https://www.resilience.org/stories/2024-06-24/overcoming-despair-and-apathy-to-win-democracy/
"Instead of organizing a protest in the city center, in front of a government building where nobody’s around, we would organize those same protests at the outskirts of the city, in and around green markets or shopping centers. We spoke to people rather than shout at institutions where the doors were shut."
Overcoming despair and apathy to win democracy

With the biggest election year in history underway — and threats to democracy facing the United States and many other countries — I decided to ask Ivan about the many practical lessons he learned from Otpor’s success. Here, in Ivan’s own words, is the story of bringing down a dictator.

resilience
@dynamic
Yes! This is exactly why I don't like the "speak truth to power" sentiment. It's not power that needs to hear truth - they already know the truth, they just lie about it - it's us regular people who need to hear it. And getting out to do some good old fashioned grassroots organizing (petitioning, lit distro) is a great way to build political power and counteract misconceptions about your group/cause/movement that your political opponents are no doubt spreading.
@dynamic you have to do this in my town, as the government buildings are all in a corner about 1km away from the main town centre - they have also been target hardened to limit the impact of any protests in the vicinity (and I counted 3 different types of CCTV camera there, as I had to go to the courthouse for jury service last year)

@vfrmedia

Sounds annoying.

@dynamic this is fairly normal procedure in larger towns in England - its not only done against protests but due to car dependency, changing demographics, and to make use of a bulk area of land for the public services.

Its interlinked but also kind of the opposite to the article you tooted - protests generally do happen in the places where the people are which is closer to the town centre, but they have 0 impact on the government buildings or their staff as those are some distance away..

@dynamic also if they still used the old town hall, courts etc the town would be gridlocked even *more* with cars due to folk trying to get to those places..