WHEN PRESIDENT DONALD Trump announced on Saturday night that he would send the National Guard to Los Angeles to crush protests, a narrative emerged on social media that demonstrators had somehow given a gift to the authoritarian president by escalating confrontations with U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
“Los Angeles — violence is never the answer. Assaulting law enforcement is never ok,” Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., posted on Sunday. “Indeed, doing so plays directly into the hands of those who seek to antagonize and weaponize the situation for their own gain. Don’t let them succeed.”
In reality, the protesters throwing rocks at heavily armed security forces or attempting to damage the vehicles used to kidnap their immigrant neighbors did not introduce violence. They are instead acting in militant community defense.
After all, would the situation somehow be less violent were ICE left to snatch and disappear people without impediment? Does Schiff imagine either his pronouncements or the empty condemnations of his Democratic Party colleagues will slow down the deportation of our neighbors?
LA is doing a great job of keeping everything calm. There was no reason to send the National Guard and now the Marines. Trump knows he looks like an idiot and is going to try and speed up the dictatorship early. Let’s not give him a reason to look like he’s doing anything and continue to be calm. Republicans, you’re in on this or I would hear something from you. You r’s better start speaking up mf’s.
Right? It’s the cops with the guns and the gas canisters, not the protestors.
And the protests are well into the thousands, yet only a few dozen arrests, and no reports of serious police injuries or death (if anything like that had happened, news everywhere would have been plastered wall-to-wall with that story). On the other hand, plenty of reports of protestors and media being harmed by police weapons. That is less violence and injury than after a major sports game.
Republicans, you’re in on this or I would hear something from you.
Always has been.
The cons hate America, hate freedom, and hate the Constitution. Always have.
Do you actually believe that? It’s a pretty simplistic view of the situation.
I think if you honestly look at the situation, it’s pretty clear to see that conservatives definitely love America, but they have a VERY different idea of what America is and how to make it better. They are working towards that goal of making America better, it’s just that their privileged, bigoted, deeply problematic views would produce a truly horrifying version of the US.
The other issue is conservatives seem comfortable using an “ends justify the means” mentality, when the means are evil and the ends are only based on one interpretation of their faith. That kind of thing would certainly bother most progressives, but in their own eyes, they’re “doing God’s work”.
The cons truly hate America, yes. They want America to be something other than what we have in the rule of law and the Constitution as it was actually written and the path that the Founders set us on. They hate a huge swathe of Americans and they hate the notion of others actually having actual freedom.
Not really sure how else to put it. If these people want a hard-right theocracy, they have options they can choose from. If they are trying to turn a secular nation into that, they clearly hate the current system.
those that make peaceful protest impossible…
The only violent group at a protest is the Police. So forward all complaints to the people heavy armed in riot gear who are going around shooting at journalists.
Which is crazy, you’d think people seeing this would fight back
The thing about the Reichstag fire is that Hitler was going to do that shit eventually no matter what.
Man, Schiff is such a fucking limpdick. Sometimes, violence is the answer. Otherwise, we’d all be speaking German and Japanese.
Don’t believe the doubters: protest still has power
Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.
There are, of course, many ethical reasons to use nonviolent strategies. But compelling research by Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard University, confirms that civil disobedience is not only the moral choice; it is also the most powerful way of shaping world politics – by a long way.
Looking at hundreds of campaigns over the last century, Chenoweth found that nonviolent campaigns are twice as likely to achieve their goals as violent campaigns. And although the exact dynamics will depend on many factors, she has shown it takes around 3.5% of the population actively participating in the protests to ensure serious political change.
Working with Maria Stephan, a researcher at the ICNC, Chenoweth performed an extensive review of the literature on civil resistance and social movements from 1900 to 2006 – a data set then corroborated with other experts in the field. They primarily considered attempts to bring about regime change. A movement was considered a success if it fully achieved its goals both within a year of its peak engagement and as a direct result of its activities. A regime change resulting from foreign military intervention would not be considered a success, for instance. A campaign was considered violent, meanwhile, if it involved bombings, kidnappings, the destruction of infrastructure – or any other physical harm to people or property.
I’m not saying protest doesn’t have power. But the power of nonviolent protest diminishes sharply if there’s no implicit threat of violent protest if matters get pushed too far. One of the primary reasons MLK succeeded was because Malcom X was waiting in the wings.
Nonviolent protest against a status quo ante is one thing; nonviolent protest against an aggressively authoritarian regime that’s grabbing more power by the day is quite another. It is a very, very different context.
I see what you’re saying, but I live in Seattle. I saw how they spun our city as a “hellhole” and “it’s on fire” for months. I had family members calling to see if I was okay when it was very contained and our cops had been quiet quitting for years anyway, it was that fucked up. You have to have the people on your side, and not be on the side of the soldiers/agents/whatever.
I think the government has learned a lot about suppression of protests in the last 20 years.
Find (or create) an excuse to call the protest violent, apply less-than-lethal weapons liberally, and subvert the message of the protest to turn the public against it.
A very big portion of How to Blow Up a Pipeline by Andreas Malm criticizes this study and how it ignores the more violent and property-destroying aspects of the movements it studied.
As Malm describes, the radical flank effect is a well-documented phenomenon in which the presence of a more militant faction in a social movement makes the authorities much more likely to compromise with the moderate elements.
I suggest you read the book if you haven’t already.
Kidnap vans need functioning tires, just sayin.
Caltrops pop them very easily
Big chungus
It should be completely legal to shoot cops with rubber bullets whenever you feel like it. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
It doesn’t matter what they say. As long as they’re congregating and throwing rocks, Trump can say “see I told you” and all his fans will believe him and agree. Whatever they choose to do is fuelling his ascension to dictatorship.
Whatever they choose to do is fuelling his ascension to dictatorship.
Which means the only strategy left (besides capitulation) is to play their game and beat them at it.
Well, the only legal strategy.
Any side can play the game without rules.
The Regime, and yes, its the Regime from now on, is only following the blueprint from its Russian Mafia Masters.
Over there, Protesting is just disorderly, its viewed as immature and irresponsible. You dont go out in the street and yell at the government for your problems,
you are supposed to calmly write a letter or other appeal to the
TsarPresident and ask them to personally intervene, and go after the middle managers at the factory , or the foreign traders ripping you off or whoever is really responsible for your troubleI hope these protests continue indefinitely.
I hope more and more and more people join these protests. Enough so, where the economy is drastically affected each and every day.
More people protesting = less people working = less money for the states = less money for the federal government.
We can stand our ground, defend ourselves physically, as well as hurt the economy financially.
In other words, I’m wanting a little bit of anarchy. Just the tip.
