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Journal pudge's Journal: Useless Protesting 18

Journal by pudge

I can't see how the peaceful protests in NYC do anything positive, except for make people who already agree with them feel good.

I suppose it might help, through preaching to the choir, convince a very small number of people to get out and vote, where they might normally not have done so. But beyond that, nothing. Everyone's heard it before, so you're not giving any new message. We all know that a lot of people hate Bush. Yawn. So what?

Now, if you start doing civil disobedience, or worse, become violent, then you can make a difference, but you don't know if it will help you or hurt you (more likely, it will hurt). If you can provoke The Man to crack your skull open and make it look like it was all his fault, then that's about the best you can hope for, but it seems unlikely that you'll be able to do that.

But I guess I can't say the protests are entirely useless, because the problem is that while they don't stand to gain anything significant from protesting, they stand to lose a lot if they don't. Without protestors, a lot of people might get the message that Bush is not as hated as they thought, and either vote for Bush or be discouraged from voting against him.

That's kinda sad, when protesting does more harm to a cause by not happening than it does good by happening.

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Useless Protesting

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  • Are you saying that non-violent protest is more useless than it used to be? If so, could you explain more what exactly has changed.

    IMHO, non-violent protesting is like writing letters to politicians. It's not going to make them go "Oh No!" and change their plans on the spot, but it's one of the ways they get feedback from the electorate.
    • Are you saying that non-violent protest is more useless than it used to be? If so, could you explain more what exactly has changed.

      No, it is more about what is being protested, than when it is being protested. I don't think there will be a significant number of people who will be affected by peaceful protests, one way or the other, in regard to Bush and the Iraq war. Maybe if 250K came out to march against retroactive copyright extensions, that would mean something.

    • Are you saying that non-violent protest is more useless than it used to be? If so, could you explain more what exactly has changed

      I'd like to think that "protests" have very little place in a society where suffrage is nearly universal, and national direction could be turned on a dime with a simple vote.

      I dunno how they run things on the coasts, but being a midwesterner (in a swing state, no less) I'm completely turned off by incoherent, screaming mobs of people whose cause seems to consist of nothing mor

      • I respect what you're saying. If you see my post below, I think a lot of today's protesters seem to have lost any sense of reaching the mainstream.

        Still, I don't agree that protesters should keep to themselves. A lot of people were similarly irritated by the civil rights protests in the 1960s, or the Vietnam war protests of the 70s. On those issues, in retrospect, it seems altogether good that a minority of people tried hard to force the nation out of its slumber. And unfortunately, this hasn't yet happene
  • Basically, the objective of the protests I think is to become the news
    issue of the week. If they can drown out the convention news for their
    own protest news, it is a success to them.

    Personally I am surprised that most major news outlets have not covered
    them as much as they have. The media is usually quite a willing
    accomplice when it comes to Bush bashing. From reports that I have
    heard though, the protesters out there are not exactly the folks you
    want defending your party or views though. Maybe that is
    • Doesn't surprise me at all. Protest turnout numbers are regularly underreported in the press (when any coverage occurs), if the reporter deigns to speak with protesters the soundbite is taken from the most clueless-looking person at the scene, and the only clips that get any play are when they're talking with police and city officials about setting up security or when things get out of control like the recent case where a bunch of assholes beat up a police officer during an illegal march.

      I tend to agree

      • the media is completely unwilling to dig into most issues being protested

        They've been looking into the primary issue, the war, almost nonstop for a long time now. What more do you want?

        the people at the top could frankly care less

        He shouldn't. Any President who would be swayed by protestors is not doing his job. He was elected to do what he thinks is right, not to do what protestors want him to do.
        • Any President who would be swayed by protestors is not doing his job
          For President I'd rather vote for a man with convictions -- even those that I might disagree with -- than a man who continually tests the wind and do what others want. I typically vote Republican, but I've voted against quite a few that I couldn't really tell where they stand day-to-day. "I'm the other guy" isn't a good enough platform.
        • What more do you want?

          I'd like to know why we have the largest prison population in the world and what our plans are for dealing with it in a responsible manner. The ineffectual War on Drugs is to my knowledge the largest contributor to the nonviolent prison population, and the issues with disproportionate incarceration of minorities and abuse of forfeiture laws have begged public scrutiny for a long time. I'm offended by the use of prison populations by industry for pennies on the dollar or the concept

          • I didn't ask for a laundry list of complaints. What I said is that the main complaints of the protestors *in this case* are looked into by the media: war, terrorism, abortion, gay rights, and the economy. I don't think I am missing any.

            If you have lots of little complaints, who cares? The protestors are throwing a hundred different issues at us and the media, but not with one voice, so why should the media care any more about those than they do about the homeless crazy man on the street screaming about
  • About the conventions (both Republican and Democrat) themselves; they don't do anything, they're just there for show, and to inspire the already party-faithful.
  • Protests of this nature are just an economic burden and an inconvenience for the city. Of course there will be the core groups that earnestly and fundamentaly believe in their cause, but a goodly potion are nothing more than scene whores with nothing better to do at the time. Really, how many protestors voted in a recent election be it at locoal or national levels.

    NY protest are just one big Kumbaya Fest. Who's going to pay for the sevices required to mange the impact?

  • But I guess I can't say the protests are entirely useless, because the problem is that while they don't stand to gain anything significant from protesting, they stand to lose a lot if they don't. Without protestors, a lot of people might get the message that Bush is not as hated as they thought, and either vote for Bush or be discouraged from voting against him.

    This is sad that you HAVE to protest. Then again, it is true. I think this is like your previous post about campaign signs. A protesting pub

  • You're probably right about the RNC protests. It is just about a countervailing force.

    As a sometime protester, it often irritates me that there's so little effort made to reach mainstream ears. Partially this is just a failure of language. They don't know how to gain the respect of a potential mainstream or conservative voter. But it's also a failure of just THINKING. I've often pressed this issue about what they're trying to accomplish and I feel like I'm in free fall. It's like they just invoke protest(

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