This one really gets me. Had an arguement with a irl lib friend during the George Floyd protests. They were like, "they need to be peaceful like MLK, not blocking traffic." MLK blocked traffic!!! What are you talking about!!!
Of course, libs hate living revolutionaries, but dead ones don't do inconvenient things like support oppressed people or criticize oppressive power structures. Or as Lenin put it:
During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it.
It's worth noting that (as Lenin notes here) it's not just liberals, it's the oppressing classes. See the conservative rehabilitation of MLK as a moderate who actually thinks there's no such thing as systemic racism.
What’s that libbed up sitcom where the mom goes, “walking into a Cuban’s house with a Che Guevara tshirt is like walking into a Jewish home with an Adolf Hitler tshirt”?
I remember Michael Moore talking about how he felt when he was a kid, hanging out with a bunch of unionized detroit auto workers, and how they roared with approval when the radio announced King's assassination.
The way I heard him tell it (on the chapo podcast) was he was walking out of church when that happened, too. Kind of a morbid and disgusting irony to celebrating his death amongst your group of “good church-going people” too
MLK was constantly tarred for inciting riots (even when he didn't), for inciting property damages (which he didn't), for his followers being rude or destructive (even when they mostly weren't), and just generally painted as a violent, uppity ****** in his time
I find it funnier that some people think blocking traffic is more acceptable than burning a flag. Blocking traffic is at least a major inconvenience, burning a flag literally doesn't affect you in any way.
Also if youre someone who cares about the flag, there are instances where you're supposed to burn it like you're not supposed to ever throw it out so burning is how you dispose of them
Also I think it if touches the ground you're supposed burn it???
You're just fucking over people who work for hourly wages and/or have childcare issues. People who otherwise might be sympathetic to your cause.
It's the stupidest form of protest there is. Maybe it would be fine in a country with a better social safety net, but in the US it impacts poor working people the most, while wealthier people can just work remotely or stay home and still earn their salary.
Meanwhile some single mom is being blocked from picking her kid up from school.
What kinds of protest action would be most effective, in your view? The point is to be disruptive so that people get pissed off at government and demand change.
I'll be honest; I don't have a great answer. I just know for a fact that blocking traffic hurts the working poor far more than it does the elite who are ostensibly the people being targeted by such protests.
As a union member and union activist, my ultimate answer is always going to be more union organizing and more union actions.
Fair enough. The main issue with union organizing imo is that they're busy with organizing for their worker's rights (which is good!), which means they're not going to lead the charge on eg environmental issues. FWIW I think the reason the forms of protest listed on the survey are allowed is largely because they're ineffective and don't convenience those in power. Obviously I'd prefer if people went and eg camped out on the lawns of the white house, or outside supreme court justice's homes, but when that happens they get called terrorists.
I think we're largely in complete agreement and as such I say let us not allow our small disagreements to sidetrack us from the larger vision that I think we both share.