Conferences are usually hum-drum affairs, with all the charms of a Jerry Lewis phone. Democrats hope to extend Kamala’s honeymoon by having a festive, well-publicized, and trouble-free event. The recent wave of protests against Israeli genocide and possible anti-immigration protests are threats to come. If it happens on any scale, it’s very easy to compare it to Chicago 1968.
That also means that the incentives for the mainstream Democratic media to curtail any active political action will be strong. That means a better chance of under-reporting any embarrassing skirmishes or ambushes of officials or stakeholders. It also means that protests will be carried out at a higher level to get results.
This post is intended to raise some questions rather than provide answers. Activists in our study and those familiar with the theory and practice of protest and social change are encouraged to speak.
Sadly, the group most experienced in using protests and other methods to effect change is the CIA. That would also suggest that they can develop a playbook on how to undermine their normal moves. Are there any students who have come across a scholarly or good journalistic work that wants to change the CIA color revolution manual engineer? Or does it involve more complex methods of replication, such as finding promising new people and finding them you are educated did you study in the US?
Many students are critical of the idea of acts of violence or simply causing a disturbance. Frederick Douglass argues:
Power allows nothing without necessity. It never did and it never will. Find out which people will submit to it in peace and find out the exact measure of injustice and injustice that will be imposed upon them, and this will continue until they are opposed by words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are determined by the patience of those they oppress
How do we think protests “work”? The authorities and the media have done an excellent job of persuading the vast unwashed public that organized resistance does not work. And in many senses that’s okay because it takes a long time to move the Overton Window and the effect changes. From a 2010 post:
It is amazing to see how the American people have been conditioned to think that political action and involvement is futile. I’m old enough to have seen the opposite, how activism in the 1960s produced huge advances in black and women’s rights, and ultimately led the US out of the Vietnam War.
I am reminded of this sense of hopelessness almost daily in the comments section. Whenever possible measures appear, almost inevitably, a few will argue that there is no need to make the effort, that we as individuals are powerless.
I don’t buy that as a situation, mostly because professional inaction is a good, inexpensive way to get rid of the people who have been spotted. I accidentally took down Johann Hari’s article in the Independent on this topic in the Links, and Richard Kline’s comment on it made me realize it deserved its own post, so I’m correcting that mistake now.
As Kline noted:
The crux of the matter is this: you lose, you lose, you lose, you lose, they stop. As someone who has protested, and learned the process, it is clear that one spends most of one’s time getting defeated. That is painful, humiliating, and scary. One cannot normally expect, as in war, to get a clean shot at a clear win. What you do with protest is exactly what Hari discussed, you change the context, and that change moves the goalposts to your opponent, taking the current out of their machine. The non-violent resistance in Hungary in the 1860s (yes, that’s the 19th century) is a great example. Communist rule in Russia and its dependencies did not fail because the protestors ‘won’ but because the majority simply withdrew cooperation until it ended badly.
So let’s get back to the subject matter. How do you rate certain protests or protest plans? Please do not reveal the obvious, that this question seems to contradict the idea above, that the protest does not result in quick, easy, or many visible gains, but gradually grinds the merits and foundations of moral support. target.
However, one of the ways to eliminate protests and other forms of opposition is to subject them to performance tests or expected results that members of the organization have never experienced. For example, it is common to criticize Occupy Wall Street for not achieving anything, even though its members never promised to do so. The fact that it is still remembered even if the first operation in New York City lasted for two months until it was canceled as part of the 17-city military attack shows its presence in representing the 99% v. the 1% (that it was their meme and endured) shows that it had an impact, and was seen as a threat. The media always insisted that Occupy was working for the leaders and presenting demands, which it did not. Its complex collective decision-making process was an obstacle to action, but it was undoubtedly a good vehicle for what was called awareness in the 1960s.
Or think about Black Lives Matter. It was starting to soften, even witnessing some Congressmen taking these ill-advised laws and downplaying the demand for the police to get their money back. But at that time, it was already entered by the Democrats, with real or virtual leaders who could be bought with various paid opportunities. Lambert could fill in too many details, but even yours truly noted that the process of co-opting began when Black Lives Matter began organizing die-ins, which saw high levels of white and Hispanic participation.
Recently, I have had students and contacts portray the late spring wave of US campus protests as ineffective because they did not save Palestinian lives. But even if this is a great goal (and sadly it seems that it will not be achieved without increasing the action of the Axis of Resistance, as we all know that it risks all kinds of collateral consequences), they had some needs, such as divest holds of the school. in Israel-related businesses (which should frankly be small) and support the BDS movement. Although the visible impact in these areas seems to be negative, as far as I know, the effect of the protests was to increase the willingness of the media to use the word genocide. It also exposed the power of Zionist billionaires to trample schools and threaten to destroy the jobs of protesting students.
There is no reason to think that these protests will not continue when the school year starts again, so the soft costs of supporting Israel will continue to grow.
These examples emphasize the difference in time scales, that in most reform campaigns, progress is so slow and difficult to see that it is easy to dismiss it as counterproductive. And that’s before trying to overthrow the regime or just trying to get rid of them, as we’ve seen with the recent wave of institutional insurrection against Israel.
So the expected anti-genocide and anti-immigration protests at the Democratic Convention are highly unlikely to yield success, barring a police miscalculation that turns participants into martyrs.
What kind of strategic advantages can they achieve? Here is a partial list:
Increasing morale among sympathizers, perhaps at the margins increases participation and other support
Get media attention. Donald Trump has shown that there is no such thing as a bad machine
Show that they are strong, due to numbers or tactical intelligence that undermines Kamala’s team. This may have more consequences than it seems. Democrats are hoping to keep the gas going in the election. Successful protests, even if below the 68 degree threshold in Chicago, could undermine the party’s efforts to make Kamala’s victory inevitable.
The venues, the United Center and McCormick Place, are already closed, hence the on-site protests. with these stragglers somehow getting close enough to make a mess and be removed quickly, it is not possible. .
So what about outside? And this is not my place, but the recent protest blockade of the 405, a freeway in Los Angeles, suggests that choking the arteries of transportation is not difficult and very rewarding, at least in terms of attention.
Chicago has a major point of vulnerability: the Kennedy Expressway, which runs from downtown Chicago to O’Hare Airport. It is also a major commuter road. There is a good public train from the airport to the city, but it is unlikely that it will have the capacity to change the route if the protesters are going to stop traffic for any length of time. I’ve had elevators that run on the streets rather than the expressway during traffic times. Few knew how to do that, and the route is cross. Of course, with GPS, information isn’t a barrier, but those side streets can get crowded quickly.
McCormick Place is isolated, which means that it is already a difficult task for the conference participants to get there from their hotels. A convention is like a fashion show; one big point is to show the foot soldiers a good time. So the use of McCormick Place undermines that edge. McCormick Place is also close to a major freeway, and former Chicagoans told me they thought it wouldn’t be hard to keep that and the traffic out of that convention center.
Having said all that, the irony is that the experiment here may not be an effective action of the old school, which depended on the scale to show the protesters have a large number or at least large numbers, but the ability to produce video vignettes that can go and succeed in increasing the positions of the protesters. But we’ll soon see if Team Dem has successfully put forward its anti-incendiary tactics, or if the protesters are able to pull the plug on the show for a more polished, non-confrontational event.
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