I’d like to thank everyone for my most upvoted post on lemmy ever. Not only have you upvoted it to the top for like 2 days you commented the shit out of it. I’d like to take this opportunity to say fuck the mods of this instance. This was my second post coming off a 30 day ban and I want to say these fucking mods have been nothing but bitches. I’ve never been more attacked on any other instance, subreddit, forum, etc. then I have been in this fucking instance. Not only have I been attacked I’ve been told my memes arent memey enough again and again.
I’ll be honest, I do not know how to make a meme but I keep posting just to piss in these mods cheerios.
Thanks lemmy.world/politicalmemes for being the worst community I’ve ever been a part of.
Street protests are one of several necessary activities for a change movement. They can help build awareness and let off some steam, but need considerable mass to affect change on their own.
More change happens when paired with organised political action, strikes, obstruction, PR and ofc violence/terror.
The trick is to coordinate the sides towards the goal. Only street protests or only terror won’t do anything, but pulling together you did get 8 hour workdays,or more recently grain import regulations (in Poland).
Then again, a million protesters over three months, including transport striking and uncoordinated violence, did not affect the French pension age.
Yes, name any successful movement for political change that didn’t involve street protests.
✅ French revolution ✅ Suffragettes ✅ Indian independence ✅ The Boston Tea Party
And, I would imagine that it’s extremely rare to have big protests without first having some small protests. People need to know they’re not alone. It’s really hard to be one of the first people at a protest. But, the bigger they are, the easier it is for people to find out about, and to feel confident in attending.
Add to that that everyone knows that to be effective these protests have to take place in DC, but the US is huge and DC is relatively small (and very strange as a city / metro area) so it will be a while before you can have mass protests in DC. The logistics of just getting there are difficult and expensive. In many countries, the capital is the biggest city in the country: London, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Tokyo, Bangkok, Seoul, Mexico City… And, in countries where the capital isn’t the biggest city, it’s at least normally a very big city, Beijing: 22M, New Delhi: 28M, Ankara: 5M, etc. The Washington DC metro area spans the District of Columbia plus parts of 4 states, but is still only the 6th biggest metro area in the US.
I imagine there will be huge protests in DC. It will just take a while for all the logistics to be worked out.
you are incorrect that only street protests (I have a dream) or only terror (9/11) “won’t do anything”, but you are correct in agreeing with me that the more forms of protest occurring simultaneously, like the protests happening now, the more likely a movement is to effect change.
You’re over simplifying the first, and conflating the other.
The MLK protests made change on the back of decades of campaigning together with multiple organisations applying different types of pressure and activism for the same goal, including president Kennedy, and several PR disasters for the opposition.
As for the 2001 attacks, what would you say was their political goal? Was it fulfilled by those attacks? If not, I’d scratch that up as a failed attempt.
“You’re over simplifying the first, and conflating the other.”
incorrect.
you are claiming that protests do not affect political change.
you are wrong.
“The MLK protests made change…”
that’s right!
“As for the 2001 attacks, what would you say was their political goal?”
to destroy an important symbol of the US, terrify the US population and force them to waste resources chasing an unseen enemy.
which, since none of you seem versed in history, is exactly what happened and is still happening.
“Nuh uh”
nope
Are you implying the ‘inside job’ conspiracy theory, or suggesting these were the goals of Al-Qaeda?
I’m not saying that to reject the former, it has some debatable credibility, but if you’re proposing the latter, “to destroy an important symbol of the US, terrify the US population and force them to waste resources chasing an unseen enemy” doesn’t make sense from Al-Qaeda’s perspective, contradicts the choices of targets, and contradicts their stated motives both years before and after the 2001 attacks. (quick wiki summary to launch from)
'Are you implying the ‘inside job’ conspiracy theory, or suggesting these were the goals of Al-Qaeda?"
…how? do you get to these non-sequiturs.
If you don’t know something, just ask.
On 9/11, a bunch of Saudi terrorists destroyed two very tall buildings in NYC in 2001. The quote of mine are several of the explicitly stated goals of that terrorist group that were successfully carried out.
I can’t help you if you don’t “believe” in 9/11, that’s…what happened. You can just read about it. Like, everywhere.
I did. I asked a question.
Where are these goals explicitly stated by al-Qaeda? Please provide sources.
For example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks#Motives
This is why the planes were sent to the Twin Towers (symbol of economic power) and the Pentagon (symbol of military power).
Their goal was to combat US military intervention .They don’t care about random US citizens being scared, that doesn’t help them combat the US military, and they didn’t want the US to be in their country so why would they want to be chased? It makes no sense for "terrifying the US population and forcing them to waste resources chasing an unseen enemy” to be the goals of al-Qaeda. They didn’t want to waste resources, they wanted soldiers gone or killed.
Thank you for agreeing with me and providing the sources you’re asking for.
I don’t get what you’re trying to do here.
i see you’re just making things up here:
“they don’t care about random US citizens being scared, that doesn’t help them combat the US military, and they didn’t want the US to be in their country so why would they want to be chased?”
but again I’m not really sure what you’re after.
Good luck.