The “disruptive protests are bad” people are straight garbage pieces of shit. You know what is disruptive? Blizzards in Florida, wildfires in California and Canada, and mass migrations of island people due to oceans rising. So go fuck yourselves with this “boo hoo traffic got held up a couple minutes “ bullshit you fucking pussies.
That's why protests in designated protest zones out of the eyelines and more importantly away from the profit operations of those being protested are an intentional and effective method of completely neutering protest.
We have protest in the US. It just doesn't mean anything anymore.
People hate protests even though they absolutely work because those people are for the status quo. I truly believe centrists are not actually on a line in between "right" and "left," but rather their own node so we all make a triangle. Much of what centrists believe are not anything like what the rest of us believe, but they are cowards who DESPERATELY want to be seen as the norm, as one of us by everyone (which is why they try to claim a "center" position, while the fascists and anti-fascists both recognize there is no middle ground between the two).
Centrism therefore should not be looked at as a mix of right and left, but as a mix of mainly centrist goals and thoughts. Teasing out centrism from the left will help us progress.
I think the key is who it is disruptive to. Blocking traffic just pisses off the average person. The decision makers don't care about the average person. You gotta disrupt the decision makers. But you also have to be prepared for them to fight back hard.
And these disruptions can be more than just an inconvenience. People can lose their jobs for being late. They can miss medical appointments and procedures.
The “disruptive protests are bad” people are straight garbage pieces of shit.
Strawman. There are no such people. You are mischaracterizing criticism of JSO methodology as criticism of their cause.
When you're protesting racism in February, 1960, do you plan a sit-in protest at a "Whites Only" diner? JSO methodology would have you picket a black-owned restaurant that caters to minorities, to "bring attention" to the problem. As if their audience had no clue that the problem existed.
When you're protesting homophobia in the 90s, do you attend a pride parade? Based on their current methodology, JSO would have slow-walk in front of a gay bar, to "bring attention" to discrimination on the basis of sexuality by disrupting attendance of that bar. As if their audience didn't already know that they were victims of homophobia.
If you're protesting the health insurance industry in the 2020s, do you "Occupy ERs", or do you Player 2 an insurance executive? Based in their current methodology, JSO would camp out in an ambulance bay, to "bring attention" to the plight of the sick and injured. As if patients didn't realize how badly they were being screwed by "insurers".
JSO (et al) is "disrupting" the general public instead of "disrupting" agents, subsidiaries, or beneficiaries of the oil industry. They are targeting the public as if the public has no clue that we are being screwed over.
JSO could be making just as big a spectacle, and bringing just as much attention to the problem by targeting gas stations, ICE car dealerships, and other public faces of the oil industry. Instead, they are "disrupting" fellow victims of that industry.
Yes, we need disruptive protests: we need the
oil industry to be disrupted.
The oil industry. Not the general public.
JSO should be driving a wedge between the transportation industry and the oil industry. Fuel stations are probably the most obvious: take action against any fuel station that doesn't offer EV charging. (Later, you can target "gas" stations that refuse to abandon there legacy pumps).
Car dealerships: target any dealer that doesn't have EVs front and center on their lots.
Muffler shops: drive them completely out of business; they shouldn't exist at all.
Some states have emission testing requirements that affect only the drivers of ICE vehicles. Disrupting the operation of testing centers prevents ICE vehicle owners from being able to register their vehicles.
The blockade power stations and airfield quite often.
But those ones barely make news, let alone front page news.
Also major motorways outside a large city is much more like marching your protestors down main street in Birmingham, US or marching on a capital city, getting those city centre shut down for Blacks and Whites alike than sitting in a Blacks only eatery.
They kind of have a point about blocking roads being ineffective, but for entirely the wrong reason. Having been stuck in traffic caused by protests blocking streets several times myself, I know that for most of the drivers, it's utterly indistinguishable from all the other traffic jams. Unless you're right up front to see what's causing it, it could very well just be another event at the fairgrounds, or one of the regularly-scheduled crashes.
Put another way, maybe driving is actually a protest against cars? It is pretty damn effective at blocking streets.
Except many of us who actually care about the cause say this because traffic delays and vandalizing paintings irritate the fuck out of people and set them against the cause of the protest. You can spew more profanity against for being like that if you wish, but it doesn’t change facts.
It’s like finding a way to stage a protest that just makes eggs more expensive. Yay protest! But don’t expect any good to come of it.
Many protests like that in Germany for a few years now. Mostly adolescent people from XR and FFF who tacked their hands to streets in neuralgic locations with superglue. They were one of the most hated groups by normies here and were compared to the 70s terror group RAF by politicians and boulevard media like BILD. Many videos in which good citizens forgot their temper and acted out in violent self justice when they feared to get late to work.
In 2023 the country wide farmer protests started and held the republic captive. Thousands of 5-10 ton tractors drove down the whole country to Berlin. They did a lot of terroristy things like loading huge manure dumps and logs in the midst of highways and their exits, controlling the IDs of drivers to only let essential staff through, putting liable anti-constitutional placards on their tractors, purposefully obstructing traffic in the cities and some of them from east-germany wanted to storm the parliament. People died, car accidents happened, ambulances and doctors were to late for operations, huge loads of GHGs were emitted and streets were destroyed.
All this because of the traffic light coalition wanted to cut subsidies for agrar fuels which was reverted pretty fast. Did the farmers stop then? Nope of course not. Went on for a few months. Those poor farmers couldn't afford to live without the precious subsidies but could afford to blow heaps of fuel and not working on their farms. A young farmer tried to prove to the public that they were essentially poor by showing his tax documents on the german finance subreddit. It didn't went well because he was rich. He deleted his post.
Now from the sentiment on social media you could get the impression that a lot of the normies who wanted to have the "Klimakleber" (climate gluers) jailed or worse, cheered for the poor hard working farmers even when the protest really went violent. I live rurally and boy let me tell you how those poor farmers have plastered their barns and houses with solar panels because of the politics of the greens and the subsidies from the EU.
Protest all you want. I'm not getting late to work because of you. I also care about the climate, but holding up traffic isn't going to get me on your side
That’s because you only care about the status quo. Congrats, you’re part of the problem. Remember that if you’re ever confronted with rising flood waters with your boss saying you can’t leave. Just repeat “ I want this”
You aren't going to join their side either way. You just care about getting to work on time. You only care about the climate as much as it affects your day to day life, so I wouldnt go around telling people I care about the climate if I was you.
Protest all you want. I’m not getting late to work because of you
So are you gonna plow through them? Sounds like a sane response to being late for work.
And if you care about the climate I have bad news - we would already be on the same side, but you only care up to the point that it will impact you personally, and that is why you suck.
Iirc they didn't even block the road. They hung signs and climbed into the poles above the road. The police blocked the road. This has all the energy of the police calling a protest a riot when they were the violent ones. They escalate it, blame the protestors, and people like you eat it up.
Get fucked you self-centered dickhead. Why go to work? What are you saving money for if it's in serious danger of burning down? Can you eat your cash if it becomes worthless?
If you want the protesters gone, vote for the party that will give in to their demands. You seem like a practical sort who only cares about results. Give them what they want and they'll go away.
This is one of those nuanced positions that it appears Lemmy users are incapable of understanding.
It's possible to simultaneously care about climate change and acknowledge that some protests are counter productive.
If you'd said "I don't like to stop at the altar to pray for climate change action on my way to work because it seems pointless" that would've been a statement.
I think the core problem is that the majority of people just don't care. The US just elected a president who will take no action. Protesting isn't going to make people care.
These protests are often enough extremely mild but get prosecuted like terrorist, while much more violent protests get a slap on the wrist at max.
Here in Germany, right wing farmers protested by illegally blocking entire cities with their tractors, much worse interruptions than the glued-to-the-street teenager, and they actually threatened violence. Yet, only a handful of them got any form of legal trouble, and that only for petty stuff.
Guess, which protesters threatened the status quo and which just wanted more money out of the system?
thats sort of similar to the Exxon Valdez spill and the Alaskan fisherman blockading their waters. It sort of went the same, the fisherman got a good deal, but then a few years later another judge changed the deal to fuck over the fisherman.
Little old lady spends 20 months in prison for blocking a main road and being mad at rich people.
President of the United States, insurrectionist, creep, man who suggested he'd got a Nazi to hack the elections, certified felon, spends ZERO months in prison and gets to have a party.
Some time ago a politician in my country announced they would start treating the people who protested at highways harsher. She said "people think these people are just protestors, but they're criminals"* and that they were "damaging the rule of law"*.
* Translated
Earlier on Tuesday, the College for Human Rights ruled that the right to demonstrate is "under serious pressure" due to the arrests of activists. They had called for the blockade of the important thoroughfare.
Yesilgöz does not respond to this criticism. She says that the Ministry of Justice and Security will look into it together with the Ministry of the Interior. The ministry is already looking into the right to demonstrate, about which reports have been published *2.
/* 2 They're currently looking into methods to restrict the right to demonstrate.
It's honestly really worrying how people just accept and even approve of these actions. It's not just because people are being inconvenienced, almost everyone I spoke to never noticed it themselves and that's honestly the scary part.
It was surreal to read about talk of extremism, social disruption and the calls for corporal punishment (by police), long jail sentences and more, all for a 5-10 minute delay caused by the A12 blockade, when the day after I was helping out at the Egmond Half Marathon there was real disruption, where people really couldn't go places with their cars... not to mention events like the Dam tot Damloop or Amsterdam Marathon that effectively put parts of our capital city on lockdown. No calls for water cannons there.
People might say "Those are not the same!" and that's true - sport events are not a constitutional right.
Yeah, sport events like that normally work with emergency services so that there are alternate or controlled routes for things like ambulances and fire trucks.
Meanwhile highway protests can block emergency services with no forethought. Imagine your parent died of a heart attack because EMS couldn't get past some people blocking a road in a protest meant to inconvenience the general public who mostly already agree with their overall goals.
There are states in America where it's legal to run over protestors.
They say it's only if the driver feels threaten but already had examples of drivers getting away after either driving though people leaving or going out of their way to drive into the protests so it looks like they're just trying to get away from the protestors as they run them over
Anyone who blocks roads to protest is just fucking with the little people. Go block billionaires driveways or their offices, don’t bother and piss off other regular people you want on your side
Many methods of protest should make normal people angry. That's the entire point. Protests exist to be disruptive.
Block a billionaire's driveway, and they fly to a private luxury penthouse and don't have to deal with you ever again.
Block major roads, and everybody realizes that the only way they're going to get to work on time in a consistent manner going forward is by actually satisfying your movement's demands, voting against oil company supporting politicians, demanding they stop subsidizing fossil fuels, etc.
Making one billionaire's life marginally harder won't convince them to change anything. Making thousands or even millions of people's lives harder on a regular basis until they collectively force the billionaires to stop will most certainly change something.
This argument is like if you demanded that during the Civil Rights Movement protests, nobody ever did sit-ins at restaurants because it would annoy the patrons, but wasn't going directly after the politicians involved. In actuality, that was a key driver of furthering the movement, because not only did it make it difficult to maintain white-only infrastructure without annoyance, thus causing some business owners to rescind their policies since it was more trouble than it's worth, but it also gave people who were more on the fence a prescient reason to stop being segregationist.
In this analogy, the restaurants are the roads, the patrons are the people driving in their cars, and the business owner is the government managing the roads.
Once it becomes more difficult to maintain the current status quo, instead of having functional roads by caving to public pressure and ending subsidies, stopping new fossil fuel development, and migrating to cleaner alternatives, then those exact changes will get implemented.
was sentenced to 20 months in prison for her participation in a climate protest on the M25 in 2022
This woman is one of the people that made me late to school in 2022. This woman directly inconvenienced my life and the lives of many other people who had much more dire consequences.
Yes. I am self centred. I demand basic rights to freedom be restricted, because these people did the same to thousands. I'm not going to decide not to go to school because a couple of hippies decided to do a protest
And me not going to school won't save the lives of billions of people. Such a braindead comment.
I don't know what it is about the British Isles but they produce some of the most bat shit insane takes I've ever read.
"This person made me late to school one time, so she should spend an extra month in prison." Like that is the most lead micromoles per litre of blood I've seen written in text.
If their school journey required driving along the M25 their school, was, odds on, a posh twuntian egoscape. They're from money and benefit hugely from the system, but don't see it because of all that hard work they have done at some point sucking on their silver spoon.
Us British plebs don't need to drive along the capital city's outer ring road to get to the local state school.