Yeah, I'd have to agree. Not EVERYTHING was fixed, but a whole lot was. As a first step, it was a good one. It just wasn't the only one that was necessary. This one won't be, either. That struggle will never truly be over.
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Yeah, I'd have to agree. Not EVERYTHING was fixed, but a whole lot was. As a first step, it was a good one. It just wasn't the only one that was necessary. This one won't be, either. That struggle will never truly be over.
Yeah, some peoples prejudices run very deep and are not seen as prejudices but as truths. And nothing you say or do will change their mind. My biggest hope is it wont be passed on to the next generation.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker
Edit:
I just wanted to add, I have a lot of hope for this generation (that excludes me, I can barely use a cell phone, still have a land line). When I look at the people protesting, it's a very diverse mix of people.
I would say that only a minority of people ever change their minds about much of anything. There's an old saying: "Progress rides on a hearse."
That's pretty much how I see it. I don't know anybody who has truly changed their minds when it comes to race, politics, or any other such emotional issue, though I've heard of a few people indirectly. After all, race doesn't exist outside of the context of society. It's not a biological thing, but a social thing. So, do people change their beliefs in their lifetimes? Some may, but all do die in the end. The people who shaped the world in the 60s, have mostly shuffled off this mortal coil. We will, as well. And as far as I can see, each generation is an improvement on the past when it comes to tolerance and flexibility.
Perhaps we will not get better, but we WILL be replaced, and that alone may be enough.
Yep, the world is finally waking up to various injustices and problems that have been brewing for a long time - and several of them are now making progress.Quote:
Originally Posted by wes4dbt
The environment issues certainly haven't been solved (Greta has openly said she will have to keep going for years), but things are getting better in many countries - it's just a matter of making all countries get involved, and do it enough. While the UK government is encouraging people back to work, it is recommending walking or cycling there if you can, and is blocking off many roads to cars for added inspiration.
MLK etc did not achieve perfection, and it is right that there is still protesting to correct the current issues (at least the most significant ones, like state sanctioned murder). My view is that 3 months of riots in some places (along with murders happening there) is taking it too far... that doesn't mean that there shouldn't be any (the injustice does need to be raised, and people should make their own choices as to how). There are lots of ways to do things (like Belarus, where they've had weeks of peaceful protests on the UK news virtually every day), and I can see that the ongoing situation in America is just giving Trump a reason for re-election, and if it happens he will do what he can to prevent the current issues getting fixed.
That's an interesting sequence. I wrote that reply, hit post, it instantly appeared (very fast connection)....but not as the latest post, as Si was after me. I think that means that we must have very nearly hit the button at the same time.
Yep, but you won the race we didn't know we were having :lol:
Who mentioned "all problems". I mean, black people are still being killed in broad daylight by the police who are supposed to defend them so I feel we're setting a pretty low bar here. But yeah, lets not talk about that, lets talk about the protests instead.Quote:
If you want to say it wasn't effective because it didn't solve all problems, go ahead but that is an impossibility.
I don't feel that's a fair representation. What we saw was a few of weeks of rioting following George Floyd, followed by largely peaceful (by my terms) occupation movements, then further rioting following the Jacob Blake shooting. I guess whether you consider there to have been 3 months of violent protest depends on how you view the occupation movements. I get that they disrupted business but I don't feel that's the priority at this time.Quote:
3 months of riots in some places
The killings continue. Details are sparse on this one and it does seem he ran from the police and actually punched one when caught but let's just break down a couple of the details:-
1. He was being stopped for a cycling code violation. Just let that sink in for a second.
2. He dropped what he was holding, the police saw it included a gun, then a deputy involved shooting again. He dropped the gun, then he was killed.
The way i see it is very few protests in modern times actually bring about change, or if they do they nudge it a along a bit rather then get the change they were looking for.
The BLM protests, may actually change something, but probably only if Trump is not reelected.
For a Protest to work you need to have a government that is at the very least prepared to engage with the protesters and Biden will likely do that.
Will the change be as big as it needs to be, probably not unfortunately we still live in a fairly prejudiced society in most countries around the world and change is hard won and slow.
I think that's probably true. It's hard to pick examples because they're never directly causal but the most obvious example I can think of was the Poll Tax riots which are widely credited with bringing Thatcher's government down.Quote:
very few protests in modern times actually bring about change
The other example that springs to mind would be the anti road building protests that Swampy et al engaged in. I'm not sure they really stopped road building though. They certainly didn't stop the actual roads they were targeted at (the Oxford and Winchester bypasses) but I do feel they slowed road expansion over the next couple of decades. Hard to quantify though.
Other than that I'm drawing a blank unless you include industrial strikes.
While I don't think it's constructive to harp on a point, the thing that strikes me about the above two examples is that both were extremely disruptive. I'm sure there are more peaceful examples I'm missing but I still reach the same conclusion, the level of disruption doesn't feel like it makes a significant difference to the effectiveness either way, beyond getting the protest noticed in the first place. Mostly I think it's a matter of catching a zeitgeist.
Well, protests that are large enough have certainly changed things in the developing world: Ukraine, Syria, Algeria, and perhaps soon to be Belarus. One thing that is notable about most of them is that the change hasn't always turned out well.
That's true and not something I'd considered. It raises the question, where does protest end and revolution begin. Personally I'd suggest they're actually the same thing and it's just a matter of scale.
If you look at Ukraine, protests toppled the regime, but, at least at first, didn't really change anything other than which palms were getting greased. Syria went right on to civil war, Ukraine pretty much didn't (except what Russia stirred up), but also just shifted the corruption. They seem to be doing better, now, or at least trying to, so they might be on the right path. Algeria and some of the other North African 'Muslim Spring' countries are still works in progress, or worse off.
Once you destabilize an existing system, there's no guarantee that what replaces it will be better. That likely keeps a whole lot of people from protesting. Most likely, almost everybody in any society has SOME grievance, but most also have some things they like. They have to decide where the needle lies, and weigh the cost/benefit. I'd guess that everybody does that calculation differently. So, when you get some protest like what's happening in Belarus, it's really significant because it means that a VAST majority made the decision that not protesting was worse than protesting.
What's interesting in the US is the number, and diversity, that are also making that determination. I'd say that's scaring some folks, which is why the right wing is also showing up.
In local news, mayor of local town said something - in short called BLM a terrist organization - and now people are calling for his resignation and boycotting the product of a company he owns... No, he isn't stepping down. He's also given the standard "I'm sorry you're offended" non-appology ... also not relevant... What caught my attention was in the comments where someone went on a tirade that in short tried to justify what he said. For their evidence they presented all the shootings, looting, rioting, and now murder (??) ...
At first I thought what bull crap... then I thought... yeah... of course they are trying to disrupt society. Makes perfect sense. Of course they are. Society is broken. IT needs to be fixed, and you get fixed with kumbyahs and rainbows and unicorns... sometimes it takes a village with pitchforks and torches. The status quo isn't working any more. So yeah... they are disrupting society. They should. Let's take a quick look at history... The "Boston Tea Party" ... We call them patriots now... I'm pretty sure the government at the time had a different word for them: thugs. Hooligans. Thieves. Disruptors of society...Quote:
"All over Floyd, who apparently died from a fentanyl overdose, per the autopsy report. The cop contributed to his death, and should answer for that in court. The rest is all orchestrated by leftist agitators, trying to disrupt society."
-tg
I think that miss-represents what we're talking about here though. Nobodies talking about bringing down the US "Regime" (scare quotes 'cause that's how we talk about the countries you're describing because... them). BLM are just asking that society stops disadvantaging them, often lethally. That's not the same as tearing down the entire system of government.Quote:
Once you destabilize an existing system, there's no guarantee that what replaces it will be better
+1Quote:
of course they are trying to disrupt society. Makes perfect sense. Of course they are. Society is broken. IT needs to be fixed, and you get fixed with kumbyahs and rainbows and unicorns... sometimes it takes a village with pitchforks and torches. The status quo isn't working any more. So yeah... they are disrupting society. They should. Let's take a quick look at history... The "Boston Tea Party" ... We call them patriots now... I'm pretty sure the government at the time had a different word for them: thugs. Hooligans. Thieves. Disruptors of society...
As of this morning Extinction Rebellion are "an attack on Democracy". Not according to me, mind, that's our home secretary talking. Out press are repeating that line. Boris has said the protests are "unacceptable". This is why I say that there's no such thing as a peaceful protest. The ones we call peaceful are simply the ones whose cause we support enough to accept the disruption.
Me, I support not murdering black people any more.
That's true. I wasn't talking about the current situation in the US, I was talking about revolutions overthrowing a corrupt or dictatorial system. In those cases, where the situation has become so intolerable that the majority of the population joins together to throw out the system, there's no guarantee that something better replaces it. In the case of the US, we are trying to adjust, but not destroy.Quote:
Originally Posted by FunkyDexter
I do find the current incumbent pretty intolerable but I'm still holding out hope that the system will deal with that in a few months so not calling for revolution yet. Mind you, if Trump doesn't win but refuses to leave (which I think is unlikely... but possible) or tries to take a third term in four years... then I guess there'd be a case for it.
By the way, I actually have real experience of a governmental overthrow. I grew up in Nigeria and was out there for the 1983 military coup and a couple of the ones that followed. Ultimately I think they were good for the country (the preceding democracy was corrupt to the point where you couldn't really call it a democracy, it was more like a tribal conflict every four years) and it was "bloodless". I don't think it's necessarily representative of overthrows in general, though, and I scare quoted "bloodless" because people did disappear (including friends of the family) and the military government did hold public executions for a while... so not bloodless at all.
edit> It occurs to me that the above might cause some confusion. For the record, I'm white and am not trying to claim a black experience. However, growing up in Nigeria afforded me an incredibly privileged lifestyle which left me with deep sense of responsibility to give back. It also meant that the majority of my social circle were black which left me highly sympathetic to the disadvantages that black Africans and, in turn, black people in general face. That probably explains a lot of where my politics on this issue come from.
My father worked in mainframes. He saw that there was no future in that, so when the company offered early retirement, he jumped at it, but wasn't old enough to really retire (couldn't touch retirement savings, yet). Therefore, my parents went into the Peace Corps for a hitch back in the early 90s. One of the things they told me is that the Peace Corps had told them that those who went to Africa came back sensitized to racial issues. Those who went to South America came back sensitized to social issues. Those who went to the South Pacific....didn't come back.
Fortunately, they did manage to come back from the South Pacific. Still, what the Peace Corps told them does fit with what you just said.