I’ve seen this movie many times before. Liberal groups draw huge numbers, make huge headlines, and then they go home and nothing changes. Contrast that to the Tea Party, which had merely okay numbers but sent 70 Tea Party Congressmen to Washington and changed everything.
If this is intended as nothing more than an expressive gesture, then I apologize and will move on, but the media is reporting this as if it really, really matters and portends something important to come.
So is something supposed to happen here once the marches end? Or are the marches the end in themselves?
Do you think the Tea Party knew what would happen when they began protests? As in, did they have the specific intention to drive the country off a cliff, or were they just speaking their mind?
“Speaking their mind” involved pressuring Republicans to do what they wanted, and punishing those Republicans who didn’t. Until a willingness to fire Democratic incumbents is manifested, even at the risk of losing seats to Republicans as a result, nothing is actually going to happen. That will always be Democrats’ weakness. They can’t get people to vote consisently in general elections, and they are afraid to pull the trigger on incumbents in primaries.
The march organizers also squandered their chance to appeal beyond the liberal base by caving into liberal activist group’s pressure to exclude a pro-life group from sponsorship.
“Tea Party is successful because they are willing to alienate mainstream Republicans. Liberals will fail because they are willing to alienate pro-lifers.”
I’m never quite sure if to see the irony of these types of statements?
I think you misunderstand. A movement can work by changing a party from within, or by widening support for a cause. These marches fail at both. The first, because Democrats never translate these movements into actual political action, and the second, because they went out of their way to alienate non-liberal women.
Civil rights policy changes were bipartisan, and civil rights marches welcomed everyone(except for some of the radical ones).
Since then, we’ve seen the anti-war marches and Occupy Wall Street and it’s neither changed the Democrats nor defeated Republicans. I’m curious as to how these marches are supposed to do one of those things.
A big and underappreciated part of the marches yesterday was to build liberal morale, which has been pretty low (obviously). Based on how upbeat and optimistic the protesters I saw yesterday were, I think it succeeded in this goal.
Other goals are to just express discontent and opposition to the terrible things Trump (and many other Republicans) have said or promised for the future.
Yesterdays’ marches were a massive worldwide pep rally.
Today we start playing the game.
I have a genuine worry that folks will mistake the rally for the game, and if that happens, we’re gonna lose the game. But I also have some real optimism that folks won’t do that. There were people collecting money for causes; there were people organizing progressives to run for local office; there were people with contact information for our congressfolk.
My favorite line from any of the speeches was something like this, paraphrased:
I hope folks answer the question the right way. It’s not guaranteed; the game wasn’t even begun yesterday. But if folk convert the energy from that fuckin AWESOME rally into game, we’re gonna win.
It’s true. The parties were very different then: both the changes to them, and the opposition to them, comprised coalitions between Republicans and Democrats. Progressives in each party supported them, and conservatives in each party resisted them.
Civil rights marches for the LGBT community were bipartisan? Well, I suppose if there’s 10,000 Dems and a token number of Republicans, I guess that’s technically bipartisan. And there have been news stories about longtime Republicans joining in yesterday’s march.
I think it is a clever misdirection to call civil rights policy changes “bipartisan.” Conservatives, regardless of what party they belonged to, have a pretty consistent record of opposing civil rights policy changes for minorities.
Oh, I see, you think civil rights marches only happened in the '60s. I’m using the term civil rights to include civil rights generally, for all Americans, for which demonstrations have been going on for decades.
And being anti-Trump is bipartisan, and everyone was welcome to join the protest.
It’s in the news because it was a large protest at the swearing in of the President. As far as I know, this hasn’t happened before.
As for what it does, it’s just another reminder that Trump does not actually have the support of most of the nation, despite being elected. Notice there are no counter protests defending Trump. And he can’t get people to show up at his inauguration.
Occupy Wall Street accomplished nothing because its opposition successfully set the narrative that they were spoiled, privileged children just whining.
But we will continue to remind Trump that we hate him. In a perfect world, it would make him grow the fuck up. In the real world, he’ll lash out, and hopefully do things that will force even Republicans to agree he needs to be impeached.
As for the Tea Party–they didn’t get to put pressure on anyone until after the protests established their numbers. And, despite the narrative, Democratic politicians did feel the pressure of Occupy WallStreet. There’s a reason that there were appeals to them. Unfortunately, their opposition effectively neutered them by getting the police involved.
OWS still lives on through BLM, however. The cops’ actions to OWS made the ground ripe for an anti-cop protest. Where violence happens, since people aren’t listening to “peaceful protests.”
The same violence that led to the Civil Rights Movement working, despite the rewritten history pretending non-violence did everything. There’s the reminder that this other large march may get violent if they don’t listen.
Well speaking personally, I saw a lot of groups doing outreach at the local event yesterday. Myself, I work for a local labor federation, and was gathering emails and flyering for an upcoming organizing roundtable (“Trump is our president; now what do we do?”). Our goal is to really expand our tent beyond union members over the next six months-- get people who don’t belong to, or have never even considered working with, a union to walk through our doors. We’ll be training potential candidates for local office. Partnering with churches and faith groups to put pressure on politicians around issues as they come up. And directing our people to commit to serving at food pantries, women’s organizations, migrant service organizations, youth mentoring programs, etc.
What we’re hoping to accomplish around the excitement from yesterday: Keep people engaged around serving in areas that matter to them; partner with other groups to lobby; prepare progressive candidates for local and state-wide office. Hopefully things similar to this are happening elsewhere.
Let us make a distinction between “pro-life” and “anti-choice”. “Pro-life” is the phrase favored by those who are, indeed, “pro-life”, and their message could be summarized as “Please, don’t!”. It recognizes choice as the fundamental question, whether or not a human being owns their own person and is empowered to make choice about it. The message of “anti-choice” is “You shouldn’t, and we won’t let you!”. That is very different.
I expect that most of us pulling on this end of the rope are willing to accept the sincerity of people who are opposed to abortion, and respect their right to choose not to. But, of course! But when sincerity bleeds into authority, when that sincerity refuses to accept the right to choose…that is the line.
Personally, I have an atavistic and negative feeling about abortion, I don’t like it. But it isn’t my body, so it isn’t my choice, and that’s that. Period. Full stop.
(When I was a much younger fool, a dear friend of mine nearly died from a botched illegal abortion. She did not, but was rendered sterile, her choice vanished. Bless her heart, she became a pediatrician, she transformed the pig’s ear of horror to the silk purse of caring.
But never again. Never. I have nothing further to add.)
Actually, pro-choice encompasses your definition of pro-life. I’ve never met anyone who identified as pro-life that is as passive as you describe. Those folks who don’t want abortions and wish they didn’t occur, but recognize the right for self determination, are pro-choice.
I think the morale boost is a very good thing. Having people see that there are many others like them hopefully means that they’ll be able to come together and work with each other.
A lot of people were despairing when Trump won, thinking that America didn’t care about sexism or racism or just being decent, and that the majority of America supported Trump. The contrast between the crowd at the inauguration and at the protests show how there’s a lack of enthusiasm for Trump and a lot of enthusiasm to oppose him.
Right, I’m sure if there was a group of women who didn’t like abortions, and tried to decrease the number through supporting birth control and sex education and cheap day care, then that group would be quite welcome. But the group that was uninvited was against abortion and for restricting rights, so they were not welcome, just like if a group wanted to march that was against LGBT rights.
It’s already accomplished one goal, it is driving Trump further off the rails and putting his mental instability on display. Pressure like this will keep his approval rating in the basement, neutralizing his radical agenda as his behavior gets more and more bizarre.