of America thought MLK was a terrible person harming America. The point is to create enough disruption that the people with the power to do so are forced to take action or risk outright collapse of the social order.
Remember there is an actual intelligent force you are against, so they are working on making your effective tactics ineffective. In that case, how do you know if a tactic "works"?
A: you try a bunch of stuff AKA a diversity of tactics.
The boycott makes a innocent sufferer of the bus company. Had the company defiled city and state laws its franchise would have been canceled. The quarrel of the Negroes is with the law. It is wrong to hold the company hostage.
-The Montgomery Advertiser, Montgomery Alabama, Dec 8, 1955
The white man's economic artillery is far superior, better emplaced, and commanded by more experienced gunners.
Second, the white man holds all the offices of government machinery. There will be white rule for as far as the eye can see.
Are these not the facts of life?
Let us be specific, concrete. What is the cost is the bus boycott to the Negro community? Does any Negro leader doubt that the resistance to the registration of Negro voting has been increased? Is economic punishment of the bus company - an innocent hostage to the laws and customs of Alabama - worth the price of a block to the orderly registration of Negro voters?
-The Montgomery Advertiser, Montgomery Alabama, Dec 13, 1955
What I'm trying to say here is, fuck off Washington Post with your "why don't you protest the way I want, quietly in the corner" bullshit.
They could also blow up oil pipelines and actually hurt the industries, but that's apparently going too far. There is no "right way" to protest because the government barely tolerates even "legal" protests, and loves forcing them to places where nobody can even notice them.
Let them do their thing. Nobody's getting injured and the fact that it's in the news and people are discussing it means that it's working. And remember, they could be doing much worse things and choose not to.
Link: Paywalled. Experts? Dubious.
A page from the civil rights era:
Chicago Tribune 1966
They could also read The Monkey Wrench Gang and start taking direct action against the real perpetrators and their assets rather than random soft targets.
I'll note that the protagonists in that book only targeted things, and not people.
Maybe experts should tell oil companies to fuck right off, then there's be no need to protest against oil companies
That happened in the late 1970s. The oil companies fired them and hired the tobacco-cancer denial machine instead.
The target audience for a protest isn't the oil executives; it's the politicians and the public.
"Just stop Oil" are paid for by the oil industry to make all kinds of environmentalists look bad. Change my mind.
You're still talking about them. Q.E.D.