2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumOrganizing street protests is fraught with problems.
One of the most frequent of those problems has always been people who show up on the day of the action and who have neither any idea of how it is organized, what its goals are nor any intention of participating in the spirit of the action. They aren't part of the planning, but become the ugly public face that is remembered after many protests.
Those are the people who screw up many protest actions and turn them into disasters. They are the people who shout, "fuck the pigs" when the protest is trying to stand in solidarity in front of a police line without provoking police violence. They are the people who show up and then throw rocks from the sidelines without putting themselves in harm's way. That leaves the dedicated non-violent protesters to deal with the resulting violence.
I finally stopped being involved in organized protest actions due to such people. No matter how much planning and care went into an action, people always showed up with a completely different agenda and often destroyed any effectiveness the planned action might have had. I decided to approach the whole thing in a different way.
Such people are still, and may always be, screwing up protest actions with their unplanned and unthoughtful actions. They're the people up on the freeway overpass in Minnesota, throwing bricks and other objects at the police, putting the people who are there to make their point in danger. They tend to ruin everything they participate in with their random, unplanned violent actions. They make street activism less effective and far more dangerous for protesters and others.
NCTraveler
(30,481 posts)Throwing rocks, storming stages, and yelling "fuck the pigs" is getting noticed.
I think you address something that is multi-faceted as being definable in one line of thinking.
"They are the people who shout, "fuck the pigs" when the protest is trying to stand in solidarity in front of a police line without provoking police violence."
If you are with a large group standing in solidarity in front of a police line, one of them yells "fuck the pigs", you are still standing in solidarity in front of the police line. Nothing lost.
People sat there and yelled "taze her" and "we have already solved racial problems" at Marissa at a political event. I'm sure you will still go to political events. Yet that rhetoric has been heard many times this season at political events. Not just one.
puffy socks
(1,473 posts)different agenda "
and yet no tolerance. yet if the cops kill people we are supposed to remember the tense situation they are in. Its again all about the cops. What don't their victims get a chance to have their emotional outbursts forgiven , or is this just for the cops?
I'm not condoning. I'm saying there's always a double standard and its usually works against the innocent people.
Blacks are supposed to stand and be beaten or killed by police over and over again on a daily basis and should they retaliate or defend they are portrayed as bad violent people. Cops go nuts and kill and they are let go without charges and in fact given sympathy for their feelings.
Not to mention how many of those are police provocateurs? The fact that they do such things to shut down protests shows you how truly serious they are about protecting these protesters right to free speech.
Orsino
(37,428 posts)...other than the powers who made our unrest inevitable.