• shiftymccool@piefed.caBanned from community
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      17 hours ago

      I would happily hit a fascist with my car for no more reason but being within swerving distance but i will also just as happily hit an anti-fascist if they block the road, keeping me from my livelihood. I’m not the target of your protest, get out of my fucking way

      • MerryJaneDoe@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        11 hours ago

        I’d feel the same way. And yet…it’s still effective.

        “Why were you late?”

        “Protesters.”

        “What were they protesting?”

        And just like that, the conversation has started.

        • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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          7 hours ago

          Yes, indeed. The conversation has started. But what conversation are they having? You seem to think they are talking about the cause being protested.

          They aren’t.

          They’re talking about the need for increased police powers to prevent such “anti-social” behavior. They’re supporting broad, authoritarian legislation specifically because it includes provisions against the kind of “protests” that make them late to work, late getting home, late picking up their kids from school, late to their doctors appointments.

          The net effect of blocking general traffic is increased support for authoritarianism, and greater tolerance for brutality against demonstrators, as we saw from tribal police in Nevada three years ago.

          The conversations you want people to be having only come when your protest narrowly targets the people doing the oppressing. When you’re intention is nothing more than pissing off their victims, you distract them from taking effective action, not focus their attention.

          • MerryJaneDoe@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            6 hours ago

            Yes, protests can be inconvenient. Freedom is messy.

            The people who view protesting as “anti-social” aren’t ever going to join your cause. They don’t care about freedom, they care about safety and security.

            • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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              6 hours ago

              There is a big difference between creating an incidental inconvenience, (such as by assembling 10,000 people whose mere presence disrupts traffic patterns around the protest site) and deliberately targeting fellow victims of oppression (such as by assembling a few dozen people to obstruct thousands on a freeway).

              The former is a great way to protest. The latter is counterproductive.

              If those few dozen people move their obstructive protest from the freeway to the driveway of the richest person in town, they get the same media coverage and motivate hundreds to come out and join them.

        • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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          7 hours ago

          And I don’t think you know how to protest. Hint: When the public walks away more pissed off about you than about your cause, your protest has failed. You have distracted the public away from your cause, not supported it.

          Instead of legislation in support of your cause, they are backing legislation against you.

      • Greyscale@lemmy.sdf.org
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        15 hours ago

        You do know that if you’re protesting in a gated community, nobody will be home?

        And nobody will care.

        • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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          10 hours ago

          Picketing that community. Blocking that community. No rich cunts in, no rich cunts out. Disrupt the people who are creating the problems, not the general public just trying to go about their lives.