Shutdown 315

You're entitled to disagree with both you and me (: but I'll continue thinking you've done the right thing.

Flat Earthers who show up at meetings of the Planetary Society should be shown the door.

Significant organizational differences, as well. Egypt has a much more nationalized economy. Also, a lot of these movements are managed at the grassroots level through networks of mosques.

Americans - particularly the terminally online liberals - hate religious organizations. They're mostly corporate hacks or gig workers. And they think half the people in their social media channel are either cops or tankies or cops posing as tankies.

How do you organize on those grounds?

I don’t disagree at all. I don’t live in the US but the ones I keep in touch with that do tell me their peers seem apathetic and unengaged. Which says a lot about how we got here.

They have nothing to do with the image but Workers Strike Back is having a conference to organize into a body that can make demands and negotiate in a general strike situation. They're getting major Union leaders to attend (Amazon, UAW, etc) so the resulting org should actually have sway. But the conference is open to anyone and they're welcoming anyone to join them. Info here: https://www.workersstrikeback.org/events/feb-2025-organizing-conference

Here are the demands from the site as of when I accessed it:

• Protection and permanent guarantee of civil rights for all

• Total government reform

• Publicly funded health care

• Adequate and accessible disability support and services

• A permanent solution to Homelessness, hunger and the housing crisis

• Respect and support for tribal Sovereignty and involvement with indigenous leadership for environmental action

• Enhanced enforcement of constitutional rights

• More power to american voters

Personally, I believe these are not specific enough. If I may be so bold, I'll rewrite them:

• Improved laws at the municipal, state, and federal levels to include LGBTQ persons as protected classes under anti-discrimination law, including explicit punishments for owners and minimum damages award amounts

• Replacing district-based voting with proportional representation for representatives at state and federal levels, first-past-the-post voting with either ranked choice voting or approval voting at municipal and state levels, and your state joining or better advertising if already joined the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact

• Single-payer healthcare at the federal level, including coverage of preventative treatment and protection for pre-existing conditions

• Clarified laws around enforcement of disability support, including failure modes to prevent dropping compliance and punishments scaling to the wealth of the offender, at the state level for physical locations and services and at the federal level for online services

• Funding and development of government housing and support for the unhoused, including mental health services, training for entering the workforce, training in financial hygiene, and addiction treatment, be it chemical (e.g. drugs) or behavioral (e.g. gambling)

• Clarified and improved enforcement of laws at the federal level for ensuring the sovereignty and support of indigenous peoples, including environmental protections in line with their beliefs, punishments for private entities including corporations that violate their sovereignty, and failsafes to prevent intentional lack of enforcement by government entities

• Incorporating government ethical norms into the US Constitution, closing loopholes that enable abuse of power, strengthening ethics review committees' power to remove individuals using government power unethical, creating federal and state level departmental entities enshrined in law to ensure constitutionally granted rights

• Explicitly excluding corporations and similar non-individual entities from contributing campaign funds to political candidates, outlawing lobbying, drastically increasing public political campaign funding based on a metric that scales with the economy, further limiting private funding for political campaign funding based on a metric that scales with the economy, defining independent entities for auditing and pursuing legal action against tampering with voting mechanisms including voters registration methods, ballot submission methods, and voter tampering methods - all via constitutional amendment

People can fix my grammar/typos. Yes, I know more specific demands are more difficult to acquire alignment on from broader audiences, but I think these would be palatable up most Americans.

However, I am realizing that my points above are too verbose for quick consumption. Via web media, maybe they could be hidden as expandable sections beneath the original bullet points

My friend, maybe edit the original post to include this? A lot of us remember how much support and visibility Occupy Wallstreet got and how ineffective it was due to lack of direction.

It's only my intuition, but I think it may be easier to get people onboard by listing demands/goals, even if they're only tentative.

With these kinds of things, we're asking people to do a lot of work. The lower we can make the initial barriers to entry, the more likely people are to consume enough info that they become more willing to put in effort. This means prioritizing headline information well, making graphics appealing, etc

All this said, I haven't organized this kind of stuff. I defer to those with demonstrable success in these things

Keep fighting the good fight <3

I suppose that's fair, there are just a lot of people here who are here because they quit traditional social media.

While the full list of demands is still being added to, discussed, edited and submitted to a legal expert, some of our basic demands are as follows:

Protection and permanent guarantee of civil rights for all

Total government reform

Publicly funded health care

Adequate and accessible disability support and services

A permanent solution to Homelessness, hunger and the housing crisis

Respect and support for tribal Sovereignty and involvement with indigenous leadership for environmental action

Enhanced enforcement of constitutional rights

More power to american voters

I hope they get their full demands sorted out. A protest without immediate actionable legal demands is pretty doomed from the start. Especially one that encourages it's protestors to give something up. Unless we can have a moment where we can see a politician sign something into law the end of the protest will be vague and mired in "negotiations" until people have had enough and decide they need to start making money again without anything of consequence being accomplished.

I think it's pretty interesting actually.

The top critic I'd point to, it's that for something so huge like that, it's needed a food chain which connects rural to urban areas established. That's the first thing.

After that other things can be looked up, like electricity, water supply, etc etc

Then a rupture with capitalist system can be created, but it needs to be understood that "nonviolent direct action" isn't an option! At the first trial on labor strikes, capitalists will crush it with all their forces and repression skill

Bring the kids to what? Be involved in what? I think the point is to stay home and not travel or spend money or work.

So? Gotta start somewhere. Blue collar are the guys that are gonna take the first hits, after all.

Yeah, hold up a sign outside of a state capital, sign up to volunteer with the DNC or with Bernie Sanders' organization, or print out some flyers for local Union organization steps and legal protections to put up at high traffic areas like rest stops and parks.

form an affinity group

Because its stupid not join forces and form a union. Jesus its a big enough task to motivate thr sorry losers in the shithole country nevermind if you tell them they can come in two weeks if today doesnt suit.

In general, people will not be able to keep their jobs after "protesting" twice in 2 weeks. Let's focus everyone's attention on just one event so the impact is greater.

I would expect that one bigger event would have more effect then several smaller ones

Seriously, I'm so sick of this "let's all just give up" attitude that people post whenever anyone brings up resistance of any kind to the US 'government' shenanigans. Some of it is from propaganda mills and trolls, some of it is just people who want to do absolutely nothing and then later say how they were right all along. It's lazy, self-defeating, and actively harmful.

If they want to give up, then the first thing they should give up is posting their drivel. They can go sit on the couch and watch Fox while reciting their favorite slurs to themselves.

I would argue you could stop going to work and stop giving them money today and people will catch on to that.

Your democracy is on the line how many more excuses do you want to make?

In order to get to "really disruptive" you start at "mildly disruptive". That's how movements work.

Name one time in history that actual meaningful change was not a direct result of violence in some way