We're Taking Civil Disobedience to End Fossil Fuels. Will You Join Us? | Asking people to engage in nonviolent direct action isn’t something we do lightly. But it is something we must do.
We're Taking Civil Disobedience to End Fossil Fuels. Will You Join Us? | Asking people to engage in nonviolent direct action isn’t something we do lightly. But it is something we must do.
This is not the way, because you alienate too many middle ground people, when you need to attract them.
You either need numbers, masses of people attending a concert in the park. Get a million . 2 million. ActivateJoe Public . Create disruption by filling the public realm with willing participants.
Or, you have to fire bomb to the offices and go to war.
Civil disobedience gets you in the news, and the media interview a bunch of members of the public, who are pissed about having their commute disrupted, and the public turn against you and they turned against the cause literally over night .
Xtinction Rebellion have made far more enemies than they have won friends.
Throwing soup at paintings is the dumbest, most counter-productive way possible.
I’ll shit on that all day long.
However it gets clicks and then people talk about the climate crisis.
So it generates revenue for the media, eats energy serving the content, and does nothing that isn’t already happening. Sounds like a big win for the planet!
Yeah, great.
The climate crisis could have been represented better. And attacking museums is just low. Like they need that.
It sure got people talking and raised awareness, and now the groups tactics have evolved.
One would hope their tactics evolved, the awareness of it being incredibly stupid is what people were talking about.
Public demonstrations are not new. Lessons learned are abundant. Changes in technology are new and that’s what could be useful but making a spectacle and preventing people from going home is not the best avenue, so to speak.
And according to you, can’t organize because Karen, who didn’t give a shit to begin with, will think protesters are annoying.
In this case it’s more about me, who does give a shit, thinking protesters are annoying and counterproductive.
The article doesn’t go into specifics about what ‘disruptions’ they want to cause but quotes MLK "to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.”
Problem is this isn’t the civil rights movement and the motives and actors are entirely different. Literally everyone in the US uses petroleum, even the people protesting petroleum depend on petroleum to engage in their protests.
I’ll accept ‘creating a crisis’ to help people already in crisis gain the same rights I have. But a bunch of main-character shitheads that probably use more gas than I do ‘creating a crisis’ over petroleum that will solve nothing is going to make me an opponent of them even if I’m an ally of the general cause.
Saying protesters also use petroleum is a bullshit point too.
Again “Literally everyone in the US uses petroleum, even the people protesting petroleum depend on petroleum to engage in their protests.” I guess you missed that was a point about the comparison to the civil rights movement. Civil rights protesters didn’t depend on actively violating civil rights. The whole MLK invocation is absurd.
In any case you should offer to do some outreach for their org. You seem to care more about feeling righteous than actually achieving the outcome you supposedly support. Seems like a good fit with this group.
I could similarly say you should meet with them in person and explain to them directly the error in their ways. Saying there are zero lessons that can be learned from the civil rights movement is also absurd. Obviously it’s different in many ways, but not completely.
I don’t live anywhere near NYC and was just offering a counterpoint to the unnecessary criticisms of something that hasn’t even happened yet. If that counts as “feeling righteous” to you, that’s your conclusion and not anything to do with me. I’ve dedicated my career and significant time and expsne to this cause that I “supposedly support”, but I do so without shitting on others in the way you’ve chosen to. I wish you success in however you are planning to dedicate your resources to the cause. We’re on the same team friend.
I’ve dedicated my career and significant time and expsne to this cause that I “supposedly support”.
I never doubt the bona fides of anonymous internet strangers ;) Sorry but when someone has to pull that out to make a point to another anonymous internet stranger it reeks of “need to win” desperation.
but I do so without shitting on others in the way you’ve chosen to.
except…
It’s got dumb Charlie Kirk “you criticize society but are a member of society, curious” energy.
Yeah you’ve so civil. I called a hypothetical group ‘shitheads’ and you compare me directly to Charlie Kirk. No irony there.
But anyway keep up the great work- you’re winning hearts and minds for our team, friend ;)
But anyway keep up the great work- you’re winning hearts and minds for our ‘team’, friend ;)
His attitude is certainly a lot better than yours.
I’ll accept ‘creating a crisis’ to help people already in crisis gain the same rights I have. But a bunch of shitheads that probably use more gas than I do ‘creating a crisis’ that will solve nothing is going to make me an opponent of them even if I’m an ally of the general cause.
Lmao, weren’t you just chasing me around c/politicalmemes telling me that causing a crisis to agitate for an end to American support to Israel’s war crimes dumb and inconvenient?
Really seems like you just don’t like being inconvenienced.
XR is widely hated, but it is extremely successful in making people talk about the climate crisis. Actions such as blocking oil refineries, coal power plants and so forth certainly work and cause massive damage to large emitters. The problem is that the media does not report on it, so when you want to recruit, you do so by blocking streets.
The simple truth is that you need both. Large scale mobilization and some more radical action. It is very clear that large scale protests have not worked as well as needed.
I would disagree that it’s widely hated, I only hear the worst, most obnoxious assholes talking about how much they hate it.
Also, anyone making a good faith effort to combat climate change in any way gets a pass from me, as long as we don’t yet know it’s actually counter-productive.
Anyone who actually cares about climate change would understand that there’s no measure too ridiculous. If throwing soup on a painting’s glass cover moves the needle on climate change even a millionth of a percent towards a solution then great, fucking do it. Even if it makes no difference at all fuck it, you’re trying, I support you. Fuck the paintings, they won’t matter if nobody’s left to look at or preserve them.
These people hate on activism despite never having any evidence that it’s counter-productive beyond “I reckon it is,” which just means they don’t like it. They don’t care about climate change or the human race, they’re just here to shit on activists because they’ve been taught to hate them by fossil fuel industry propaganda.
So these aren’t persuadable people, we shouldn’t care about what they have to say, so fuck them.