I’m pretty forgiving. But it’s not too much to ask “what are you trying to accomplish and how will this help?”
Trying to protest excessive use of fossil fuels by blockading gas stations makes sense. It’s maybe not the wisest move, since it’s likely to turn people against your cause, but it makes sense.
Trying to protest excessive use of fossil fuels by throwing soup at a painting doesn’t make sense. It’s just trolling.
I think about protests as marketing for your position. The commercial where they throw soup at a Van Gogh didn’t do it for me.
I do. Supporting wishy-washy campaigns is how goals go awry and innocent people get hurt. How hard is it to delineate your goals and set forth a reasonable plan that addresses those goals?
Throwing soup at paintings to address oil concerns is idiotic and will turn people against you and your cause. If you do anything other than stand in front of the Exxon Mobil building with a sign in your hand, then yes, I expect you to have a cohesive cause-and-effect demonstration.
If only everyone were calm and rational and not given to excess, surely the millennium would be upon us. I agree that some actions are unhelpful and that coherent connections between ends and means are important, but also recall Saul Alinsky’s observation that those who say I agree with your ends but not your means “always wind up on their ens without any means,” and often do not in agree with the ends. To expect hurt, angry, desperate people to be calm and patient and abiding to someone else’s sense of propriety is asking a lot from people who may be just learning the skills of protest and action. Would they benefit from training of the sort Training for Change gives? Link here: In times of rapid change, victory comes to those who train for it | Waging Nonviolence Absolutely. But I’d rather support even inchoate resistance than tell them to stay home: it’s a process.
Ironically enough, when the punk band DOA proclaimed “Theory minus action equals nothing,” my response was always “action minus theory means you do something stupid.” Somewhere in the middle is a better place.
First, I never said they should stay home and, second, these people are stretching the definition of “waging non-violence”.
That might be tricky for the ones at the museum, since it closes at night. The ones at the petrol station or the Aston Martin dealership are outside. Leave them glued to a wall for a little while. They’ll have to relieve themselves eventually. Maybe it’ll even rain.
I do wonder what their plan is. Do they have some solvent with them, or are they counting on the police to safely extract them?
But did you even hear about when they protested outside of a gas station or any of the other suggestions?
If the point is to make their voice heard, they succeeded. If the point is to make you agree with them, well, you aren’t going to no matter how they presented their message.
I’m not really a believer in “No publicity is bad publicity”. Having heard of them doesn’t help if I think supporting them is a waste of time, money and sanity due to their tactics. There’s likely a spot between “protested outside a gas station” and “vandalized fine art and glued their hands to walls” they’d be better off aiming for.
So, you will ignore the message if you don’t like how it’s delivered?
If enough people protest stupidly about climate change, will that fix it? IF not, then it’s really not about how the message was delivered, is it?
I’ll ignore the messengers if they don’t seem credible and act like chucklefucks. There’s a bajillion people trying to get messages to me daily, gotta start the filtering process somewhere. I’m generally in favor of combatting global warming, etc but I couldn’t tell you the nuances of these guys’ stance nor do I care. If I’m going to listen to someone on the topic it’ll be someone with more common sense than throwing soup in museums.
Their stunt failed to make me any more educated or motivated about global warming but it did convince me that these aren’t the people I want to listen to on the topic.
Yeah, the message behind the protests at gas station was clear: “Fight global warming by buying less gas!”. The message behind the van Gogh protest was… fight global warming by vandalizing art?
If lots and lots of people decided to fight global warming, that’d be good… unless they tried to fight it by doing stupid irrelevant stuff. Then it wouldn’t be good.
Not that I condone their actions, but I believe their idea ( art vandalizers) was to bring attention to the issue by doing something that got them in the news.
So, who do you listen to on the topic?
Exactly. We are talking about them, their cause, their reasons. Would we be doing that if they had stood outside their local Exxon-Mobile station with some signs?
Sure, what they did was stupid, but what they were doing was completely ineffective.
But once they “get in the news” they have to have a call to action, don’t they? Often it’s to just get an issue into the public eye, but there’s not too many of us who don’t know about the global climate change issue. So, they’re against it. I’m against it too. If I wasn’t against it, this wouldn’t help turn me to their side. If I am already against it, I still don’t know what they expect me to do. So, I’m comfortable saying this was a stupid way to protest. (I won’t be too hard on them, as I once chained myself to a fence at an Air Force base to protest US policies in Central America.)
Hey, I don’t condone it, but it’s obvious what their immidiate goal was.
Generally scientifically-leaning media though a fair amount seeps through more traditional news media as well.
Honestly, not really. I mean, you’re trying to press it to make some point (that I disagree with) but most people are just “lol those guys are dumb” and going on with their day. At most, making a mental note to ignore any fundraising emails from Just Stop Oil because you don’t want to pay for their next can of soup. Hell, we’re not even actually having a conversation about climate change or oil, we’re just talking about whether or not throwing soup is an effective messaging tactic. They could have been protesting Russia or mink coats or revenge porn or LGBT education for all their actual message has mattered for the past 36 posts. So how was it effective?
It all comes down to the messege printed on their t-shirts when they’re on TV. These guys were, what, Soy Bomb right?
No, but I will ignore these idiots and contributing to anything they are involved with. Do you honestly think they are delivering a message to anyone that isn’t already aware of it? There’s probably not a single person who hears of their antics that isn’t aware of the climate crisis. The notion that some in this thread hold (“they are a wee bit misguided or naïve - but they mean well”) is disingenuous - these people are bullies and criminals. They are like toddlers who throw tantrums and break shit because they don’t get their way.
And what are they expecting me to do exactly? Where is that message? Breaking other people’s stuff and getting arrested doesn’t tell me what I should do to help. Further, backing and empowering a militant group could very well turn into a “new boss, same as the old boss” situation.
There are hundreds of stunts they could pull that would garner the same exposure without damaging other people’s property that could end in a press conference explaining their concerns and what I could do to help.
Not to me it’s not. Get arrested? As Jophiel said, “Their stunt failed to make me any more educated or motivated about global warming”. Everyone has heard of global warming. Everyone knows it’s wrecking the planet. Set out a plan to fix it.
Do they even have a plan? I’ve listened to several of them screed on while they had the media’s attention. So far, I haven’t heard them offer solutions.
No. They wanted to get on tv. Whatever.
(Do you really think this is very complicated??)