This is an actual conversation I had with my oldest nephew when we went to the Boston Tea Party Museum last week.
“If you ever hear people complaining that damaging commercial property during a protest is unacceptable, remember what you learn about the Tea Party today. Our country was literally founded on protests trashing commercial property. And remember that some people complained to them that it was unacceptable too.”
The tea wasn’t owned by the mom and pop shop neighbors who were also fighting for the same cause. There is a difference to me in a large corporation sustaining damage it will recoupe from insurance and people trying to scrape by and now can’t afford rent until the hopefully if they had insurance, then maybe a check comes in a few months.
Those places if a protestor breaks in during a riot I am fine with being shot at and even killed if need be. Your cause doesn’t give you the right to starve or put in jeopardy other people’s lives who did not choose to riot.
Case in point
Owners are owners. I can’t have too much sympathy if a group of disenfranchised people, who have never had the opportunity to own anything, don’t distinguish between hyper capitalists and regular vanilla capitalists. Both are pieces of the system that denies people the value of their labor.
That’s exactly what the government wants. They want you to eat each other not them and the corporations. Stop buying shit, stop paying for internet and cell service, stop buying cars etc. That’s the real control we have. Just be idle and watch them bail.
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What riots are you talking about, this discussion is about rioting needing to become more common, not a specific incident that already happened.
That said, the deadliest listed on a quick seaxh was 1947, between 500,000-2,000,000. (Punjab, located between Pakistan and India today)
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No, I said 500k to 2 mil were killed. Arguing against lives for the sake of arguing huh?
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I’m with you that it’s a crime that should be punished, but you lost me at murder.
What a fucking asshole. Maybe your position will change when it’s your property that’s being destroyed.
Destroying private property does not make politicians or police question their choices. It barely hurts them in any way. You know who it hurts? Your friends and neighbors who had abso-fucking-lutely nothing to do with whatever it is you’re upset about.
The Sons of Liberty only destroyed property that was directly responsible for their oppression.
You wanna go burn down the mayor’s house? The police commissioner’s house? The police union HQ? Have the fuck at it, you have my full support.
You wanna burn down the local convenience store or meat market? You wanna destroy vehicles and businesses that belong to your neighbors who are suffering alongside you? You’re human garbage.
Second verse, same as the first:
"IIt was the Sons of Liberty who ransacked houses of British officials. Threats and intimidation were their weapons against tax collectors, causing many to flee town. Images of unpopular figures might be hanged and burned in effigy on the town’s liberty tree.
Of course, the winners write the history books. Had the American Revolution failed, the Sons and Daughters of Liberty would no doubt be regarded as a band of thugs, or at the very least, outspoken troublemakers."
I’ll let Dr. King do the talking:
“A riot is the language of the unheard. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention”
“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White citizens’ “Councilor” or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direst action” who paternistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”
https://billofrightsinstitute.org/primary-sources/letter-from-birmingham-jail
Of course, the winners write the history books. Had the American Revolution failed, the Sons and Daughters of Liberty would no doubt be regarded as a band of thugs, or at the very least, outspoken troublemakers."
So then you agree?
“A riot is the language of the unheard. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again.”
Your mistake is conflating an explanation with a justification.
the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice
Maybe you glossed over the part where I supported disorder. The problem is with how and where (and not when, as you suggested) that disorder takes place.
Remind me: did they burn down or steal from MLK’s church?
Third verse, same as the first:
This is an actual conversation I had with my oldest nephew when we went to the Boston Tea Party Museum last week.
“If you ever hear people complaining that damaging commercial property during a protest is unacceptable, remember what you learn about the Tea Party today. Our country was literally founded on protests trashing commercial property. And remember that some people complained to them that it was unacceptable too.”
See also Dr. King:
“who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action” who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom”
Dude I think your record is broken. If you’re just going to repeat the same nonsense over and over without acknowledging my responses I can safely block you and move on with my day.
Bye son!
Historically inaccurate concern trolling. Nice.
Are you going to actually construct an argument against me or just throw up some fancy words you learned on the internet and bail?
Nah I don’t owe ya that lol. Next.
You don’t owe me your trolling either but you saw fit to put that on me regardless.
I’m not getting into how overly exaggerated incidents of property damage during the BLM protests were. You’re not interested in facts
Even Jefferson wrote how technically it wasn’t right for the colonists to destroy the tea, they had an agreeable reason for it.
Based take.
I swear, if you could teleport some people back to the French revolution, they’d be like “No need to protest, the king will give up absolute power on his own if we keep asking nicely” 🙄
The idea of a Right Wing literally exists because the deputies who thought that way in France back then took the right side of the chamber.
The French Revolution is way more complex and nuanced than that, and saying the people protested against the power of the king per se is really missing the point.
A better example would have been King Charles I and the English civil war.
Would be nice if we could start at not demonizing peaceful protests. Nowadays any protest is seen as a massive misguided problem of you so much as block a street.
But then muh car can’t move! Go defend your human rights somewhere where it doesn’t inconvenience me!
spoiler
/s
In fairness, I’ve got too many emergency workers in my family not to draw the line at fully blocking thoroughfares. Can you look an EMT in the eye who has had a patient die while their ambulence couldn’t get through protestors to the hospital and insist you’re in the right? Happens more than you’d want to know. Can’t find statistics, but googling it shows just page upon page of different incidents, and unfortunately most of the time shit like that happens it isn’t published since it’s all HIPAA-complicated to discuss that stuff.
You want to inconvenience someone walking into a Macdonalds? Go ahead. But keep the artery roads clear. It’s not about convenience, it’s about shutting down life-saving infrastructure. Those assholes that cemented themselves to 93N in Boston 5 years back didn’t earn any sympathy from anyone, even their own cause.
To simplify, the only way to get me not to stand beside you in defending your human rights is if you’re recklessly taking away someone else’s.
Good point. I was thinking more about people just driving in their cars, but I now see that I was a bit ignorant about emergency vehicles.
That’s why I replied. You seemed like you’d be receptive to that side of things.
Protest is complicated. The less you inconvenience people, the less effective it is. The more you inconvenience people, the more harm you can do and the more fence-sitters might find a good reason to challenge you. We shouldn’t NEED protests, but we do.
I think most of the time BLM is a great modern example of doing it right. It shows how much to take the “protesting is wrong” attitude with a grain of salt because so many good peaceful BLM rallies get painted as riots anyway. Yet through all the horseshit, progress.
Just progress with as few deaths as possible, if we can :)
Dang kids should do their climate strike on the weekends!
Not much of a strike then, is it? You want workers to strike in their free time too? That will show 'em!I like the spoiler XD
spoiler
I really do~
This. Even “liberals” are out here “PROTEST IS COOL AND ALL BUT DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY JUST MAKES EVERYONE HATE YOUR CAUSE” over a fucking sticker or sign stuck to something.
Riots are generally an escalation of peaceful protests, sure there are exceptions.
Usually, riots break out when people get so frustrated at the fact that no progress gets made during protests that they start to lash out.
I’m with Jesse on this one
We remember the reasonable ones positively, but it isn’t all of them. It’s important to remember that not all riots or protests are to create a more equitable society. Unite the right was a riot for example and one could easily call Mussolini’s march on rome a protest.
Even peaceful protesters like MLK said that “riots are the voice of the unheard”
Yeah, but assholes can riot too. Assholes can be unheard. One needs to listen to what a group is demanding and ask if their demands are for justice or for injustice. Sometimes a race riot is against racism, sometimes it’s against racialized people doing well in a racist society. Jan 6 was a riot. They felt unheard and made demands and used violence to get them. That’s bad. Stonewall was a bunch of people who felt unheard, made demands, and used violence to get them. That was good. The difference is that society was right for listening to the votes instead of conspiracy theories and society was wrong for sending cops to arrest gay people.
Speaking in terms of the USA, the constitution was built with the intended reasonable pursuit of escalating properly-to violence If need be. Peaceful protests, voting, freedom of speech, etc. are all avenues of reprimand towards an over reaching or overbearing government. Violence was seen as acceptable and even necessary in some cases but was never intended as a first resort.
This is why right to bear arms exists along with all the other approaches. Now it’s a matter or decision by the people of what methods have been exhausted, which are futile, and what is next.
Revolting, fighting, and force in the name of freedom from a truly oppressive government is a necessary sacrifice for any people who wish to live with the freedoms that brings regardless of nationality, location, or beliefs.
Clarifications: This is not against any government for any disagreement, just truly oppressive ones that strip human rights from the people.
Violence should never be a first resort, but has it’s place among negotiations.
Personal opinion: These means should not be used for ones own benefit, you are upset because of the ways of life for all the people, the rights of your people, there is a fair likelihood this method will result in a world you will never see or benefit significantly from, its for others; those that follow. How else would I be able to sit here and eat bugles if someone didn’t strive for a world good enough for me to do so?
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Violence should never be a first resort, but has it’s place among negotiations.
i agree in the abstract, i’m less sure in reality. SCOTUS makes an unpopular ruling that takes away right to abortion for half the country: doctors in affected areas feel the credible threat of violence “i’ll lose my home and i’ll be locked behind bars if i perform abortions”, but SCOTUS don’t feel any threat like that. they’re free to make millions worse off because they don’t really fear repercussions for it.
violence isn’t a first resort, but organized society as we know it depends on the credible threat of violence. if only one party feels that threat to be credible, then “negotiations” are one-sided. “demilitarize the police” is a great way to balance those threats of violence by reducing violence (yay), but failing that how else to make the side you’re negotiating with treat your threat of violence as credibly as you treat theirs other than to actually use violence?
my favorite is whenever i encounter the phrase “non-permitted protest”. like, the idea that you should ask permission from the authority you’re protesting before doing so: it’s just so laughably missing the point
Yep. Having to get permission from some authority in order to oppose the authority in question makes no sense.
“Here’s your free speech zone 6 blocks from the event you’re trying to protest behind a huge black curtain so nobody can see you”
Americans needs to fucking quit their jobs and go peotest. Your country is shit and sitting idly by and posting memes about it, wont solve anything
Look at france.
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Don’t equate the struggle for liberation and self-determination with a fascist coup attempt
You mean rejecting both popular and representative democracy by attempting to kidnap and execute Congress?
This isn’t some event in 1850 that you can pretend was about state’s rights or some bullshit like that, since you dumbasses recorded the event and voiced the motives yourselves. There wasn’t any goal of making America a better place to live, just pure spite to punish everyone who said no to an openly shitty demagogue. Fuckin’ pathetic.
Oh cool we’ve moved the goalposts from “it wasn’t a riot” to “it was a justified riot.”
LMAO.
🤡
You mean the attempted coup?
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Yep… People hate protests because they don’t understand that’s how it has always worked.
People hate protests because they value not being inconvenienced more than they value the rights of others.
Because people are tired of it. If people need to keep doing this over and over than I guess humanity is doomed.
We should just start calling riots championship football celebrations. Then the media and the pols would love them.
This isn’t a bad idea, Philly and West Virginia have this trademarked
When localities pass ordinances to restrict more peaceful protests, they run the risk of pressurizing into even more violent and illegal protest situations.
I try to explain this to my dad. Protest means that people are unhappy and feel like their voices aren’t being heard. People need to be motivated to do it. It’s an effect, not a cause.
When I was growing up I had a lot of right-wing influences in my ear; I almost grew up to be an alt-right/fascist psycho. I’ve reformed now, and I’m the polar opposite of where I was when I was younger, but I hope I can offer a little insight into why protest is so demonized: it’s because people don’t think it actually works.
Protests, riots, and other public shows of solidarity are viewed in the same way as a petition: it’s not going to actually get anything done, it’s just raising awareness and trying to get people to agree with you. This is, of course, a fundamental misunderstanding of what protest (or even petitions) are really about… But when I was in that mindset, I didn’t care to know more, and I didn’t bother to read into. There’s a great deal of cognitive dissonance regarding it, because historically-speaking, protests are typically lionized, i.e. the Boston Tea Party.
I’m not saying to sympathize either; being a fashy shithead is first and foremost a choice. I just hope this helps with understanding a bit more. ACAB, taxation is theft, keep fighting the good fight.
I don’t think protests work and sometimes I roll my eyes when I hear about them. But it’s just because I’m disillusioned, and far be it from me to stop anyone from trying.
As a Portlander, we had our fair share of riots… The problem is any lack of a coherent message.
Things would start off fine during the day with a Black Lives Matter protest, but as soon as the sun went down it became taken over by anarchist white kids who just wanted an excuse to break things and steal shit.
Not all protests are the same, and when you have people attacking an Historical Society for no good goddamn reason, that’s where you lose support:
Same for blocking streets and freeways. You want to piss off your intended audience? Keep them from going home.
To top things off… the things they were protesting had fuck all to do with Portland. What do you want Portland to do about ANY of this shit?
Cool story bro
Now try being this angry about cops when THEY break things and steal shit and yknow KILL PEOPLE.
That’s the thing, if that was happening in PORTLAND, the protests would be 100% justified. It wasn’t and isn’t.
People in Portland just want to protest, but they don’t want to go where it would do any good. They want to “feel like I did something” when at best what they’re doing does nothing and at worst is actively harmful.
Fucking preach. France was rioting for literally NOTHING. And we’re losing hundreds of thousands to drugs/homlessness/no healthcare/etc.
Where the fuck are the organizers? I’m in Texas and I’m just about done w/ this shit.
Nah, they weren’t rioting for nothing - they were rioting because a line was crossed.
If they let the PM push things through in that way, the battlelines will just be around a more important issue, and they’ll be in a much weaker position
Cops murdering a child isn’t “literally nothing”, it’s a very good reason to riot. Just because it happens so often here that we’re desensitized doesn’t make it any less abhorrent.
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Riots are a last resort because people end up dead or in jail if they fail. You want to keep people who are on your side free and alive while achieving your goals.
But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard.
MLK Jr. - “The Other America,” 1968
Love this quote, everyone starts with the last sentence and sometimes include a few sentences after that but I think this section is the most generically useful bit. This applies everywhere for every struggle of the oppressed.
For context this is the full quote, where MLK Jr. condemns riots but also equally condemns the conditions that cause people to riot: inequality, injustice, lack of humanity, lack of progress.
Let me say, as I’ve always said, and I will always continue to say, that riots are socially destructive and self-defeating. I’m still convinced that nonviolence is the most potent weapons available to oppress[ed] people in their struggle for freedom and justice. I feel that violence will only create more social problems than they will solve, that in a real sense, it is impractical for the Negro to even think of mounting a violent revolution in the United States. So I will continue to condemn riots and continue to say to my brothers and sisters that this is not the way. Continue to affirm that there is another way.
But at the same time, it is as necessary for me to be as vigorous in condemning the conditions which cause persons to feel that they must engage in riotous activities, as it is for me to condemn riots. I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society, which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. And in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity. So in a real sense, our nation’s summer’s riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.
Wise words, but I think even MLK Jr would say take the peaceful approach first. You have to give peace a chance. If that doesn’t work, you escalate from there, but you don’t go scorched earth without trying the alternatives first.
He used peace because the bigots seeing “inferior violent savages” organizing peaceful protests made them more uncomfortable than if they were violent. It’s not because he thought violent protest was outright bad, just not as useful in his circumstances. He worked along side of organizers who did use violence. His approach was likely strengthened by this. Also, so many of his protests were called riots by the media. If you take a stand against the monied, they will use it to make your movement appear violent and evil even when it’s not.
You do understand I’m not saying “riots and violence don’t have a place”, they absolutely do. What I’m saying is don’t go straight to riots and violence unless peaceful options have been exhausted. The French and US revolutions were two prime examples of violence bringing change, and I can’t say there was anything wrong with what the people were doing as those in power refused to accept peaceful resolution.
His way was nonviolent, not peaceful.
What he was doing and why is often buried in history class - you could put it as “exploiting the system until everyone feels the hurt”
Civil disobedience wasn’t about a message or public sentiment - they were about getting arrested. You make a scene, the police are called, you refuse to cooperate until they’re forced to arrest you.
Having been arrested, they either let you go and you do it again, or they charge you - and now you’re in the court system. Now you have standing to challenge the laws, appeal to higher courts, and counter-sue
They tied up the courts, ground businesses to a halt, and disrupted people’s lives
It wasn’t physically violent, but it was violent in a more metaphorical way. They didn’t win over hearts and minds… They just made it more politically costly to keep fighting them off than to give in
And there’s an argument to be made that this all wouldn’t have worked without the black Panthers… Their purpose was to show up armed when the police came to black neighborhoods. They were an unspoken threat - we’re playing within the rules of the system, but if you break them all bets are off
Yeah I’m not gonna die for what? So others get to reap the reward? The only reward I got to reap is other people’s greed. I’m not dying for your kids lol.
You’re allowed to decide where your moral responsibilities lie. I will say that “I’m not going to do anything that has no value for me personally” is a take that’s caused a lot of the ills plaguing the world today. Not suggesting you have to die for others but remember that a rising tide raises all ships, and a better world will be better for everyone, including you and the people you care about.
“I’m not the one being oppressed so I’ll just sit back and watch” is the stance the US tried to take in WWII until it affected them personally and just imagine how things could have turned out had they stayed that course.
