I was told that it may lead to easier or faster release, and I imagine I might be targeted to be imprisoned if I push it if I don’t bring an ID, but I feel like that’s bullshit but I don’t think I should leave it to chance
Would you bring an ID to a protest?
(Did I accidentally start a struggle session?)
Ok so what are you doing instead?
great defense of liberal performance art
I wasn’t intending to agree or disagree until you elaborated more. But I will say that describing a problem without any attempt at a solution is usually not productive.
Personally, I think most protests have no chance at actually accomplishing their demands, but are still useful to attend to find people and orgs active locally.
Ive described how liberal protests present the problem of wasting the time and energy of millions that could be directed towards more revolutionary actions and the solution is “stop entertaining the idea that protests achieve anything more than being liberal performance art” so i would say that actually arguing with me is what’s “not productive”
Again, like what?
“X is useless” and “X is useless, do something useful instead” are equivalent: neither one gives any indication of what should be done.
Like imagine you’re talking with some local comrades, and they want to do “X”, and you tell them that’s a waste of time. You can see how their obvious question would be what to do instead? And if you regularly gave that type of non-actionable criticism they’d probably start viewing your input as non-productive and start to disregard it.
sitting on your couch jerking it is more productive than “going to a protest” i’m sorry you disagree but feel free to go to some No Kings thing I’m sure it’ll depose trump because that’s how things work, you show up and he gives up like it’s a marvel documentary
Yeah, based on your tone I kinda suspected that’s what you were proposing.
If you wanted, instead of protesting, to have a strike at a strategic workplace, or do sabotage, or block a port, or have a general strike, or even an insurrection, then those are at least somewhat actionable. You can find historical examples, even current examples, and study what they’ve gotten right or wrong, and how their context is similar or different from yours. You can start thinking through how you can get from your current circumstances, to that goal, and then what could be next. Start thinking about the material conditions you’re in and what possibilities actually exist and how you can potentially, in some way, intervene in the course of the class struggle.
And if you decide your next step is “find two dedicated local comrades” or whatever, that’s a completely valid starting point. Reading could be a starting point. Getting your personal life together could be a starting point, I don’t know your life. Unproductive criticism is unfortunately not a starting point, unless you find a way to make it productive.
And maybe you’ll decide conventional protest has some role in this process, and maybe you wont. I gave my opinion above, but I don’t really know, and that specific tactic isn’t really the important point. The important part is thinking through questions of strategy materialistically and scientifically, instead of emotionally and impressionistally.
You’re not wrong about thinking we’re in a bad situation and not accomplishing what we need to. But put yourself in your historical context. Communists have chosen one of the most difficult causes in human history. We’ve been at this for hundreds of years, we’ve faced unimaginable defeats and losses, but we’ve also learned some hard lessons and made at least a few important advances. And right now, that process is still in motion, and we all have to figure out what to do and how to do it. Picking one specific thing not to do is completely insufficient.
“My solution is to not do the problem”
Just Stop Oil apparently disbanded because, after all of their protests, they had their initial demands about North Sea oil drilling met. They’re mostly liberals, and their performance art got some results.
You might think that blocking corporations or something else dramatic and non-performance would be a big deal, but when JSO did that they got no media attention, and the corporation successfully ignored them at a negligible material loss.
lol yes just stop oil stopped oil 🙄
sadly, stopping all of the oil isn’t really a reasonable expectation in our current mode of production, we’ll need a revolution really.
but they did indeed stop some oil, something that wouldn’t have happened if they’d just stayed at home.
The legitimate critique is that they only stopped some specific oil, but it was kust replaced by other oil. Protesting with ineffective methods can create a situation where the externalities are just shoved elsewhere