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.
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.