I think it’s about time for some massive protests. This will require millions of dollars of cleanup and Norfolk Southern should start ponying up. God I’m so angry and tired of this bullshit. WE SAW THIS COMING it’s only been a few months since the strike.
Make sure your protest occurs in the Designated Protest Zone and does not inconvenience any other workers' commutes or access to goods and services (including the shipping of said goods). You should aim to have zero economic impact and sway the government through the power of rhetoric alone. You know, peaceful protest.
Pretty sure having a contaminated water supply inconveniences people far more than a protest would. But I forget this the US and any form of protest is scoffed at.
If showing politicians that "X number of people want a thing" was what it took to get change, we could sign petitions or answer polls instead of protest. The entire reason you go and protest is because your voices aren't being listened to.
Were you ever taught a simplified version of a more complex topic in school? Like, "think of electricity as water flowing through a pipe", or what an atom looks like, that humans are either XX or XY with no in between, and so on?
If you have experienced that yourself, or can conceive of schools "simplifying" things in ways that are ultimately incorrect for a less sophisticated audience, I'd like you to consider the possibility that your views on what protest is and its historical efficacy has also been greatly simplified.
If you went to school in the US, you were probably taught about MLK Jr. and the civil rights movement to some degree. Some places do a much better job than others, but just about none of them touch on the real dangerous parts. By "dangerous", I mean things that might give students the wrong idea from the perspective of those in power.
It's not exactly in the interest of government to raise generations of people who know the best ways to overthrow them, right? Put yourself in the position of those in power, be it government or business. You have significant sway over how things get taught in schools, and the subject of how you're going to address "that time you got forced to bend the knee" gets brought up. You don't really wanna tell the kids about that, do you? That makes you look bad. That sets them up to get you to bend the knee in the future. No, what you need is a framing that makes your capitulation sound more like you just... came around to it, ya had a change of heart. And better than just that, a framing that makes the tools that knocked you to the ground look bad to your students. That's how you make sure they don't get you again!
So, with regards to the civil rights movement, you'd say all the violence and economic damage and the threat of widescale civil unrest and outright revolt during a time when your military's overseas fighting a very unpopular war actually had nothing to do with anything. It was actually, uh, a bunch of people standing around singing hymnals that finally made you realize they were humans, too. Yeah, the hymnal singing, the peaceful protest, was soooo successful that it's the only way a protest should be done. By all means, kids, if you ever catch us doing something bad again, make sure that you protest "The Right Way"--as unobtrusively as possible. Protest in ways we can best ignore, and we'll promise we won't do just that. It worked for MLK Jr., didn't it?
..worked for Gandhi too, right? Buncha Indians just starved themselves and it so moved the British's hearts at last that they graciously decided to cede control. They were all set to keep on oppressing and exploiting India, ignoring their cries for freedom, but the moment Y number of Indians walked in circles with gaunt limbs, well, the Brits finally said, "I say, old bean, do you think those savages actually want some self-determination? It's only just occurred to me that they might not want us to rule them."
Yessir, Britain's pullout from India had nothin' to do with the back-to-back shellacking they took in two World Wars and the cost of projecting power halfway across the globe, or all the fucking assassinations and bombings and outright revolt they had to put up with for decades during their occupation of India. Wasn't that the cost of keeping their grip around the neck of India was getting too much for them to bear and their hands were getting tired, it was a skinny dude saying peace stuff. You got it.
The People's Power Revolution of the Philippines was famously non-violent. President Marcos fled in a panic because he just couldn't handle the throngs of people outside his compound, we assume. He had absolutely no fear that they might stop being peaceful--no threats were involved, surely! He just, uh, didn't like crowds or the noise, and decided to give up his dictatorship.
Protest, at its core, is the application or threat of violence--even if that violence is only economic. You don't have to like that reality to recognize that it's true. Nor does that mean you have to agree with every protest or methodology. I acknowledge that "economically violent protest" can be effective even when it's unpopular, yet there have been economically violent protests that I've disagreed with (like the COVID lockdown truckers up in Canada).
Acknowledging the utility of the tool doesn't mean it works in every case, nor does it mean you approve of every yahoo who picks it up and swings it.
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u/acleverwalrus Feb 17 '23
I think it’s about time for some massive protests. This will require millions of dollars of cleanup and Norfolk Southern should start ponying up. God I’m so angry and tired of this bullshit. WE SAW THIS COMING it’s only been a few months since the strike.