Hey protesters, I have a message for you.

B

bhsup

Deity
Joined
Jan 1, 2004
Messages
30,387
http://news.yahoo.com/protesters-disrupt-ceremony-100-old-navy-vet-uncivil-193028485.html

On Saturday, a ceremony honoring U.S. Navy veteran Dario Raschio, age 100, was held up for 15-minutes after Sen. Ron Wyden (D) of Oregon was interrupted at Portland Community College's Southeast Campus, Oregon Live reports.

More than 100 protesters burst into the room shouting "hands-up, don't shoot!" in reference to the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., last fall.
Click to expand...

F-you. That is all.

Moderator Action: Not a good OP. Please don't start a thread with no comment other than "F-you. That is all."
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
 
Not sure what the Navy has to do with police officer conduct. Penny for the thoughts of the organizers.
 
SS-18 ICBM said:
Not sure what the Navy has to do with police officer conduct. Penny for the thoughts of the organizers.
Click to expand...

"Publicized event? Let's make spectacles of ourselves chanting the latest catchphrase!"
 
Well even civil disobedience is still disobedience!
 
Given the racist attitudes on display in the recent threads its easy to understand how protesters might feel that being nice and polite was getting them nowhere.
 
classical_hero said:
The fact they are even going with this narrative shows they don't know anything. They are protesting for the sake of protesting.
Click to expand...

True enough. If anything, the grand jury testimony did prove that the entire 'hands up' thing was totally fabricated.
 
I've been confused about these stunts from the beginning. How is this supposed to win them supporters? When they pull things like this or block off freeways or whatever all it does is push me towards deeper sympathy towards the police and a fervent wish that they'd deploy the tear gas to clear the protesters out. Harassing innocent people who are just trying to live their lives isn't a protest, it's harassment.
 
What, do they hope they're going to reverse the decision not to indict? Or are they trying to "raise awareness?"

I can't tell if this is activism or slacktivism. But nothing will change unless these random groups of protesters unite and make a real push to make change through the legal system. Not by asking, not by protesting, but by signing petitions, making efforts to recall public officials they hold responsible, and vote. You can ignore a bunch of people walking around chanting; they'll spend a few hours before they realize that this activism stuff takes effort and that they have no clearly defined goals or any ideas of how to reach them and give up. You can't ignore ballots and voter initiatives so easily.
 
Wolfbeckett said:
I've been confused about these stunts from the beginning. How is this supposed to win them supporters?
Click to expand...

Who are they supposed to win over? The OP? The conservatives? You think?

Who would Rosa Parks have won over when she held people up by refusing to sit in the 'appropriate' section of the bus? The racists? The so-called 'moderates', who need to be convinced that prejudice is really quite bad?

No, I think the point is not to "win supporters" because at some point the lines have been drawn on the sand. Winning the few still on the fence aren't really going to make much of a difference; the apathetic will forget soon enough.

Look at the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong. Not your average Occupy movement, certainly. They were saintly in their conduct. What did that get them? Modern authorities simply need to stall for time and turn the power of the mass media, initially almost always sympathetic for the most part, against the protesters. The media will eventually get bored and start picking at whatever tiny cracks they can find in a protest movement: "Lack of leadership", "lack of clear goals", "disorder", "rioters", "looters"... these are some the words that will start to appear given enough time. And, if need be, why not get some guys to break some things or to heavily propagandise the black sheep to discredit the movement by allowing people to tar all of the members with the same brush? This tactic has been seen over and over again in recent years, from the London student protests to the Hong Kong protests.

No, winning over people in rational debate has to stop somewhere, because there is a significant number that just cannot be convinced or just won't care no matter what.
 
Does it get attention? Certainly. Is it wise, ultimately? Not sure. They might have miscalculated here, but there might have been a reasoning behind this move and it's not totally random.

That's the other thing about protests. Some people have unreasonable standards for people who are already often socially and politically disadvantaged - they expect political geniuses and saints everywhere. That's just not going to happen. Sure, there may be very talented and savvy organisers who are very rational and calculating, but as you might reasonably expect, they are relatively few in number. And if these handful of people were to run the show, you get the opposite reaction - people will start talking about power cliques, cults of personalities, etc. You want a Castro, Guevara or Mandela? Guess what, lots of conservatives have little or nothing good to say about them either. And if protesters do try to change things by legal means but meet with every roadblock and get discouraged and start trying other means? They're lazy slacktivists who didn't realise "this activism stuff takes effort."

If a legitimate cause isn't good enough to convince you to be 100% in support even through all the screw ups and black sheep that happen, chances are you won't really be of much help anyway, especially in a very long and drawn out struggle that lasts longer than your attention span. And I would hope that you hate Westboro Baptist Church because of their abhorrent views, not just because they're loud and annoying. This isn't some reality show :rolleyes:
 
Smear grassroots opponents of the established order, marginalize it, and legitimize its loss of rights. Well done bhsup and others, you are reacting precisely the way you were meant to.
 
Pangur Bán;13627782 said:
Smear grassroots opponents of the established order, marginalize it, and legitimize its loss of rights. Well done bhsup and others, you are reacting precisely the way you were meant to.
Click to expand...

This is a bit of a tricky one. The danger, which I think you're falling into, is that you give marginalised people carte blanche by virtue of their marginalised status - in other words, you make the claim that people can never criticise the ideals or methods of those less powerful than themselves under any circumstances, appealing to the power relationship which exists between them. People can still do wrong while being fundamentally right, and the people who are part of protests remain fundamentally people who are prone to being stupid, reckless and sometimes malicious. It's absolutely right to call them out when they are, provided that you don't use that to say that they somehow deserve the conditions against which they're protesting.

aelf said:
And I would hope that you hate Westboro Baptist Church because of their abhorrent views, not just because they're loud and annoying.
Click to expand...

That's a bit self-righteous. Nobody's saying that they disagree with the WBC because they're loud and annoying, but their ideas are otherwise sound - but then you shouldn't expect people to walk around foaming at the mouth at every example of injustice or bigotry going. I don't like the BNP, but I don't actively hate them - though it gets a lot closer when they drive a van down the road blaring their slogans when I'm trying for some peace and quiet.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom