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.

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[–] JohnBrownsBawdy@hexbear.net 35 points 4 days ago (2 children)

I took my oldest son to our local protest and yes there were libs (some Kamala signs, a “we’d be at brunch” sign), but to be honest, the vibe felt very different to the very Lib protests that happened at his first inauguration and during the first term.

I saw almost no signs about Trump and Putin being gay together or whatever and a whole bunch of signs about John Brown having done nothing wrong, Fuck ICE, deny/defend/depose, and “doing something about this”.

Yes, there were libs at these things. Well guess what, most of the people who have Saturdays off and want to go to one of these things are Libs. But I also saw a lot of solidarity with Palestine. I also saw hammer and sickle flags flying. I also saw people who looked like normies holding signs identifying themselves as anti fascist.

The politics of these marches aren’t what I wish they were, but if you’re not using them as an opportunity to build community and educate, then you’re missing what should be the point for us True Leftists and Correct Opinion Holders.

[–] Incremental_anarchist@hexbear.net 18 points 4 days ago (1 children)

yeah, no kings if nothing else did successfully mobilize millions of first time protestors, which is nothing to scoff at imo. If even a tiny fraction of them look into local orgs or otherwise continue engaging with their community, then imo no kings at least did some good. Better than just waiting for the revolution to happen by itself.

also fwiw peaceful revolutions are said to require 3.5% of the country to mobilize, and today over 2% of the population mobilized (estimated ofc). Sure they didn't have concrete demands (nor would a one day protest achieve them anyways) but I think it mobilizing so many who oppose the current administration is still quite significant.

[–] WIIHAPPYFEW@hexbear.net 10 points 3 days ago

Pretty sure it’s only that low bc the ones that toppled governments either had immediate backing from major powers (every mid 00s color revolution) or went after governments with low legitimacy to begin with (80s Philippines and ROK)

Same study also said that revolutions without violence were twice as successful as violent ones, which I feel is attributable to most of those nonviolent revolutions being in the gorby era warsaw pact where they were both internationally encouraged and going up against governments in preexisting crises, as well as violent revolutions usually taking the forms of coups, which can be highly fragile

[–] Maeve@kbin.earth 12 points 4 days ago

Community building and education is a great idea. With so many people, someone is bound to be interested in building a party.

[–] dead@hexbear.net 25 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

I don't think that the No Kings protests are meant to be a show of force or at least not a successful show of force. The real use of the event is meeting people and joining organizations. The organizations are the resistance against oppression. If you go there and don't make any connections, then yeah it's probably a waste of time.

Trump's biggest complaint about the No Kings protest is that people had matching printed signs. Trump says that matching printed signs are an indication that the protesters are payed protesters.

Who actually has printed signs? Organizations have printed signs, ie PSL, Jewish Voice for Peace, etc. Trump recognizes that organizations are powerful, so he makes up conspiracy theories about them, so that he can prosecute and attack the organizations.

There were Rapid Response organizations at the No Kings protests to recruit new members. Rapid Response organizations are groups which are forming to protect undocumented people from ICE.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_response_team_(resistance_movement)

The No Kings protests can be useful if you organize with people at them.

[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 19 points 4 days ago

The real use of the event is meeting people and joining organizations.

The use for communists is that.

The use the libs have in mind is purely electoral. They aren't protests, they are electoral rallies masquerading as protest.

[–] LangleyDominos@hexbear.net 18 points 3 days ago

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.

[–] Carl@hexbear.net 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

My area is very libertarian, so I got to see the rare "right wing no kings protest" from guys who are mad that Trump hasn't legalized weed like they thought he would back in 2016

[–] ThermonuclearEgg@hexbear.net 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Bit idea: the-democrat counterprotesting that Trump is a peaceful democratic leader who gave them the 2018 farm bill

[–] VILenin@hexbear.net 5 points 3 days ago

Remember when libs celebrated SDPD calling them good boys for being so docile? lol