textsfromsolarpunk

I am one of these people this text is throwing shade at.

1. I don't think that pitching these as an either-or thing is accurate. You can disrupt the functioning of the economic machinery, while also getting a whole bunch of "undecided" commuters pissed off at you, and doing the latter can undo some of the good effectiveness of the former in accomplishing your goal.

2. Persuading the general public to take climate change seriously is absolutely an important task. This high-minded contempt for the opinions of the general public because they're not as informed as the golden child who is writing this text, and the reader presumably, is counterproductive.

3. I'm not convinced that a lot of these freeway shutdowns actually are damaging the interests of the planet-destroying ruling classes who according to this they are targeted at. Greenpeace did some great stuff with directly disrupting whaling ships. It stopped some certain number of whale hunts, it got great publicity because it was clearly directly targeted at the people causing the problem, and it demonstrated some very genuine courage and commitment. I think it was effective. If someone started doing some version of that to e.g. Shell Oil, that would sound great. I don't know that much about it, but I suspect that the ultimate economic impact of blocking the freeways on Shell Oil's bottom line is nonexistent.

I'm not trying to be some armchair jerk throwing shade at the people out there trying to make a difference. But yes I don't agree with this.

1999 Seattle is a great example of this. Anti-globalization became part of mainstream media vocabulary, the organization saw enormous cost overruns, and another conference has not been held in a US city since.

It also achieved Martin Luther King and Gandhi style aims - pissing off the kind of people that reveal the violence of the system in situations where complacent people can more easily recognize it and sympathize with the oppressed. The city has settled with over a hundred activists, and a federal jury ruled that demonstrators' fourth amendment rights had been violated.

This reminds me of a while back, when I learned that Mary Molony, an Irish Suffragette, went to a speech by Winston Churchill and rang a bell every time he tried to talk, leading to the cancelling of the event. The place I read it didn't give sources, so I went digging for verification before I shared it.

It took a while, because variants of this story have been shared for a while, and something that became apparent was how hated Suffragettes were in their time; people were pissed at Mary Molony for spoiling their opportunity to hear a great orator like Churchill speak.

The ambient level of vitriol surprised me because whilst I knew the Suffragettes were unpopular because they were trying to change the system, I had grown up hearing names like Emmeline Pankhurst and Emily Davison in a positive manner from my mum (who wasn't well educated). Realising this drastically reshaped how I viewed the purpose of protest; before, I might have been more likely to argue along the "winning hearts and minds" angle, but now I'm on board with what the OP says.

(Some original sauce for the Mary Molony thing, because it's great and to not include it when I've mentioned it would be rude)

Photo of the newspaper headline

Newspaper text found beneath the photograph

A SPEECH SPOILED: MISS MOLONY’S SUCCESSFUL INTERRUPTION OF THE LIBERAL CANDIDATE.

On Monday, when Mr. Churchill was addressing a meeting of workmen during dinner-time at a large factory, Miss Molony, an Irish Suffragist, appeared on the scene in a carriage, and began to drown the speaker’s voice with a hand-bell. She declared that the Liberal candidate should not address an open-air meeting in Dundee until he had apologised for some recent remarks about women politicians. For some time Mr. Churchill struggled good-humouredly against the bell, but at last he gave up the effort in despair, saying, “If she thinks that is a reasonable argument she may use it. I don’t care. I bid you good afternoon.”

this post references some knowledge but doesnt go into more detail.

what are some other tactics that can be used and why? what can be done so a protest isnt just waving signs?

Taking action to directly effect the thing rather than convince others is called "direct action." Liberals tend to conflate this with protests.

Causing capitalists financial stress is valid and can be a form of direct action. You're making the economic incentives of doing awful things weaker relative to not doing awful things, and if the cost of doing awful things gets high enough capitalists will tend to not do the specific awful things that cost too much. This can also be useful when the state is acting on the behalf of capitalists, but is not useful for resisting fascism because the awful things is the goal in and of itself.

Massive protests didn't do anything to stop Trump's ICE raids, but one guy attacking vehicles completely stopped ICE for months and derailed their entire plans. This is the difference between protest and direct action. Protest seeks to cause those in power to change their decisions. Direct action seeks to make their decisions irrelevant by making their course of action impossible. Direct action takes far fewer people to be effective, but those fewer people take much more risk. Today forest defenders resisting cop city are another example. Both Willem and Tortuga died taking direct action, and both had a huge impact.

An example with less risk was when SPD asked for pictures of houseless encampments and people flooded them with pictures of tents from REI. That was direct action in that it made the data impossible to process and while also being relatively low risk.

Direct action may be illegal, but it doesn't have to be. Strikes are another example of direct action, as are boycotts.

I think you probably can't teach this to older generations but younger generations are capable of learning and we really need them to learn this.

Oh fuck off you smarmy child.