Everything you mentioned is 1000x better than occupying a sidewalk (that oligarchs dont walk on) with signs that try and make JD Vance feel shook. I’m not against occupying sidewalks with signs, just think we should be doing outside mansions and gated communities, where billionaires in their pajamas can see us. Megaphones all night long, i’d be helping to hand out free coffee.
This was 100% relevant to what i’m trying to say, you just said it better than I could. They think that it goes “Protest, sign petition, that’ll magically make politicans think oh we should listen to them, they sign our best interests into law.” They also think the only blood spilled in the name of democracy are from our troops who fought overseas - but forget the protestors who were gunned down by land-barons when workers were killing cops so that we can have weekends, or lives without slavery. That’s why there’s so much importance held to democracy, because of all the horrific sacrifices people have had to make, and will have to continue to make, to make it even possible. But even that’s been lost on most people, people now “vote with your wallet” instead of voting with a soul.
Not bragging, just proud.
I’ve had better luck turning MAGA towards leftism than any liberal. At least they have the balls to storm the US capitol, these so-called “protestors” with their JD Vance signs outside a ski resort are groupie cheerleaders for the status quo.
Fr. They’d probably piss their pants if they got hit by a brick thrown by a fascist, or if a police officer yells at them.
inspiration to others!
Even if they think organizing the community to raise local funds for deaf and blind kids, as well as grassroots organizations to delay big coal for a year, laying our in front of bulldozers and police cars, as “just protesting”? The same way these people are peacefully and safely holding signs outside a goddamn ski resort?! I’m not special, yet even I and others like me can risk our safety to get real results instead of peacefully be taken unseriously by the opposition. Just look at all the critical enlightened centrists in this thread.
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I am responding to something other than what the person actually said. People like myself (and the countless nameless faces who actually stick their necks out) have been screaming about this to people who metaphorically can’t see or hear, for decades, only for them to be the “holier than thou” one trying to look for hypocrisy or hatred in other people who’ve done more than them. Why focus on idols like Trump and Co when they’re just symptoms of the greater problems - capitalistic greed/corporate irresponsibility - and then after listing our many years of efforts to fight it and then say “Yeah but what did you do to stop Trump and Musk specifically?” That sort of nitpicking, missing the forest for the trees attitude is what angers me so, it’s proof of how blind people are to the realities of what it means to be in a democracy. “If you want a democracy, you have to be a player.”
Isn’t enough now, wouldn’t have been enough 2 years ago. Americans need to work far harder than they’re used to.
Thank you. I just want to add that they saw all that and said “just looks like protesting” as if personally helping organize action against the coal industry using grassroots techniques to some small success is “just protesting,” or raising money for disabled people in community “not much apart from protesting.” The gall, from someone who probably hasn’t been to even a measley protest. And yes, I am saying protesting isn’t enough, speaking from someone who’s done it for 14 years. Waving signs does fucking nothing. It disrupts nothing. You have to put your bodies on the road and your safety on the line like we did.
I’ll believe it when I see it. People are not doing enough, myself included. The reality around us is proof of this.
making them feel bad for not doing enough.
If you feel bad for not doing enough that’s on you.
Started in 2003 when I was 13 and would fundraise at middleschool against the war in Iraq.
Somewhat prioritized political literacy and critical thinking as a young lad, though I was lofty and idealistic in those days I was at least trying to do something. Genocide in Sudan and watching Schindlers List when I was 13-14 also fueled that fire.
Got extreme at one point, friends and I used to attack-on-sight Nazi’s and KKK every chance we could get, in some cases endangering their lives. I cooled off that stuff and attended the Occupy protests in 2011, was one of the 800+ people that got herded onto the Brooklyn Bridge by police and mass arrested. Did you hear about that one?
2013 I (naively) worked for Greenpeace for a few years, alongside environmentalist charities and activists in the SW Pacific (New Zealand, Fiji, Australia). Got there with $15 to my name after hitching a ride on a sailboat, ended up dressing up as an Orangutan in the boiling Australian sun and making police chase me (they never did catch me.) Worked with the Wilderness Society, worked alongside Bob Irwin (Steve Irwin’s dad) on the Fight for the Reef campaign to protect the GBR from getting dredged for coal shipping (our campaign successfully delayed them for a year, after which they dredged a world heritage site anyway.)
Since then I worked small, working with various charities from deaf kids to blind persons, attending every protest I could physically attend. A recent diagnosis of Graves Disease has put me on my arse for a while, but despite that I still stood up to the pogroms in the UK, using my body to block protestors from bricks. A brick hit my bad knee too, but i’d take a million more.
Does my resume satisfy you? Now lets see your card, what have you done?
I’ll believe it when I see it. Anything short of most Americans not showing up to work and grinding the economy to a screaching halt won’t be enough. And that’s the best case scenario.
If you’re trying to understand an artist then you’ve already failed.
Probably a different more luxurious and private ski resort where they won’t be bothered anymore.
Future action heroes in movies and videogames will be Ukranian soldiers, not some American green beret or something. In fact, the future backstabbing coward turncoat characters will all be American, and our Ukranian hero will have to un-fuck the situation.
Is that the best you can do America? Wave a sign, chant slogans, while occupying a sidewalk as he laughs at you and skis with his family? I can’t tell who’s more pathetic in this scenario.
EDIT -
I haven’t seen any socialist or anarchists show up with guns to protect protestors from police with guns, nobody has since the 60s.
Allies = Europe and China Axis = Russia and USA
If I ran for office and mentioned anything about the $36 TRILLION in offshore tax havens to help pay for things like infrastructure, UBI, and universal healthcare, i’d be fucking assassinated. The problem about wanting change and working within the system to achieve that, is that it’s never you who changes the system, it’s the system that’ll inevitably change you. There’s nothing wrong with compromise in a situation, but compromising yourself in a situation is another story completely.