Curiously enough, civil protest also relies on wearing people down. But it relies on defiance.
Blue state governors should mobilize every piece of heavy equipment in the Department of Transportation into convoys that slowly parade around ICE buildings, then blockade traffic wuth “construction” sites when ICE vehicles try to leave.
Right idea, wrong scale. You need tens of thousands of people surrounding ICE facilities. Flood the streets around them. Make it impossible for agents in the facility to leave, and for agents outside to get in.
Yes, people will get arrested, and some will get hurt. But they don’t have the resources to arrest 50,000 people. They’re struggling to meet 3000 arrests every day nation-wide. Take a page from Bannon and “Flood the zone”.
Over Thanksgiving?
We haven’t the preparation to pull that off yet. People need to see their families; and a whole shitload of them need to travel further to get there than they can do without spending money, and can’t just do it at another time.
I think the idea is that it’ll cause businesses to lose their Black Friday and Cyber Monday income.
But I’m not entirely sure, it’s just something I see popping up here and there. I have no idea if it has enough of a following to actually to even be noticed, much less move the needle. Even ignoring traveling, a lot of people have no interest in losing out on those sales and having to move their Christmas shopping at least a week in one direction or the other.
I know one of the things I saw somewhere mentioned that you should do your regular shopping at local/small businesses during that time to keep them afloat. I’m glad they mentioned it and if this movement picks up steam, I hope they keep mentioning it. One of the difficult things about being a small business is that we often get lumped in with big businesses and a place like mine, with 15ish employees, is fundamentally different than a place with 100s or 1000s of employees. Not only would losing a week of income be a huge problem for a small place like mine, many of them either won’t survive or take weeks or months to recover. Plus, little places like us have about as much influence in politics as random individual.
This is definitely a good idea, whatever else is going on. But people who have to travel in order to see their families at one of the few times many people can, while they may be able to do so at both ends of the journey, may not be able to do so enroute.
This sort of sentimentality about personal “needs” is why nothing is being accomplished. This isn’t a game where you can hit Pause to go the bathroom. And other people aren’t going to do the necessary so you can have a comfortable life. This really is All or Nothing, and we’re still far too close to Nothing.
nota bene – this is one point of view. It may or may not be my point of view, but it does seem to be the one behind several of the posters in this and other threads. One thing at least I can agree with: either be a leader in action, or shut up about it.
Gandhi! Please get it right!
Ghandi is a legit name in Persian, completely unrelated to Gandhi. It’s the name of a World Cup footballer or something like that. All the more reason not to confuse the two.
When typing the above, I noticed the red squiggle under “Ghandi,” being unrecognized by the spell checker. Too bad for soccer fans, but you’d think it would help Gandhi be spelled right.
Here is a courageous act of resistance.
Apropos of which, I’m now seeing messages for people to cancel their Spotify subscriptions while Spotify is carrying recruitment ads for ICE.
You want lots and lots of people to show up at whatever the next action is? Or do you want to make big announcements about it and then have it fizzle into almost nothing?
There may be a point at which massive numbers of Americans will all stay home and buy nothing for a week that includes Thanksgiving. That point is not now. Trying to schedule that for the next action would only make us look like fools.
I agree with the OP, but there needs to be a direction, a plan, a leader, or something to coalesce around. Anarchy, whilst potentially satisfying, plays right into Steven Millers arms. Me thinks the government shut down to protect medicare coverage of an awful lot of Americans is not a bad first battle to try win. And winning begets winning. And there will be many more government funding battles to pick a single issue to win.
First off, don’t take the bait that helps “justify” troops in the streets or “it’s an insurrection.”
Second, point and laugh. Portland ICE facility protests with Frogs, furries and inflatables. Inflatable chicken ruined Kristi Noems photo-op.
Third, avoid performative protests. The pussy bow march on Washington for Trump 1.0 didn’t accomplish anything.
Fourth, No Kings is building a database, getting people who have never protested before to come out. Baby steps. And there were thousands of protests. Be really nice if the NY Times or someone did a fully researched investigative report on just how widespread and how attended No Kings was across the nation.
Fifth, build coalitions on a single issue with those that don’t agree with you. One example might be personal rights of all Americans, including the right to arm bears but by the same token the right of women to control their bodies. These are both personal rights. Maybe not the best example but find common ground. Maybe that parents of minors are the ones to make medical decisions (and not the government), which also can include puberty blockers.
While we could get there, we are no-where near the bad craziness that went on in the 60’s (political assassinations of MLK and Bobby, huge demonstrations and riots, the Chicago DNC, ad nauseum).
My two cents
Yeah, I’m gonna say “whoosh.”
No, not like that. Not at all. Talk about confused messaging.
We’re talking about anti-Trump protesting and resistance, not vaguely anti-capitalist nonsense talking about mega businesses and locally owned businesses.
I think protesting isn’t going to do squat directly as far as the Trump Administration is concerned. If anything, it validates that what they’re doing is pissing off the liberals. ESPECIALLY if it’s the usual suspects at the protests with long hair, tie-dye, Mexican flags, snarky signs, and all that stuff. They’re who they WANT protesting and who they enjoy irritating.
The only way it helps is if it sways attitudes on the part of the casual voters (whoever they are) who are undecided about party at this point, or those dickheads who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Biden as a vote against Trump because Biden wasn’t ideologically pure enough/liberal enough or whatever, and just stayed home on election day. Those are the people who need to be grilled over a slow fire, FWIW.
Harris. How soon we forget.
‘Tisn’t.
I mean, they’re there (or sort of, I’ve only heard of Mexican flags at a few places where they were specifically relevant, and I haven’t seen tie-dye at a protest since the ‘70’s); but mostly I’ve seen a shitload of veterans waving flags, mixed with a widely varied batch of other citizens.
Whoever. The point wasn’t that it was Harris or Biden, it was that they wouldn’t vote for an insufficiently progressive candidate, so they stayed home, instead of just gritting their teeth and voting against Trump.
Maybe it’s media coverage, or something local to Texas, but every protest I’ve seen since about 2015 is rife with those sorts, especially the snarky signs. And there’s always someone waving a Mexican flag, presumably as some sort of anti-ICE/pro-immigrant thing, but it always gives a bad look; to many, that looks like “We support lawbreaking immigrants instead of enforcing the laws of the land.”, which turns a lot of people straight off of their message.
My point is that protests are about optics primarily, and the optics are terrible on the Democrat/anti-Trump ones unless you’re already on that side of things anyway. In which case it’s preaching to the choir.
The demographics at the No Kings protests are almost indistinguishable from the Tea Party rallies 15 years ago; old and white. The snarky signs are just a reflection of the fact that the highest visibility Trump opponents are TV comedians and the fact that Trump and MAGA are so fucking ridiculous to almost everybody outside their bubble.
Moderating:
Calls to action. Political advocacy and other calls to action are permitted on this board, subject to the rules below:
- No advocacy of harassment, violence or lawbreaking. Do not advocate or encourage harassment, violence or lawbreaking (including civil disobedience) as a form of protest or for any other reason. See Harassment and abuse.
- No fundraising appeals without prior permission. See Fundraising appeals.
- No Spam. Notices or appeals posted by bots or individuals who appear to have registered solely to advertise a cause, event, etc., will be considered spam and removed, and the poster will be banned without notice.
- Do not post private contact information. See Privacy.
I’m going to redact part of your post. No warning issued though.
From the beginning of Trump’s second term and his restarting of the endless trolling and fucking around that we knew would happen and the mean-dumb people wanted to happen, people on our side have been wringing their hands and saying, “Why won’t Democratic leadership do something?!” or expressing sentiments like that of the OP.
Which is fine as far as it goes, but in order for all that to be more than “fine,” we need to ask and answer a key question: What are we trying to accomplish (with protests, the government shutdown, etc.), and in what frame of reference? While we are at it, we should ask the same question with respect to our opponents.
Thus, with respect to our side:
- Are we trying to win, say, the 2026 midterm elections and gain more power and defeat Trump and the fascists within the system as it currently stands (frame of reference)?
- Are we trying to trigger a Trump resignation or some other form of administration collapse within the system as it currently stands?
- Are we trying to trigger an administration collapse outside the norms of the current system but then go back to the current system?
- Are we trying to trigger an actual revolution, i.e., overthrow the current system?
With respect to our opponents, we don’t have to ask the same questions, as I think the answers are clear:
Intentions: They don’t even know themselves. Trump lives in the current moment like an animal and has no vision for the future. His inner circle and Republicans in general don’t seem to agree on anything in particular.
Frame of reference: Pretend that the current system exists and will continue to exist while ignoring all of its norms, safeguards, checks and balances, etc., insofar as possible.
I’ve written about this elsewhere on the Dope, but Trumpism is an incompetent fascist insurgency that has already failed to establish total control and will continue to fail. It’s doing incredible damage to the system, of course, mainly IMO by having coopted and destroyed one of the two main political parties and extirpating what little trust in and enthusiasm for government that remained on the part of the American people. Trump has hacked the federal government for his own benefit and some plain old kicks, shown how easy it actually is, really, and any president of ill will and bad character will feel emboldened to follow in his footsteps in the future.
Our system is done and destroyed. Both sides hate it, deprecate it, and disrespect it for overlapping but somewhat different reasons. Therefore, our long-term intention should be, IMHO, to leverage the current and expanding failure of Trumpism to guide our polity and economic system toward better and more just forms: i.e., a careful and slow-moving r/evolution. This is where the protests and and all political activity should head, though the time is not right for the Democratic party to declare this intention, and it is probably the wrong institution for it anyway.
But there’s one key fact upon which all of the above must be predicated: Trump is sliding very quickly toward incapacity and death. Once he goes, Trumpism will be very weak indeed, and we should save most of our energy and effort for that time while planning very well and carefully for it.