The climate activist blocked a port handling fossil fuels with a group of young activists in June.

The climate activist blocked a port handling fossil fuels with a group of young activists in June.

  • TheUniqueOne@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    935·
    1 year ago

    Good I hate this attitude some have that protests should never even mildly inconvenience others. It completely ignores any basic history of protest movements and the fact some point to MLK JR shows they don’t know anything about him and how “disruptive” some of his sit ins and marches were. Go Greta we need to take extreme action about climate change immediately its an extreme emergency.

      • Anomander@kbin.social
        35·
        1 year ago

        I think it’s worth addressing that “the right people” are very often going out of their way to be absolutely unreachable by the average joe and are completely impossible for mere poors to meaningfully bother directly. Protest will always inconvenience average people first, because the little people are always affected more than the rich in any action, especially any that would manage to rattle the powerful in any way.

        The powerful have managed to structure society and laws alike to make effectively all actions that would target them directly and spare the average joe from any collateral overspill either impractical - or significantly more illegal than protest actions that cast a broader net. The idea from the powerful is to ensure that protest must affect other citizens in order to reach them, and can’t just target them directly. Targeting them, alone, is harassment, or trespass on private property, or … etc.

      • saltesc@lemmy.worldEnglish
        93·
        1 year ago

        Yep. Protesting is just marketing. It is very effective when done well and backfires when done poorly. If you study the market and target audience properly, they’ll listen and join the cause.

    • fishos@kbin.social
      213·
      1 year ago

      Protests actually weren’t MLKs strongest tool, and he himself admits it. Getting arrested for doing something and then challenging it in court now that you have standing was his biggest tool. Most of the protests were just a means to get arrested. It’s revisionist history that says it was the protests specifically that worked because it’s better to emphasize the tactics that didnt work than to point out what actually did and risk a reoccurrence.