PROTEST

[Latch33570]

Are people protesting to much. I am talking about the sign carrying  marching and disrupting things type of protest. Not that I am against that sort of thing sometimes you gotta do what ya gotta do.   I am just worried that it is overdone and has lost some of its effectiveness. It doesn't get the same coverage on the news and when it does it just seems like it is part of everyday life now. Now instead of surprising people they just plan for it. We will be here the protesters go there ,  situation normal.

What else can we do other than carry signs and yell?

[Abreo]

Well we can always start killing cops bosses and politicians since they're the people we're always protesting against. If we do that though we'll start a revolution, which is inevitable but it risks a lot of innocent lives so before you get one going you got to know that you're saving more people than you're hurting. 

About a month ago I saw a (webcast?) of a protest as filmed by Tim Pool on his smartphone. The protest was over the police killing several unarmed black men in some shitty neighborhood. I think they had drugs or something and were running away when they were repeatedly shot but I've heard so many stories like this that they all just blend together so I might be mixed up. Point being the locals believed that the killings were totally unnecessary and they were pissed.

The protesters were fired upon multiple times with bean bags and other non-lethal weapons and a bunch of people were arrested. One of the people who was arrested claimed to have been related to one of the guys who was killed and she was screaming at the police but from a pretty safe distance. Everyone else I saw get arrested did jack shit. One guy wasn't even part of the protest, he was just putting groceries in his car when the protest moved down his way and the police arrested him. I have no idea why that happened. Two other kids were skateboarding. 

Anyways the instances of police brutality go way up during protests, even if the public remains peaceful. In the way of protesting in the streets the only real step we, the public, can take is to start killing cops. The only other way to get the change we want is to get the support of the wealthy who can use their money to fund change whatever kind of change they're looking for. That's already pretty unlikely and we haven't gotten that far into the dream world yet. Obviously the best option is that everyone holds hands and decides that they'll never purposefully wrong another human being again and that they'll instead all work together to make everyone's lives better. That'll never happen.

That just leaves waiting for a revolution. No country yet has lived forever so it'll probably happen. The thing is financially "we're fucked". We're headed towards another Great Depression because the institutions that caused that first recession are still in place. I'm going to go ahead and assume that even if the government isn't overthrown and the third world war brings itself about once the great empire falls something will undoubtably happen. People don't like being broke.

[Latch33570]

You are probably right . life sucks big hairy ones.

[Lori S.]

People do not protest enough.  We should be having, like, general strikes all across the country; workers should not be taking their company's heads making 200 times what the average worker makes. They should be refusing to work until things change.

Young people should be spending all freaking day in the streets: Guys, they expect you to go $40K or more into debt just to have a college degree that might, if you are lucky, yield you a long-term temp position with some benefits, because otherwise your only option is maybe getting a minimum wage service job.  That is messed up!  You should be demanding free public higher ed and not shutting up until they give it to you.  

We need more protest, more disruption, because that's the only way people with power will listen.

[Latch33570]

Lori the true fact of life is that some jobs just aren't worth much in pay. for instance housekeeping. I think that it is because of the time in history we live in. We live in a time where machines do a lot of our work which makes things so much cheaper and affordable. But they aren't good enough yet to do a lot of things. That makes the menial jobs that they can't do yet worth less. I truly believe that we will soon have machines that are smart enough to do most of the jobs to do and therefore make everything even cheaper for people.

[Gabriel Iglesia]

Well, I wouldn't say protesting has lost its "effectiveness" per se. It definitely catches the attention of police and authority. If it's on a very pressing issue or an important cause rallied by a massive amount of people, whether it's the Occupy movement, the Arab Spring, or otherwise.

It's very natural for protests to occur when things don't go the way people think it should, especially in areas where democracy is the prized symbol of the people.

Now alternatives to protesting include of course the armed uprising (which I won't explicitly advocate here), but people can also voice their collective opinions by directly contacting their designated representatives who work in government and by encouraging more people to vote during elections - and not just presidential elections, but ones that involve Congress, initiatives, referendums, etc. Presidential elections by far have more turnout than off-year elections because of their seemingly "less" significance and because of less media hype. But in reality, voting is still nonetheless important when it comes to issues and putting the right people who are making decisions for us. Whether we like it or not, politics guide our everyday life and define the limits and rules our society is deemed to follow.

As hateful and frustrating as politics are these days, it's still very important for people to get involved in issues that very well affect them- whether by voting, talking it out, or protesting.

[Eystein,]

IF you don't like the way cops are doing things, vote some representatives into office that will cut the cops salary.

Yes, cause the one thing that is gonna make bad cop play nice is to steal money from him ;)

[Latch33570]

Well in my lifetime I have seen protest work. I have also seen it fail. I have been thinking about this since I started this "thread." I think that the difference is the focus of the protest. Back in the day most people who were at a protest were protesting the same thing.  Now days whenever there is anything going on groups will show up each supporting their own cause. The news and politicians have too much to focus on anything specific just that there was protesters. And it happens to often. To this day I don't really know what the Occupy Wall Street movement was about other than economic reform. That is to general. It isn't specific enough for anyone to take any real action. Protesting for pulling our troops out of Vietnam or equal rights is pretty specific. They can take action on that. Protesting for immigrant rights, higher pay, or against police brutality all at the same time at the same event, I think, doesn't work.  

[Eystein,]

Think that makes sense. And also unless what is protested actually mean much to the general public, there isn't much sense expecting any protest to work. It's not necessarily all demands for change deserves for change to happen either. If the protest fails, you simply have to do a better job persuading people to your cause so that it makes a bigger impact next time around.

Sometimes things do deserve to change, but you can't expect it happen over night just because you had a few protests. The civil rights movements, suffrage movements and peace movements, all went on for years and had to grow on people.

There are times when a one time protest should have made an impact, or at least should have been respected enough to temporarily halt an ongoing controversial process, but didn't. Like when a million people protested in London against Tony Blair's decision to join the war on Iraq.

[Latch33570]

Well time will tell.