How would you protest without turning people against you
How would you protest without turning people against you
We’ve all seen the JSO protests in various events. I’d like to think a good number of people here agree with the point they are making while being uncomfortable about the way they make the point.
I for one would not run into the field in Twickenham in the middle of the final. There is no cause in the world that would make me run into a professional Rugby front row.
Putting that to one side, how would you protest to make people really stop and think without annoying them to a point where your message suffers.
Future generations listening to the elders tell stories about the luxuries we had in the long ago Peak Times and all the true and right warnings we had, might wonder why we weren't blowing up more pipelines or oil company executives.
I'm old and will be dead before the worst of it (probably in a heatwave in the next decade) but young people today are going to see everything fall and I wonder if they're angry enough yet.
I'm 29 and angry but to a point of hopelessness. Sometimes I have conversations and there's only me that seems angry so then I doubt myself. Then I wonder even if I wanted to change anything what could I even do, it'd be just as productive screaming at a brick wall.
The countries fucked and at this point I just hope I can keep feeding my family long enough to make it to my grave naturally.
I’m 29 and angry but to a point of hopelessness.
One of the Kennedy descendants was on the radio earlier saying that "the antidote for cynicism is activism". There's plenty of ways to get involved and you can chose your level of engagement: Greenpeace, JSO, Extinction Rebellion. We can argue until the cows come home about the effectiveness of activism but CND certainly helped keep the issue of nuclear disarmament at the forefront of people's minds until the end of the Cold War (and beyond), which I think most people would agree was important.
Sometimes I have conversations and there’s only me that seems angry so then I doubt myself.
Perhaps what you should be doing is shaking them out of their apathy.
Then I wonder even if I wanted to change anything what could I even do, it’d be just as productive screaming at a brick wall.
The only guarantee is that if you do nothing it won't make a difference. Collective action relies on numbers.
The countries fucked and at this point I just hope I can keep feeding my family long enough to make it to my grave naturally.
But then what about your kids? You may get out before it gets really bad but they will see flooding and desertification displacing huge numbers of people with knock-on effects everywhere (political instability, wars fought for resources, etc, etc). Will you be able to look them (and possible grandchildren) in the eye and say you did nothing?
Like it or not what they're doing is working. People are talking about this more and more. It doesn't matter that they're saying JSO after fucking idiots. Eventually people will be putting pressure on elected officials to do more. So in that sense protest works.
how would you protest to make people really stop and think without annoying them
You don't. That's not protest. That's campaigning. Both have their place. Both work.
Exactly. You don't raise anywhere near as much awareness handing out flyers at the racecourse, as you do running in front of the royal horse.
But you can and they have been doing. They've been blockading the entrances to refineries. I've not heard anyone but right wingers and/or climate denialists complain about that. Honestly the pacifism is what I find the most annoying but we don't exactly have the capability or laws to "cop watch" like the Black Panthers did.
How do you do it successfully? You don't.
It's the same playbook that many successful movements use, having two groups with one extreme and one "moderate".
Suffragette and suffragists, black panther and MLK. Look at Peta, most people can kinda sorta agree with the general gist but find them extreme, but it opens the door for people to form groups that look out for animal welfare and "aren't those crazy people".
It's moving the centre, opening the door for anti-oil groups who aren't extreme, who wouldn't previously be engaged because they were fringe. Now they aren't the fringe crazies.