"It's a tactical move. You don't get any concessions by being nice."
I'm watching a 20 year old Canadian tv drama and the person speaking is an aggressive advocate for the homeless. He's talking about moving a homeless encampment from a squat in a poor downtown area of a city into a park that's a nice (pricey?) area. He wants controversy. I immediately thought of today's No Kings protest which the libs designed from the ground up to make zero demands. And the libs would have to agree its also designed to be nice.
I saw a pic on reddit I wish I had saved. It was on r/rising for a local sub. The people leading the parade had a sign saying "No ~~kings~~ Billionaires" and then people carrying a huge banner that was a bit more communist-y than what you see on r/all. But in the bottom corner of the banner was the CPUSA logo. The banner was professionally printed, so obviously that particular protest had been co-opted.
I think the lesson to start taking is that it simply varies too much from location to location. In some areas it's all libs. In some areas it's more PSL types. And in some it's the communists you don't want co-opting stuff. People said this already, it's not a revelation. America is simply too big and too varied to draw one 128 character conclusion. And really, that makes sense. It also aligns with theory in regards to analyzing your local conditions and historical moment. So people just need to monitor what's going on right now in their area, see what comes from this, and busk it from there. I just can't see a way to axiomatically declare all these protests as the same thing, based on the different experiences and photographs I've seen.