*In Oakland??? * That’s where this started, remember.
The other thing that comes to mind if there are, in fact, people at these restaurants who are unfamiliar with the recent police shootings is: These protests are not really educational. The protesters are simply saying: The police shot this guy, and we don’t think they should have. The diners, who presumably are so far off the information grid that they were unaware of recent cop shootings, would then have to go home and then do some individual research to determine if they actually agree with the protestors or not. I suppose they might have a smart phone and try to educate themselves at the restaurant, but that seems unlikely. The protestors, themselves are advocates, and I wouldn’t trust them to give an unbiased account of events.
It seems to me that these protests are more cathartic for the protestors than anything else. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but still they’re not likely to help affect change.
I read an article recently, which I wish I could find again, that suggested that for any given issue, one could be reasonable and ignored or unreasonable and talked about. One example given was that vegan outreach did normal, non-obnoxious things to spread the message that factory farming was bad. And indeed, if you corner someone, and ask them about factory farming, they will likely agree that it is bad. However, most people haven’t heard of Vegan Outreach, and don’t talk about the evils of factory farming on their own initiative. On the other hand, there’s PETA, who gets talked about all the time, but it’s due to their obnoxious stunts, and it is hard to believe they are converting anyone to veganism
I do not know if there’s a sweet spot of reasonable enough to be liked, but obnoxious enough to be talked about, but it is a tough line to walk.
I’m just not that crazy about breakfast food. I’d rather have an early lunch, then another lunch. Plus, I’m not crazy about getting out of my PJs just to eat.
I’m middle aged. I don’t see how it matters, since brunch isn’t some hot thing with the kids or dwindling along with the old folks.
You don’t like breakfast food?!? But…bacon! And French toast! And…bacon! And you can sleep in until 2 or even 3pm if you get it at brunch. Surely you’re out of your pj’s by then!
And that’s why the protests are okay, because there are people who think the protesters should not be heard because they don’t want to hear about it. And it shows that, if you value an orderly society, you’re going to have to listen to them to get peace, because until their cause is dealt with, society won’t be orderly. The only way this sort of thing stops is if you actually at least make some noises about fixing the problem.
It’s the parable of the Importunate Neighbor. Keep bugging people until they do something about it. Even the most immoral person will give in if you are insistent enough. It’s how every civil rights issue has ever worked. It would be nice if you could sit down and convince people, but when they don’t view you as legitimate people, that doesn’t work.
Silly goose, bacon is an anytime food, not just for breakfast. French toast is nice every once in awhile, but it’s served anytime I desire it at home.
And on Sundays (which I understand is a big brunch day), I very likely may stay in my pj’s until it’s time to go get cigarettes - that could be as late as Monday. Shoes aren’t likely to happen unless I have to mow, or it’s freezing outside.
But what are people eating brunch supposed to do about the problem? Why the assumption that brunch eaters have control over what the police do, just because they’re white?
I can think of several things to do about people trespassing on private property other than take them seriously, or pretending there is something I can or should do about whatever they are whining about.
I don’t see their complaint as legitimate, so disrupting brunch isn’t going to work either.
That’s the difference - Jim Crow was an actual injustice, that a majority of Americans could recognize as an injustice and therefore didn’t need to be annoyed into action. The annoying parts of the civil rights movement didn’t “work” - the Black Panthers (to take an extreme example) achieved nothing, while the moral authority MLK exerted did. And that is something white society could do something about.
With this kind of thing, it is much less the case that white society can or should care. This is basically a media fad of the moment - next year there will be some other cause de jour and the leftwing fruitcakes will be pitching fits over that. Like I said, of the list of names these bozos are blocking the buffet so they can read, I expect 90+% of the names are going to be cases like Michael “You Are Too Big A Pussy to Shoot My Lard-Laden Ass” Brown. Or the kid in Cleveland. Yes, it is a shame he got shot, but it wasn’t white racism so much as teaching kids not to pretend they’re Wyatt fricking Earp when the police tell you to put up your hands.
This thing will peter out in a month or so, like Occupy, or PETA and that damn Snow the Wonder Chicken who just wanted to be Free and wound up barbecued instead, but in the meantime it isn’t going to achieve anything but mediocre improv comedy.
Or else they’ll try to disrupt brunch someplace outside the liberal bubble, and find themselves nose down in the alley behind the restaurant amid the potato peelings.
Mrs. J. and I were speculating about the likelihood that there would be a brunch-style protest at our favorite Mexican restaurant hangout.
We realized that apart from the fact that the place doesn’t serve brunch, its clientele runs heavily to the sort of people likely to wind up shooting or getting shot at by cops, so a protest there wouldn’t make much sense.
The lunch counter sit-ins were definitely annoying, but they were directly related to the issue being protested. Walking into a restaurant and reading off a list of names only tells the customers that these particular people find the killings objectionable. If the patrons have not already made up their minds, how are they to decide whether they agree with the protestors or not? It’s like the protestors are giving the customers a homework assignment that few, if any, are going to do.
This is a good point, and why I’m not sure how comparable these are to the lunch counter sit-ins… at the lunch counters, they were directly protesting behavior of the businesses that owned the lunch counters. In these cases, they’re not protesting anything about the restaurant or even the patrons.
So I’m not sure if these are good tactics or not, but the fact that they’re “annoying” doesn’t have any relevance to whether they’re good protest tactics or not, IMO.
Well, that’s kind of the point. The lunch counter people were fuckwads, and the people who patronized the lunch counters were enabling their behavior. Restaurants serving brunch have no more connection with police brutality than any other randomly selected business. A more effective protest site would be a police station. Or government buildings. Or prisons.
Annoying in the same way as interrupting brunch to read a list of people who were shot for resisting arrest? NAFAICT.
As several have mentioned, the protests of the 60s had much more directly to do with the inustices being imposed. Lunch counter sit-ins were against segregated restaurants. Voter registration drives took place in states where blacks were being excluded from voting. The March on Washington took place in the public square. School desegregation happened in public schools.
It’s one thing to be annoying to institutions who are creating injustice. Saying “We interrupt this brunch to waste your time complaining about something you didn’t do and can’t change anyway” is another.
