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silence_kit posted:If you aren't protesting to try to persuade people, then what is the point? Is the point to satiate your martyr complex? It makes them feel important, I guess.
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Jan 20, 2016 05:32
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Shbobdb posted:Non violent protests are designed to create martyrs. I guess directly trying to incite police action is a way to accelerate the creation of more martyrs for the BLM cause. I think you are kind of cheapening the martyrdom of the black guys who got killed by police who weren't looking for a fight by doing that but whatever.
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Jan 20, 2016 05:41
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Martyrdom is a conscious choice. Those pussies at the salt march really cheapened the deaths of those killed by British imperialism.
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Jan 20, 2016 05:49
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enraged_camel posted:I would hardly call driving to work "entertainment" (a lot of people still worked on Monday, you realize?). But maybe you have some bizarre tastes. To each his own I guess. It made your time less happy. It made you notice how displeased those people are about something. It got your attention. Mission accomplished.
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Jan 20, 2016 05:54
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It also made you pick a side. I hope you're happy with the side you chose.
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Jan 20, 2016 06:02
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FRINGE posted:I forgot this thread was in D+D. I will be very literal for you. So I was right enraged_camel posted:Unless you subscribe to the hosed up mindset of "any publicity is good publicity." Then again this is probably why modern protests have been so ineffective compared to their counterparts in the Civil Rights/Vietnam eras. OWS was an embarrassing failure of a movement. It got people's attention, but didn't accomplish much in proportion to the energy put in and the damage caused. The long-term effectiveness of BLM remains to be seen, but things aren't looking good so far.
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Jan 20, 2016 06:11
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silence_kit posted:If you aren't protesting to try to persuade people, then what is the point? Is the point to satiate your martyr complex? So is your proposition here that "cops should not be indiscriminately killing black folks" is rendered less persuasive by some traffic getting blocked? "Well, they make some good points about that police murder thing, but on the other hand, traffic on 80 is already a bitch, so honestly it feels like a tossup."
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Jan 20, 2016 06:12
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Counterpoint: Both movements have shifted the political dialogue pretty significantly.
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Jan 20, 2016 06:13
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enraged_camel posted:OWS was an embarrassing failure of a movement.
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Jan 20, 2016 06:35
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Shbobdb posted:Counterpoint: Both movements have shifted the political dialogue pretty significantly. What does this even mean?
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Jan 20, 2016 06:52
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Leperflesh posted:Those suffragettes didn't huck bricks through every window they could find. They targeted their brick-hurling towards specific demographics. They went after golf courses to target a specific demographic. Martin Luther King, Jr. (and the civil rights movement's other leaders, generally) targeted specific demographics, too: they were fighting institutionalized racism by publicly engaging (usually peacefully) with the racist authorities and institutions. I don't mean to dismiss your entire post out of hand, but are you really claiming that a BLM protest on MLK Jr. Day was bad timing?
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Jan 20, 2016 07:05
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What it really means is that when it comes to political and social movements, dominant memes in the media, sweeping changes in public perception, etc. etc. it's a chaotic system where it's impossible to irrefutably assign causes and effects. We're still talking about poo poo like breaking up the big banks, "too big to fail," the candidates in the democratic presidential debate were competing for who is going to be tougher on wall street, etc. Would we be having that conversation if OWS had never happened? Perhaps not, but it's impossible to prove one way or the other. We also can't know what other movement(s) might have happened instead, if OWS hadn't. What would the civil rights movement have looked like, without Selma? We don't know. What if MLK hadn't been murdered? What if we'd won the Vietnam war? What if Obama hadn't been elected, where would race relations be right now? That's very broad obviously, but when you're talking about "how effective was this protest movement" you can create a narrative (and historians do), and back it up with a strong argument, citing specific series of events, etc. You can find someone who did something important (pass a law, say) and interview them and maybe they say "yeah when I saw that march on TV, that was really a wakeup moment for me." But people's personal narratives aren't even reliable. Our memories are a lot worse than most people are ready to admit or accept, and every time you review a memory - good or bad - you alter it. And in any case, even if we accept all of that, we still cannot investigate an alternate history in which X didn't happen, but some other Y event did, because there are an infinite number of Y events. So no, we just don't know. We probably cannot know. We can say, "they protested, and then in the next election, the numbers had shifted in their favor" but correlation does not imply causation, we just cannot know. Instead, I think charitably we can say this: modern protest movements can take cues from past protest movements that historians and cultural narratives regard as having been successful. BLM obviously looks to past civil rights movements and we can hardly blame them for protesting in ways that past movements did, even if we don't personally think it'll work, for whatever reason. Kobayashi posted:I don't mean to dismiss your entire post out of hand, but are you really claiming that a BLM protest on MLK Jr. Day was bad timing? Ironic, huh? Obviously the anniversary makes a protest particularly appropriate. But I think in this case, they chose a specific location that, on this particular holiday, is more likely to inconvenience a different demographic than (I'm guessing) they intended to inconvenience. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 07:08 on Jan 20, 2016 |
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Jan 20, 2016 07:06
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Occupy talking points have become part of the common political parlance (it shifted the overton window left on economic issues in a way that hasn't happened since Bobby loving Kennedy) and likewise BLM forces Bernie's campaign to accept canonical texts like "Black Marxism" as opposed to the white boy attitude of "race issues are economic issues".
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Jan 20, 2016 07:07
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Leperflesh posted:Ironic, huh? Obviously the anniversary makes a protest particularly appropriate. But I think in this case, they chose a specific location that, on this particular holiday, is more likely to inconvenience a different demographic than (I'm guessing) they intended to inconvenience. You give them too much credit. I don't think they intended to convenience a specific demographic. They just wanted to protest because of the same misguided belief that FRINGE posted above: that attention is the only thing that matters and as long as you get someone's attention with your protesting, it's "mission accomplished." It's as hare-brained as it gets, basically. MLK must be turning over in his grave.
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Jan 20, 2016 07:43
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A statement about how disappointed Dr. King would be is the ultimate signature of milquetoast white liberals and rich black conservatives.
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Jan 20, 2016 08:23
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 Look at all these selfish people who want to feel good and scream "gently caress everyone until you listen to me" 
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Jan 20, 2016 08:30
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Kobayashi posted:I don't mean to dismiss your entire post out of hand, but are you really claiming that a BLM protest on MLK Jr. Day was bad timing? MLK Jr day has social significance but his/her post is quite correct in that repeatedly shutting down 101 in south bay would do far more to rouse the people with actual political connections and power.
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Jan 20, 2016 09:28
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FRINGE posted:OWS took a mostly invisible topic (to average Americans) and made it a daily conversation piece that has not subsided. but the pizza tweet enraged_camel posted:MLK must be turning over in his grave. Shut the gently caress up honky
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Jan 20, 2016 11:40
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enraged_camel posted:You give them too much credit. I don't think they intended to convenience a specific demographic. They just wanted to protest because of the same misguided belief that FRINGE posted above: that attention is the only thing that matters and as long as you get someone's attention with your protesting, it's "mission accomplished." Yea, you can have the right strategy (protest to raise awareness of your issue and keep the discussion about that issue going) and still have poo poo tactics (perform your protest in a way that minimally impacts those whose awareness you need to raise while most impacting those who area already on your side). Doing the right thing the wrong way isn't appreciably better than doing the wrong thing, especially in the long run. Look at the ridiculous and completely ineffective protests that were taking place in the run-up the the Iraq War: lots of self-righteous people marched and blocked traffic (in blue urban areas and college towns) and did absolutely nothing to even slow the start of the war itself.
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Jan 20, 2016 16:08
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GrumpyDoctor posted:So is your proposition here that "cops should not be indiscriminately killing black folks" is rendered less persuasive by some traffic getting blocked? "Well, they make some good points about that police murder thing, but on the other hand, traffic on 80 is already a bitch, so honestly it feels like a tossup." No, if you would read my posts, all I'm saying is that a BLM protest by stopping traffic is a horrible ad campaign. Getting people to associate your cause with something annoying like traffic isn't persuasive. Other people have pointed out that their ad campaign is poorly targeted. It's like if Tesla decided to promote their cars by putting stalls in flea markets instead of upscale shopping centers and by piling human poo poo and garbage in their floor cars so that people would associate their cars with bad odors and decay.
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Jan 20, 2016 16:27
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silence_kit posted:No, if you would read my posts, all I'm saying is that a BLM protest by stopping traffic is a horrible ad campaign. Getting people to associate your cause with something annoying like traffic isn't persuasive. If the best analogy you can come up with for a movement protesting the murder of its children is a company selling $70k cars, you may want to reconsider the point you're trying to make.
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Jan 20, 2016 16:37
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Kobayashi posted:If the best analogy you can come up with for a movement protesting the murder of its children is a company selling $70k cars, you may want to reconsider the point you're trying to make. If you can't see the actual point he's trying to make and can only look at the superficial elements of the analogy, you're either intellectually dishonest or much more interested in the tribal elements of your political affiliation than in trying to do actual good in the world.
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Jan 20, 2016 16:53
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Kobayashi posted:If the best analogy you can come up with for a movement protesting the murder of its children is a company selling $70k cars, you may want to reconsider the point you're trying to make. Listen, if they want to stop dying in the street, they better come up with a more enjoyable way to communicate their goals. Why don't they spend money on ads or do some cross-marketing like other "urban" brands? e_angst posted:If you can't see the actual point BLM trying to make and can only look at the superficial impacts of the protest, you're either intellectually dishonest or much more interested in the tribal elements of your political affiliation than in trying to do actual good in the world. I would point out this statement applies very well to those critiquing the techniques used by BLM. (Also the fact we're discussing this days later is probably proof their actions worked)
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Jan 20, 2016 16:53
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Kobayashi posted:If the best analogy you can come up with for a movement protesting the murder of its children is a company selling $70k cars, you may want to reconsider the point you're trying to make. You are being very uncreative and are latching onto irrelevant things to try to make arguments. The point is that BLM stopping traffic is horrible advertising. Not all press is good press. There is a reason why advertisers don't intentionally try to get you to associate their product or service with annoying and unpleasant things. Good advertisers also try to target and tailor their ads towards an intended audience. For example, playing ads targeted for 20-30 year old singles during Saturday morning cartoons is a waste of time and money. As pointed out earlier, BLM protestors poorly targeted their ad campaign by inconviencing probably mostly retail and service workers by blocking the Bay Bridge on an evening commute during a government holiday.
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Jan 20, 2016 17:19
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silence_kit posted:Good advertisers also try to target and tailor their ads towards an intended audience. For example, playing ads targeted for 20-30 year old singles during Saturday morning cartoons is a waste of time and money. As pointed out earlier, BLM protestors poorly targeted their ad campaign by inconviencing probably mostly retail and service workers by blocking the Bay Bridge on an evening commute during a government holiday. Or blocking people going into SF to shop/play on a holiday...but lets keep playing up the workers angle, and blame BLM for the actions of theoretical lovely bosses. What ad time do you suggest they have bought instead for the same price?
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Jan 20, 2016 17:51
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I'm sympathetic to the protestors and don't really care if they block traffic or not, but at the same time I don't really get what the point of that specific action is. It's obviously not targeted toward inconveniencing specific people or winning hearts and minds of people who are unengaged, so is it just "raising awareness"? I guess if we and other people are still talking about it, awareness is raised somewhat among people in the Bay Area who are likely almost all at least familiar with the idea of BLM, but the way that "awareness" translates into anything concrete seems a little hand-wavey and nebulous to me.
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Jan 20, 2016 18:25
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SousaphoneColossus posted:I'm sympathetic to the protestors and don't really care if they block traffic or not, but at the same time I don't really get what the point of that specific action is. It's obviously not targeted toward inconveniencing specific people or winning hearts and minds of people who are unengaged, so is it just "raising awareness"? The reasons to engage in protest action are more numerous than just raising awareness. Maintaining momentum, increasing organizing experience, because it is right, and because the injury is still painful and ongoing are just some examples. It is easy to dismiss protests when you limit their purpose arbitrarily as others have shown.
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Jan 20, 2016 18:38
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I'm not talking about protest action in general, I mean (as I said) this specific action, blocking traffic on the bridge, as opposed to other types of organized protest actions.
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Jan 20, 2016 18:54
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I think it's easy to overlook just how good the authorities have gotten in combating, and controlling the narrative of protests. It's easy to push people off into a 'free speech zone', so they can be easily ignored and everyone else can go on with their daily lives. Protesting in the 21st century seems to really only have the function of 'getting people to discuss the problem, maybe...' as other people have pointed out. I have to admit the protest culture (especially bay area/Berkeley protest culture) seems pretty strange. It feels weirdly institutionalized. It just seems like applying 1960s protest techniques to more sophisticated 2015-2016 institutions isn't working out very well. Outside of leftist circles , most protesters (like unions) have been successfully vilified. It's extra depressing when you see like a bunch of semi-retired 50 year olds protesting and trying to recapture their protest glory days. It really feels like some of these people here are just into protesting as a hobby, like running 10ks or knitting. It's what they do.
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Jan 20, 2016 20:27
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SousaphoneColossus posted:I'm not talking about protest action in general, I mean (as I said) this specific action, blocking traffic on the bridge, as opposed to other types of organized protest actions. Please explain how what I said didn't apply to the protest action in question, because afaik they apply perfectly. Shutting down the bridge is hard work and isn't easily done. Trabisnikof fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Jan 20, 2016 |
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Jan 20, 2016 21:03
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quote:The reasons to engage in protest action are more numerous than just raising awareness. Maintaining momentum, increasing organizing experience, because it is right, and because the injury is still painful and ongoing are just some examples. It's not that none of these apply at all, I just don't see how the bridge action is specifically the best or even a particularly good way of meeting those criteria or more broadly advancing their agenda. "Maintaining momentum" and "because it is right" in particular are a little vague and could really be said about almost anything you like.
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Jan 20, 2016 21:17
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SousaphoneColossus posted:It's not that none of these apply at all, I just don't see how the bridge action is specifically the best or even a particularly good way of meeting those criteria or more broadly advancing their agenda. "Maintaining momentum" and "because it is right" in particular are a little vague and could really be said about almost anything you like. Now you're moving the goal posts to "protesters must do what is the best" rather than "what value could they gain from that protest." Yes, a lot of protest movements could try and shutdown the bridge, I would argue that it was a valid protest tactic even if I disagreed with the cause.
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Jan 20, 2016 22:03
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The protesters were cuffed with plastic zip ties for six hours. CHP considers this "appropriate." In other news: Ed Lee vetoed the Idaho Stop.
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Jan 20, 2016 22:07
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Trabisnikof posted:Now you're moving the goal posts to "protesters must do what is the best" rather than "what value could they gain from that protest." Maybe I worded my initial post badly, but my real question has always been "what value could they gain from that particular protest rather than any other protest." If I genuinely thought shutting down a bridge the way they did would significantly advance the cause of BLM beyond vague, unspecific assertions of "momentum" and "gaining organizing experience", I'd say great, do it. But it seems that you and a lot of advocates of these kind of protests just take it for granted that it is not only appropriate but necessary action, and I suppose I'm not able to make the connection between the action and any significant advancement of the cause. Edit: slightly better wording SousaphoneColossus fucked around with this message at 23:29 on Jan 20, 2016 |
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Jan 20, 2016 23:06
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silence_kit posted:You are being very uncreative and are latching onto irrelevant things to try to make arguments. The point is that BLM stopping traffic is horrible advertising. Not all press is good press. There is a reason why advertisers don't intentionally try to get you to associate their product or service with annoying and unpleasant things.
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Jan 20, 2016 23:32
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SousaphoneColossus posted:Maybe I worded my initial post badly, but my real question has always been "what value could they gain from that particular protest rather than any other protest." I listed some ways they got value, but that was dismissed because there were theoretical better ways to get those objectives. But even if the goal was just to get BLM back in the Bay Area news conversations, I can't think of a more effective thing 50 people could have done.
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Jan 20, 2016 23:39
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FCKGW posted:SoCalGas officials just said they're optimistic that they'll have the Porter Ranch leak capped by end of February Haha they were thinking about flaring the gas, but decided not to citing the risk of "catastrophic explosion": quote:
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Jan 20, 2016 23:59
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FRINGE posted:Social change movements are not widget sales campaigns. But they are, fundamentally, public relations campaigns. This is what the great social movement leaders have always understood, and what too many modern movements are missing. They do counter-productive things because it "gets people talking about them", not recognizing that also matters what they are saying about you, not just that they are talking about you.
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Jan 21, 2016 00:27
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e_angst posted:But they are, fundamentally, public relations campaigns. PR can reliably take bad attention and transform it once it has been gathered. When sales tarnishes a brand it is sometimes sunk, and when sales targets the wrong audience it is wasted money. They are different kinds of processes. Social movements need attention first, and everything else after. Without massive amounts of attention it is not a social movement, it is just some people being irritated. Without massive attention it is easy to dismiss people as "fringe malcontents" or "conspiracy theorists" or a dozen other media friendly buzzword dismissals. The idiots that attacked Sanders in Seattle are an example. Those two were loving stupid, but the attention was something that BLM (and Sanders) were able to change and make use of. (Of course its a fine line between idiots/bad attention, and the kinds of things that are actually destructive to a cause. People that are not interested in the issue to begin with will say that anything inconvenient to them is a "bad strategy" ... for a while. After the fact they will act like they were always on "the right side". Thats people.)
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Jan 21, 2016 00:39
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e_angst posted:But they are, fundamentally, public relations campaigns. This is what the great social movement leaders have always understood, and what too many modern movements are missing. They do counter-productive things because it "gets people talking about them", not recognizing that also matters what they are saying about you, not just that they are talking about you. I think you're underestimating that when these movements actually find some success, institutions won't outright admit it. You're not going to get nice soundbites or positive coverage from a lot of this stuff, even if there's a positive impact due to the disruption. The problem is any disruption of the status quo is going to be an inconvenience. I'm not convinced there's a 'productive' way to deal with these issues, but I know I'd much rather have traffic stops over people getting hurt.
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Jan 21, 2016 01:08
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