Those non-violent protests shook them so bad they wanted to charge non-violent Quaker protestors with terrorism.
Cool sticker on your cybertruck!
Cybertrain*
I don’t want to shake the ruling class, I want to take away their power to exploit people. I want insurance companies reigned in. Getting Obamacare passed did more than what a thousand vigilantes could, and that was after the Republicans and lobbyists gutted it.
If people really want to stick it to the man (conservatives and liberals alike), then they can vote in representatives and Senators who will actually legislate for the people, rather than ones who will enrich themselves off their backs.
You can revolt, you can eat the rich, it feels great. But what matters is how the system gets changed or doesn’t change. Plenty of revolutions have replaced the system was something worse, with these heros who took down the ruling class in their place. Keep a close eye on Syria, here’s hoping for the best.
I want to take away their power to exploit people.
They don’t want that. They control Congress and the courts. It can’t be done through proper channels because we already lost our Republic. They won’t give it up without a fight.
There are people in Congress who want that and are exactly working towards that. It isn’t lost yet, and they are not giving it up without a fight.
There are not enough, by far. At this point (thanks to scotus) we’ll need a new constitution just to reclaim democracy.
That is all without considering what Trump is likely to cause in his second term. Scotus has ruled that a sitting president cannot, officially break the law. That is not a Republic. Scotus has ruled that money is speech, and so our positions on issues have less (/no) value. That is not democracy.
I’m not trying to be a doomer, just realistic.
Yes, we are in agreement on the outlook. As they’ve been saying in Ukraine, “The situation is grim”. My point was more about continuing to fight on all fronts, including the political/legislative fronts.
The protests were amazing, nothing like it before or since. The media suppressed coverage of them as best they could. They couldn’t totally ignore them but gave almost 0 coverage. Masses and masses of people packing the streets. Wish we’d had drones back then to get some good aerial footage.
I wish they had come armed. I wish Jan 6 happened to Bush. So many children’s lives could have been spared across the years and borders.
We want public healthcare. This act of violins highlights the anger we feel. It doesn’t bring us closer to a solution. But imagine the roles swapped. We continuously live in fear of getting sick and then going bankrupt and homeless because of it. But what about from the other side…imagine a wolf in a house eating his sheep dinner. Imagine that asshole dancing around and humping several wolfority mates every night having the time of it’s miserable life…and suddenly that wolf peaks at the window and has a sudden realization… Sudden because he suddenly opened the window. It realizes that there’s nothing but sheep outside, all looking at him thru the window. Goes up to the roof top and observes himself surrounded by million upon millions of sheep all looking directly at him. The wolf sees one fellow wolf nearby as the sheep trample him. The wolf listens to his friend’s bones crackling into mush. So just close the blinds and have another sheep from the fridge? Or maybe address the impending problem?
Indeed and wait until Mango Fucking Mussolini decides to invade Iran. That will be one hell of a protest.
as much as i dislike war, and while on the topic, do you think iran should have its own nukes?
Why not? I assume they too would be subject to MAD.
I remember huge student protests for weeks on end. Then, over spring break when all the students were off elsewhere - the bombs began to drop.
American problems require American solutions
I was just recently informed of a podcast called “blowback” the other day on Lemmy and their first season actually goes into Iraq and the lead up to it. It’s a very good podcast for anyone interested in the topic of American intervention in other countries. Very well produced for the subject matter.
Long story short there was nothing that was going to stop us from going after Iraq. “We” wanted that for a long time and it’s not just a simple “cuz oil” thing.
Listened to the first season a while back, I genuinely had one (1) note/dispute, for a series spanning nearly 11 hours on the Iraq invasion. They brought receipts, sources, archived media snippets, and a lot of context that mainstream media still glosses over with 9/11 remembrance justifications.
Very listenable, add it to your queue if you remotely enjoy geopolitics
They need to make it easier to find their podcast on their website, instead of dumping everyone into the Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify Podcasts pipeline…
https://blowback.show/BLOWBACK
There’s a playlist of the episodes near the bottom of this page.
Reminds me of the graphic novel “The Bush Junta.”
Episode Zero with H. Jon Benjamin as Saddam Hussein is pretty gold.
I think the assessment that the history of the Iraq War is important to understand our current place in history. Especially not prosecuting war criminals and how that lead to not prosecuting Trump.
They’re blaming the USA for making the USSR arm nuke sin Cuba and invade the Gulf of Mexico? Fucking tankies, smh.
I mean the US has been consistently aggressive against Cuba, and while I hate the idea of mutually assured destruction, when it was the accepted strategy to get a country to stop fucking with you, it makes sense that Cuba would want the ability to threaten that against the US unless it stopped trying to overthrow their government. Plus the US literally just armed 2 countries near the USSR, so it’s not like it was an unreasonable escalation by the USSR or anything, the US kinda did it first lol.
both sides irresponsibly escalated the conflict in the name of imperialism.
Oh yeah 100%, I don’t place the blame solely on the US or the USSR, it’s on both. I don’t like any state, US and USSR included, and imperialism isn’t exclusive to capitalist states. The USSR is way too demonized in the US education system though, it gets treated as some ultimate evil of history, only responsible for bad things, when it wasn’t really doing anything the US wasn’t also doing.
Yeah, the US education can be very chauvinist. It definitely was in the part of the US where I grew up.
I called for a massive peaceful protest that, occasionally, takes a shot.
A massive peaceful march from home to home of owner-class individuals. With a little occasional shots, as a treat?
Heavily armed and peaceful
Ftfy
Yes.
Otherwise the unarmed get shot by the police.
Yeah, the point of a peaceful protest is meant as a neutral option, just to show that a large group exists who has some demand, and if the demand is not met it will escalate, either via disruption to the economy with strikes or disruption to society with violence. It shouldn’t be blamed on protesters if it ends up escalating that way, because the protest was meant as the warning. Most people wouldn’t blame a country that has repeatedly warned a neighbor to stop annexing it’s land for fighting a war with them. If the country never went farther than warnings then they would all be empty threats. Somehow protests are thought of differently though, and if one turns violent it’s blamed on the protesters and not the government for basically completely ignoring every protest movement in recent memory.
There’s two episodes in the podcast Cool People who did Cool Things that talks about basically that in regards to the violent wing of the nonviolent civil rights movement. You need both.
Is true.
That is why so soooo many headlines everywhere are preaching how this should have been done through voting & protests or whatever.
Iirc majority of Murikans want public healthcare for at least two decades now, yet nothing has changed (expect living generations).
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.”
Lol, “voting”.
Peaceful protest, electoralism, those are spooks. If you want to stop something, try physical destruction.
Not opposing your comment at all, more of a rare occurrence fun fact: Even an actual (ie financially or personality effective) show of power is enough sometimes.
Eg unions in USA haven’t killed any tycoons for the longest time. But they do get a loaf of bread per week more in wages when they stop working for a few days.
Not all revolutions need to be as complete as the French or Russian (tho that works, but also costs a few years of instability & political power struggles), 10% of the elite de-elited (eg losing their wealth bcs of direct demos actions) would send a big message in USAs case.
Even just for something as mundane as protected bike lanes, I’ve found through personal experience that just a couple instances of direct action against motorists who tried to park in them was infinitely more effective than years of begging peacefully for barriers.
Lol, yes, exactly.
That strategy is spreading, BTW: https://momentummag.com/vision-zero-campaign-bricks-vancouver/
I’m also a big fan of:
But taxes!!!
Said anyone who doesn’t know that minus $600/month that only covers the basics plus $300? in taxes that covers a lot more is a net savings.
“largest worldwide non-violent protests in history”? I remember living through that time and don’t remember that. Do you have a source? I myself was opposed the second Iraq war because Saddam had agreed to let in any inspectors the west wanted but we went “too late, we’re coming in anyway” and I knew it was a scam invasion.
We were also just a couple of years into Afghanistan and it made no sense to be starting a second war on a second front when there was no immanent danger. Again, it made to sense.
Start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_protests
Specific news articles about that day:
From Guinness World Records:
On February 15, 2003, anti-war rallies took place across the globe – the largest occurring in Rome, Italy, where a crowd of 3 million gathered to protest against the USA’s threat to invade Iraq. Police figures report that millions more demonstrated in nearly 600 cities worldwide: on the same day, 1.3 million rallied in Barcelona, Spain, 1 million participated in a peace march through the streets of London, UK, and 500,00 people in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia, joined the biggest marches since the Vietnam War peace protests.
https://web.archive.org/web/20100326221254/http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=6067
The French political scientist Dominique Reynié has estimated that, between 3 January and 12 April 2003, some 36 million people took part in nearly 3,000 protests around the world against the Iraq war.
(It’s worth noting here that I have been unable to find Dominique Reynié’s paper that estimates this. I have searched and searched for a PDF with no luck. Lots of references to this work, but can’t seem to find the actual document.)
https://web.archive.org/web/20190921125652/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2765215.stm
Between six and 10 million people are thought to have marched in up to 60 countries over the weekend - the largest demonstrations of their kind since the Vietnam War.
A key aspect of what made it so big was because it was happening worldwide, simultaneously, in multiple cities all over the world.
I was a bit skeptical as well, but there’s at least one seemingly reputable academic researcher who says as much: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_protests (first citation).
So even if it wasn’t, one could easily be forgiven for the mistake.Goes to show how effective non-violent protest is.
Protests mean nothing if it doesn’t change how people vote.
Who are you supposed to vote for when both parties drift right indefinitely?
I see it differently; despite campaigning to attract cowboys Kamalla still wanted to cancel student debt, tax the rich, and legalize weed.
The old Democrats are dieing of old age, the young ones want Green New Deal.
If you elect 60 democrats you might not get single payer because only one of them has to object, but if you elect 60 Republicans you will get pure privatized healthcare and millions of people will die stupid unnecesary deaths because of it.
So you see people don’t feel represented when neither option gets them what they want? FPTP-voting is the problem.
One party specifically opposes any progressive election reforms. We’d all be so much better off right now if H.R. 1 For The People had passed, but it got the Mitch “The Reaper” treatment.
What’s funny is the majority of the country supported the war, at the time. Less than a quarter of polled citizens were against the war. (That’s me! I was there!)
When polled now, the majority of the country claims they were against it at the time.
Echoes of the Civil Rights era, where at its peak, it was deeply unpopular, but the Boomers spent the last 50 years re-writing their own history to pretend they were always on the right side of history… only for Trump to make them feel safe in being racist again.
Voting means nothing if no candidates represents how 75+% of the nation feels on the biggest issues.
It feels to me that all the issues of concern are represented on the ballot. People are just too stupid to figure out which door tells only lies.
Not in USAs case.
On every big economically significant issue of the last 40 years both parties have been on absolutely the same page, none of the candidates would make different choices (at least for both houses and presidents, not sure about state levels, Im not from over there).
Even policies that one party publicly “opposed” were then carried on by the same party when it came in power (eg Bill Clinton).So both parties would and have brought constant deregulation (financial markets especially), wars & anything war industry related, healthcare, taxation of profit, etc.
They bicker by design on issues that are huge for the non-elite (but meaningless to the elite as they can circumvent such issues), like lgbtq+ and reproductive rights.
59 Democrats voted for Single Payer, 0 Republicans, it failed
60 Democrats voted to expand medicaid and protect preexisting conditions, 0 republicans, it passed
The USA then elected more Republicans. Republicans used that majority to cut taxes for the rich, raise taxes on everyone else, a plan that would have expired in 2026 if the USA didn’t just elect more republicans AGAIN.
Seems pretty fucking diverse, mate.
This is simply a lie
Health care is a prime example of how badly youre lying.
I mean personally I do vote every election I can, but people did change how they voted after protests were ignored. The pro-Palestinian protesters and the uncommitted movement during this 2024 election had a basic demand they wanted met, that was ignored by the Harris campaign and some number of them didn’t vote because of it. And yet a lot of people blamed the protesters for Harris’s loss (of Michigan at least), even though that is literally changing your vote because a protest didn’t get her to change her position.
And that’s also skipping over however many people didn’t show up because of other positions she changed, like healthcare, fracking, the border, etc. And I do get it, I know Trump will be so much worse, and like I said I did vote, straight Democrat down ballot like I always do. But if the point of a protest is meant to show that a group of people is unhappy and you’re losing their support, having that group turn around and vote for you anyway means that you can just ignore protests.
And again, I know I’ll probably need to keep saying this, I voted for Harris. But the fact that the lesson a lot of the DNC is seemingly taking from this is that they should go more centrist just boggles my mind, because the point of people not showing up to vote for her after they protested and were ignored is literally that going more centrist and ignoring your base will lose democrats elections.
It’s no surprise though, the DNC receives a ton of corporate donations so why would they seriously support policy that hurts those donors income. Like Josh Shapiro condemning the killer and those who supported them, and thanking the police who caught him in PA isn’t surprising when he received $10,000 dollars from UHG in 2023 (the second most of any candidate). This is what people mean when they say voting is pointless, even if you somehow voted in a senate of 100% democrats, a house of 100% democrats, and Bernie Sanders as the president, they wouldn’t support a proposal for something like single payer healthcare because most of the other democrats in the house and senate get money to not support major reforms like that.
You didn’t like blood so you helped elect the river? I at least hope most people at those protests weren’t as stupid as you imply. The whole point was to get the institutions being protested to divest from Israel.
Honestly, at this point I’m not convinced that Trump will be significantly worse for Palestine than Harris would have been. Neither one is going to stop sending weapons, and the stuff Trump supports are so extreme that Israel wouldn’t want to do them anyway, like nuking Gaza. Either way in 4 years I can’t see the US being the reason anything changes there.
I’m also talking about specifically the uncommitted movement and protests at the DNC, which were meant to get Biden and then Harris to support an arms embargo. The consequence promised by those protests was losing voters, so if that didn’t happen it would mean that the Democrats could see these as empty threats and safely ignore them.
There are only so many times you can say “vote for me because the other candidate is so much worse” before people get tired of voting against their interests just to prevent someone else who is also against their interests just more so. Either way you’re voting for something you don’t support, and eventually people will give up. Blaming voters for a candidate losing and not the candidate for abandoning voters doesn’t make sense. It’s not the voters job to represent a candidate, it’s supposed to be the candidates job to represent their voters.
Yeah thats true, real change is going to come from the house and senate, not the president.
Just want to plug the movie and book How to Blow Up a Pipeline. Also the book Rattling the Cages.
This is why the ruling class pushes gun control so hard. Don’t let them do it.
Partially because “peaceful” and the definition of what would or would not be accepted as valid protest became co-opted by the management/ ivy league class.
Compare the Seattle WTO protests to the 2003-2005 Iraq protests.
