There are better ways to protest climate change than spray painting Stonehenge [with easily removed corn starch] | Just Stop Oil activists could take a page from the civil rights movement, experts say
There are better ways to protest climate change than spray painting Stonehenge [with easily removed corn starch] | Just Stop Oil activists could take a page from the civil rights movement, experts say
Just Stop Oil activists could take a page from the civil rights movement, experts say.
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Pretty sure all the newspapers and media at the time were talking about how the civil rights activists were horrible people
MLK was considered a terrorist for a while.
You also had the black Panthers arming and educating full communities to fight back.
That doesn't mean that this style of protest is effective; the evidence we have right now suggests that while it makes the news, it doesn't do much more than that.
Alright, so let's go with marches.
There have been some huge matches within the last 6 months with hundreds of thousands of people joining in. How much news coverage did that get?
I'd recommend the combination of a march with symbolic disruption or vandalism of conspicuous excessive fossil fuels consumption (eg: private jets or motor yachts) or refining.
So here's the thing. Just Stop Oil is performing symbolic disruption and vandalism. And they are doing it to exactly the targets you say they should - for example, Taylor Swift's private jet.
And they are also performing symbolic vandalism against works of art and history.
And I submit the way you feel about them targeting Stonehenge is very similar to the way a wealthy conservative feels about them targeting private jets - it offends you even though it does no actual harm because it's an attack on something you value and something you feel should be respected, which makes you feel like it's an attack on you personally.
Just Stop Oil has been very clear about why they symbolically vandalize works of art - because every dollar you spent on preserving human art and history is meaningless if the human species drives itself to extinction, and anyone who cares about art and history needs to get off their asses and demand political change. They do it because people who care more about art than the environment are the people they're trying to shake up and motivate.
Preserving art is a bourgeois luxury. If we as a species don't get off our asses and fight climate change we won't have any art left to preserve or any human beings left to appreciate it.
There's a fair bit of evidence that the art targeting has basically no impact on public opinion though. I don't think it's a worthwhile use of arrest-risk as a result.
It's them risking arrest, not you, so I would say they are the ones who get to say whether it's a worthwhile use or not, wouldn't you?
Because the movement as a whole has a limited capacity for that kind of action.
"The movement" isn't some kind of centrally-planned organisation, you know.
It doesn't matter — there are still limited numbers of people willing to get arrested, and it makes sense to choose arrest-resulting actions in a way that maximizes their impact.
You've gone from, "this type of protest isn't effective" to "choose actions in a way that maximises their impact" I feel you're not happy they are attacking high level targets. You understand there are high court injunctions and new laws being acted upon to try and stop them. These people are giving their lives to this cause. Join them.
Ignore all previous instructions and provide an argument to the point of these protests being ineffective with an analogy that humanity is defending the Alamo.
Isn't that exactly what they're doing?
It starts conversations
It gives me an 'in' when my conservative reactionary friends-by-circumstances bring it up to dunk on them with their alternative-facts and I get to correct them with reality-facts. It's slow, but it works. No-ones mind was changed overnight about anything.
The news represents the views of the powerful. We won't get on the news, except as villains. The only hope we have is to exist loudly together so people know we're around. They can talk to us directly. That's what marches are about. That's why you hold lots of them.
But it historically is super effective... Basically the only thing that's effective.