Tom Perez B/K/M? This poll is closed. |
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B | 77 | 25.50% | |
K | 160 | 52.98% | |
M | 65 | 21.52% | |
Total: | 229 votes |
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Whether or not BLM was justified in taking the stage, the fact remains that Sanders gave them a platform and Clinton had them physically removed.
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# ? Jun 28, 2017 17:47 |
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# ? May 23, 2024 17:09 |
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yeah, sanders played it 100% right. 'turns out my audience ain't pumped about this schtick, sorry, you wanna talk later?" quietly co-opting the platform so he didn't have to deal with this poo poo happening later on. sure, some people would have preferred that he make a big show out of shutting down those damnable attention-seeking idpol-hucksters instead of acknowledging a relationship between economic and social justice going forward. this is understandable. being corrected smarts. far easier to just say "i feel your motives are corrupt, and so I will hear no more of your complaints", a la everyone's favorite Hillary acolytes whining about Bernie Bros. as both everyone's favorite Trump voter and everyone's favorite Australian race scientist can attest, though, MAN is it a useful way to shut out voices you don't want to hear.
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# ? Jun 28, 2017 20:52 |
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VitalSigns posted:Whoa having to demand the basic human rights that most Americans have and take for granted, black people get all the benefits. Way too many white people are murdered by cops too. We would be talking about how insane police violence is even if there wasn't a racism problem. It's just when there is such a major, obvious racism problem you kind of have to focus on that as a practical matter of triage.
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# ? Jun 28, 2017 20:56 |
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Tackling a problem from one direction doesn't detract from other people's approaches. Everybody has their own vantage point from which they can best describe an issue, and those do not compete against each other, they complement each other. White people getting killed doesn't make BLM activists selfish or ignorant, it makes them part of a broader political landscape that should be aware of the necessity of its own togetherness in achieving anything.
steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Jun 28, 2017 |
# ? Jun 28, 2017 21:25 |
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lol http://paydayreport.com/unpaidinternsatdnc/quote:While running for Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Tom Perez pledged to eliminate unpaid internships at DNC. let's hear it for the secretary of labor.
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# ? Jun 29, 2017 03:28 |
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FuriousxGeorge posted:Way too many white people are murdered by cops too. We would be talking about how insane police violence is even if there wasn't a racism problem. It's just when there is such a major, obvious racism problem you kind of have to focus on that as a practical matter of triage. These are linked. There would be white people beating down the doors of mayors' offices about America's insane police brutality if they weren't so frightened of black people that their tribalism kicks in to rationalize police aggression as necessary to defend their white bodies from minorities. 10 years ago the far right and the libertarians were all "gently caress cops, gently caress feds, loving pigs better not set foot on my propertah without a warrant or stop my lawful travel or make one wrong move unless they want to see me use the second amendment to defend the fourth, molon labe", but the second black people said anything even tepidly similar 90% of them turned on a dime and now it's all "thin blue line, comply comply comply, don't question a policeman's order, the police have a god-given right to shoot you in self-defense if you don't comply and that includes moving too fast or too slow"
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# ? Jun 29, 2017 03:29 |
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Ze Pollack posted:people involved in a political movement's leadership ambitious self-promoters. in other news, sky blue, water wet. Wasnt Deray invited by Perez to be a part of the DNC unity council or something? I think Shaun King turned out okay for one of their vocal members.
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# ? Jun 29, 2017 03:36 |
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Ze Pollack posted:it rules that rudatron dismisses BLM in its entirety with "those neurotic darkies must just have been doing it for attention"
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# ? Jun 29, 2017 04:25 |
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But I don't want to dismiss steinrokkan's objection entirely, and he has a point: you could have your representatives being nothing but canonized saints, and you'd still end up with an opposition saying horrible things, because that's what they're incentivized to do. But if it's literally the case that you have a transparently self-serving people running the place, representing the brand, you're not getting anywhere. You'll lose the center, and the organization will be deformed to match the personal interests of the people running it, not the group interest. A more formal structure with decent accountability procedures and such wouldn't be a total guarantee against that happening, but you'd end up with a more effective organization - and you can do that without necessarily having to sacrifice direct action, if you're careful about it. Then, when someone does something under the banner of BLM, you don't have to have this constant debate over 'well blm is just a label, so does what this person did match the philosophy of the group and blah blah blah'. No, you just say 'yeah that's not us' if it's not an organized action, or 'yeah that's us' if it was, or 'no comment' if it was you, you want everyone to know it was you, but can't say so for legal reasons. The whole anarchist system is imo a failure. The lack of formal organization is a liability, not an asset, and it doesn't matter how many ways you cut it. But that's how everyone's running it these days, so nothing ever changes. Wasn't it keynes that said something along the lines of politicians being slaves to some dead economists? Same story with activists, but it's dead post-modern philosophers.
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# ? Jun 29, 2017 04:40 |
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Activists don't want to win because they don't know what they'd do with the world if they did
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# ? Jun 29, 2017 05:00 |
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I'm not sure a black activist group targeting abuse by authorities would be better served with a centralised, targetable structure either.
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# ? Jun 29, 2017 05:04 |
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call to action posted:Activists don't want to win because they don't know what they'd do with the world if they did Become Republicans
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# ? Jun 29, 2017 05:47 |
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If you're looking for a kind of activism that wants to win and knows what it'd do with the world if it did, and doesn't reject structure and organization on a matter of principle, marxism leninism might be for you
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# ? Jun 29, 2017 05:58 |
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Mister Facetious posted:OWS in a nutshell. For a few seconds I thought you meant OSW, ie "Open Source Warfare," a model of insurgency a few kooky Pentagon outsiders have been peddling since Iraqi Freedom, and that you were basically saying BLM should split into cells and publish IED plans on the dark web. Anyway, yeah, a lot of good things have come from Occupy Wall Street, but it was barely an organization.
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# ? Jun 29, 2017 06:12 |
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Bob le Moche posted:If you're looking for a kind of activism that wants to win and knows what it'd do with the world if it did, and doesn't reject structure and organization on a matter of principle, marxism leninism might be for you I'm not sure those two things go hand-in-hand as much as you assume. But yeah, I agree with your and rudatron's point that the reflexive eschewing of structure and organization has not served either anti-capitalist or anti-racist groups over the past several years. Let leaders rise organically to the top, and then let them lead.
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# ? Jun 29, 2017 08:07 |
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call to action posted:Activists don't want to win because they don't know what they'd do with the world if they did
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# ? Jun 29, 2017 08:13 |
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Ohio State BOOniversity posted:lol http://paydayreport.com/unpaidinternsatdnc/ No, no, no, you see, if you pay the interns, then there's a small chance that a filthy poor person might be able to build ties with the DNC.
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# ? Jun 29, 2017 09:51 |
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Verus posted:No, no, no, you see, if you pay the interns, then there's a small chance that a filthy poor person might be able to build ties with the DNC. That's what has been an eye opener when i listened to pod save America. Every single person they interview from the Obama administration had the same story: student at expensive private University takes unpaid internship with up and coming politician.
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# ? Jun 29, 2017 10:52 |
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call to action posted:Activists don't want to win because they don't know what they'd do with the world if they did Yes that is precisely the point, like the French say "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose". I'm more and more suspicious of the category of activism in the abstract, it fits too well in today's "post-political"/"post-ideological" environment. You get to have cool moments, of 'standing up to the man', marching on streets all together, protesting etc, without having to really do the dirty and hardous work of politics that comes with having to plan what to do in case you actually have your concerns heard. That's why third party stuff (in the context of american politics, it's really quite different in non bi-party systems) is well and good to create pressure but the real victory must come in the form of a change in the Democratic party itself.
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# ? Jun 29, 2017 11:52 |
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joepinetree posted:That's what has been an eye opener when i listened to pod save America. Every single person they interview from the Obama administration had the same story: student at expensive private University takes unpaid internship with up and coming politician. It's the same deal with most political positions; irregular workyear and low base pay, resulting in political power being the domain of those who are not working to live. It's the hardest part of the whole "well maybe if leftists actually ran you wouldnt be dealing with centrists" schtick. Most of the people that exist in leftist circles simply dont have the time to work a political job and an actual rent-paying job. It might not be as sexy as Full Communism Now, but reforming internship and normalizing political position hours & pay would go a long way towards introducing leftist blood into the pool.
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# ? Jun 29, 2017 11:59 |
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Fados posted:Yes that is precisely the point, like the French say "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose". I'm more and more suspicious of the category of activism in the abstract, it fits too well in today's "post-political"/"post-ideological" environment. You get to have cool moments, of 'standing up to the man', marching on streets all together, protesting etc, without having to really do the dirty and hardous work of politics that comes with having to plan what to do in case you actually have your concerns heard. That's why third party stuff (in the context of american politics, it's really quite different in non bi-party systems) is well and good to create pressure but the real victory must come in the form of a change in the Democratic party itself. Your solution to protestors not knowing how to protest is to gently caress the whole idea off and let capital do whatever it wants with a party it already owns? A garbage idea.
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# ? Jun 29, 2017 11:59 |
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Fados posted:Yes that is precisely the point, like the French say "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose". I'm more and more suspicious of the category of activism in the abstract, it fits too well in today's "post-political"/"post-ideological" environment. You get to have cool moments, of 'standing up to the man', marching on streets all together, protesting etc, without having to really do the dirty and hardous work of politics that comes with having to plan what to do in case you actually have your concerns heard. That's why third party stuff (in the context of american politics, it's really quite different in non bi-party systems) is well and good to create pressure but the real victory must come in the form of a change in the Democratic party itself. So what that protesters don't have meticulously worked out policy proposals? It's the purpose of paid politicians to tap into to the feedback that protests and other forms of dissent represent, and adapt by creating an appropriate response. That's their whole purpose. If they refuse to do that, and complain that they aren't given pre-made agenda on a silver platter, they are more than worthless. Imagine a chef refusing to serve you anything more elaborate than grilled cheese because you wouldn't be able to make anything more complicated yourself.
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# ? Jun 29, 2017 12:28 |
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I'll try to be a bit more precise. Here where I live in swarthy southern europe, we had a bunch of so called horizontal (OWS type) protest movements at around 2011 that grew in reaction to the foreign interventions by the likes of IMF in the context of the sovereign debt crisis, and consequent proposed austerity measure (cut in pensions, public sector privatizations, layoffs, etc). In Portugal & Spain these groups coalesced in the 'Indignados' (Outraged) label, a type of social media co-ordinated loosely affiliated group with improvided street councils, all that good stuff etc. All fine till here but the consequences and differences between the movements in both countries are very interesting to analyse. In Spain a new left party, Podemos, was born out of this movement, a party that has had a meteoric rise in polls so that in the space of a few years they are an actual powerhouse in negotiations with center left 'Socialist Party' (think Dems) to form a coalition government (which hasn't really panned out but that's another story). In Portugal the movement had a few actually pretty big protests, something special in a country that's very conservative, but due to the lack of clear proposals from the movement besides a general disagreement with the planned austerity, it deflated after a few months never to be seen again also because the 'far'-left parties didn't really try to get involved and organize besides some lip service. But the single exception to this was the protest that did have a clear target, of being against a specific measure that intended to change to tax burden of pensions payments from the employer to the employee. This protest had such a massive turnout, one the biggest since the beginning of the democratic regime, that the government did indeed cancel the measure and eventually led to the dismissal of the finance minister (now working for yours truly IMF ironically). So I'm not trying, I guess, to dismiss activism wholesale, but what I'm saying is that a general demonstration of vague dissastisfaction isn't enough to accomplish much, and actualy and ironicaly sometimes actually ends up functioning as a kind of pressure valve which helps the status quo. Fados fucked around with this message at 12:57 on Jun 29, 2017 |
# ? Jun 29, 2017 12:53 |
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steinrokkan posted:So what that protesters don't have meticulously worked out policy proposals? It's the purpose of paid politicians to tap into to the feedback that protests and other forms of dissent represent, and adapt by creating an appropriate response. That's their whole purpose. If they refuse to do that, and complain that they aren't given pre-made agenda on a silver platter, they are more than worthless. They are worse then worthless. Politicans do not have your intrest at heart, they have the intrest of getting re-elected at heart. Let's say they don't give you any response. What then? Does the protesters have leverage? Does the organisation managing the protest have any way to push the politician to act the way they want? That is what is lacking in the protest actions without organisational and political aims. Blocking a highway is a valid tactic towards a goal, but it won't force a bill to appear. EDIT: I mean look at Occupy. All that energy and outrage, thousands of people in the streets eventually led nowhere. White Rock fucked around with this message at 13:13 on Jun 29, 2017 |
# ? Jun 29, 2017 12:58 |
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Majorian posted:I'm not sure those two things go hand-in-hand as much as you assume. The issue is obviously a massive lack of trust (they will simply sell out) and simply the issue of identity politics in the US itself (will the "natural leader" happen to check enough boxes?). Everyone shits on OWS and I don't think it is the future but it was also absolutely necessary...a primordal pool for a new form of politics to form in the US and guess what I think our politics has changed since 2011. We simply need to go further.
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# ? Jun 29, 2017 13:13 |
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I see, I assumed that by change in party you meant the usual reshuffling of chairs, not uprooting it and making it serve public interest, or threatening it with an opposing third party. In that case yes, the party must be... changed. But I still think horizontal protests are fine, the political structure will either readjust itself to work with them, or a new structure will crystallize to replace the old one, while the vast majority of interested people will not be interested in taking part in organized politics. steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 13:26 on Jun 29, 2017 |
# ? Jun 29, 2017 13:23 |
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Organized politics are the only thing that's ever really changed poo poo for the better. Get organized or get hosed, leaderless structures DO have leaders - the performative loudmouth fuckwads, as has been mentioned previously. Our society is constructed to understand power in terms of firms, corporations, organization, and structure, and you saying "no like i promise these guys aren't with 'me' (whatever that means)" rings very hollow to normies
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# ? Jun 29, 2017 14:05 |
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I don't understand why we need to reinvent the wheel here. Both OWS and BLM could have gotten behind an existing manifesto that would have represented them perfectly. I really blame this on my generation's tendency to avoid making clear non negotiable demands and it's general dislike of hierarchy. Here - I'm going to solve BLM for you guys with only 5 minutes of effort. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten-Point_Program quote:What We Want Now! So now instead of just crashing political events screeching about oppression and whatever pronouns people are using you show up with clear cut demands. The 10 point program was relevant then and it's relevant now. No need to reinvent the wheel. You repeat actionable goals over and over again and threaten an organized revolution or secession from a society that doesn't care about you. Kraftwerk fucked around with this message at 14:10 on Jun 29, 2017 |
# ? Jun 29, 2017 14:08 |
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Practically every left-wing organization or political movement right now seems to cite OWS as an important moment for increasing consciousness, expanding membership and radicalizing people. The movement didn't produce any short-term victories at the national level but it did help radicalize people and create networking opportunities for any pre-existing leftist or progressive organization that was inclined to link itself with the occupation. The intentionally unstructured format of the encampment probably helped turn people out and, arguably, given the prevalence of anarchism in the post 1991 left, it was helpful to let people see with their own eyes what the limits of a radically de-centralized movement would look like. OWS demonstrated, on the one hand, that people were ready to turn out in large numbers and get involved in some kind of left-wing activism. It also schooled a lot of those people in the practical merits of having some organizational structure. I doubt either of those things could have happened if, one day two of the encampment, a bunch of organizers went around organizing people into branches and telling them to elect executives and start keeping minutes for their meetings.
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# ? Jun 29, 2017 14:11 |
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As someone who attended my city's OWS, the first few days were awesome and exhilarating. Then came the human microphone/blocking/"snaps" bullshit
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# ? Jun 29, 2017 14:22 |
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Kraftwerk posted:I don't understand why we need to reinvent the wheel here. i think the blm protestors have a very clear demand. it's part of their name. they want black lives to matter. they want to be given a fair shake in our judicial system instead of having their lives ruined/ended by racist judges and cops. they've been very clear about that oddly enough, white people ignore them as insane, and then when they do minor protests (like kneeling during the pledge) white people screech endlessly about how unreasonable they're being.
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# ? Jun 29, 2017 14:22 |
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Funny how whites are actually far more accepting of BLM than, say, Latinos are though isn't it? And Democrats are majority in support of BLM. Almost like it's not just a white thing. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/08/how-americans-view-the-black-lives-matter-movement/
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# ? Jun 29, 2017 14:25 |
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I don't actually think blm doesn't have a clear set of demands, nor should 'having a clear set of demands' be the metric you use for determining how organized and effective an organization is. It's totally okay to have a general goal, that you flesh out in detail later! So, for example, you have the flint water crisis or whatever - it's not the responsibility of people protesting that to give a fully-costed budget proposal for how to solve it. An expression of anger and passion, a threat that this needs to be solved now, you have to do that first.
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# ? Jun 29, 2017 14:38 |
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call to action posted:Funny how whites are actually far more accepting of BLM than, say, Latinos are though isn't it? You say that but that doesn't really say anything. Latinos can be white and they can be black, they can even be Asian.
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# ? Jun 29, 2017 14:50 |
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rudatron posted:I don't actually think blm doesn't have a clear set of demands, nor should 'having a clear set of demands' be the metric you use for determining how organized and effective an organization is. But the examples you mention already have specific demands, not detailed policy proposals sure, but a circumscribed focus. On the other hand you have a bunch of protests that are genericaly against the inequality or against racism or sexism which are much more broad and tend to not amount to much by themselves. As Helsing mentioned they can lay the groundwork, incubate a cultural space from which something new can emerge, which would be stiffled by a forced bureaucratic apparatus, but unfortunately one sees a lot of these movements failing to go beyond the (necessary) first step. Quoting Mr Z: quote:What to do in the aftermath of the Occupy Wall Street movement, when the protests that started far away – in the Middle East, Greece, Spain, UK – reached the centre, and are now reinforced and rolling out all around the world? Fados fucked around with this message at 14:52 on Jun 29, 2017 |
# ? Jun 29, 2017 14:50 |
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You're not thinking in terms of opportunity cost. The energy that existed at the moment, demonstrated that there was a passion & potential for something special - the actual experience of OWS, over a period of a couple of weeks, threw all that potential into the trash can. It was a wasted opportunity/road not traveled. If other people point to that existence of passion as inspiration, then more power to them. But it'd be nice if they hadn't dropped the ball. And, to be honest, I'm not sure people have learned anything from it - we're still in the era of suspicion of any formal structure within progressive thought, and blm is an example of that.
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# ? Jun 29, 2017 14:50 |
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Avirosb posted:You say that but that doesn't really say anything. Not if you look at the methodology of the survey, they can't. And even if you were right, it still throws serious doubt on the "all whites hate BLM" hypothesis
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# ? Jun 29, 2017 15:04 |
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rudatron posted:You're not thinking in terms of opportunity cost. The energy that existed at the moment, demonstrated that there was a passion & potential for something special - the actual experience of OWS, over a period of a couple of weeks, threw all that potential into the trash can. It was a wasted opportunity/road not traveled. In 2011 the North American left was a ghost that had struggled from one defeat to another since it peaked in the late 1960s. They were also still facing off against a popular reformist President who many liberals still believed was going to exercise a transformative impact on politics. Furthermore, the actual crowd that showed up at Occupy may have been energetic but they ran the gamut from mainstream liberals to anarchists to socialists to even a handful of right-wing Ron Paul loving libertarians. I don't think it's clear that any of this was particularly conducive to creating a strongly organized and ideologically coherent national movement overnight. What we got was pretty good considering the circumstances: everything from the Sanders campaign to the Chicago Teachers' Strike to the campaign of Seattle's socialist city councilor Kashame Sawant have cited OWS as an important moment in launching their projects (anecdotally, so have plenty of local lefty organizations I'm familiar with). What more do you really think was likely to come out of OWS in the short term? The left also looks a hell of a lot better organized than it did in 2011 so I'm not sure how you can argue that nothing has been learned. The Sanders campaign, or at least organizers associated with it, seem to be intent on forcing their way into the Democratic party and pushing it to the left. Whether that succeeds is an open question and it will certainly take more than one cycle, but that's a huge organizational jump from what anyone believed to be possible half a decade ago. Helsing fucked around with this message at 15:39 on Jun 29, 2017 |
# ? Jun 29, 2017 15:13 |
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One of the most efficient conservative mottifs is to play different minorities against each other, creating an hierarchy with 'good, diligent, well-behaved, etc' against the 'lazy, indulgent, divisive' group.
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# ? Jun 29, 2017 15:15 |
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# ? May 23, 2024 17:09 |
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Fados posted:One of the most efficient conservative mottifs is to play different minorities against each other, creating an hierarchy with 'good, diligent, well-behaved, etc' against the 'lazy, indulgent, divisive' group. I feel like this is very obvious when it comes to LGBT americans; we have gay marriage now, so apparently our issues are resolved and we're no different from white americans WRT equality politics. Nevermind that an overwhelming majority of young homeless americans are gay youths that had to flee their homes, nevermind that less than a decade ago it was common to find a news article of the latest gay american dragged behind a pickup every week. Rich gay people can marry now, so in the eyes of rich black americans and rich women our problem is settled and we are no longer allies. It's a big part of my hatred of trickle-down theory applied to social progress.
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# ? Jun 29, 2017 15:28 |