Rebellion or something.

[Junkenstein]

Vice on UK Policing:
http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/the-metropolitan-police-cops-out-of-control

In the wake of 9/11, British and American authorities were quick to embrace more aggressive policing approaches and grew increasingly impatient and intolerant of political protest. The USA Patriot act and its British legislative equivalent, the Terrorism Act, both made it significantly easier for police to criminalise dissent and have each been routinely abused. While the Met and other police forces pay lip service to "facilitating peaceful protest", any kind of political expression outside of the tick-box electoral process is treated with suspicion. Sure, you have the right to protest, but show up at a political demonstration and you run the risk of being kettled for hours on end, being aggressively photographed and filmed by police photography teams or just getting a good, old-fashioned kicking in the back of a police van.

I asked Val Swain of FITWatch, a group that monitors the policing of political groups, what she made of the recent revelations of undercover policing. She told me, "This isn't just about undercover policing. The police treat protest as something to prevent, deter and disturb, so they've created an environment in which people are fearful of becoming involved in political protest and distrustful of those who are already are."

Much of the article applies to other Police forces, particularly the move towards militarization.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Yeah, protesting hasn't exactly been "safe" for quite a while here, either.

[Junkenstein]

There's something in my head about the relationship between the state and dissent with some "coping" (This could mean acknowledging grievances and providing redress to well, not.)

There seems to be an issue with states that have effective grievance procedures do not tend to need or have many protests for this reason. Which kind of gets me thinking that pretty much every protest is somehow wrong by focusing on the issue and not how to change the system to provide "compensation" of some sort and ensure further lapses don't happen.

By taking the "X is Bad, Lets protest" you force the system into an authority reaction. "X is bad so lets change Y and Z to prevent X reoccurring" is not a catchy protest chant however. Less focus on the issue and more on the systemic failing is what I'm getting at. Otherwise you just seem to end up repeating the same protests over and over again. 

I'm also kind of leaning to any protest being much more effective directly related to the horrific event spurring it. Been reading a lot about "story-telling" of late, and it would appear that people are much more involved with any protest if it's got a nasty human tragedy to begin the conversation.

[Roly Poly Oly-Garch]

I also think that the "There's no point in protesting, it won't change anything anyway" rhetoric is designed to get the majority of people to SHUT UP, and it does a very effective job of doing so.

There's always a point in protesting...it may not be to effect change, but then it doesn't need to be. At a given point there is nothing left to do but to take to the streets and scream FUCK THIS SHIT. Even if it doesn't result in some big dramatic change in the world, it does result in a big dramatic change in the person who does it -- that is to sayc they go from feeling pissed off and shitty to pissed off and really, REALLY good.

[Roly Poly Oly-Garch]

Thing is, Nigel, this has resulted in the population galloping to the left.  It's hard to see day-to-day, because the 20% that thought Palin was a good idea are LOUD.  But looking at things from a results-based viewpoint, what's changed, there's no doubt that a bit of sanity is returning.

It's a long game.  Results take time, but they are occurring.  Getting impatient and declaring the system defunct plays directly into the hands of the people who aren't really happy with the idea of a republic...The Koch brothers, among other people.

Have you heard the one about the two bulls?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHcoMMaW2ZU

[Roly Poly Oly-Garch]

This discussion got off the track of my original statement, which was that the Protest Culture™ is largely ineffective in the West. I was not talking about actual protests/riots that have overtaken a number of countries around the planet and resulted in at least some kind of deviation from the established norms in those countries. I was talking specifically about what it means to protest in the West, specifically in America.

Again, do you think the right for Gays to marry just happened?  Or the right for them to not have the shit kicked out of them with a wink and a nod from the legal system just appeared?

That's one example.  I can name a lot of others.

No, but I'm not convinced it was protests that got that done. Protests were part of it, maybe, but I think most of the progress in that area specifically came from a cultural shift at the lowest levels. The LGBTQ community was portrayed positively in media on a large scale; gays began to tell their stories and share their experiences and come out of the closet in larger numbers; almost everyone in the country can say they have a gay friend, relative, or coworker. It wasn't Gay Pride parades or picket signs that changed America's mind, it was forcing people to account for the way they personally treated others that caused a huge shift in popular sentiment.

The American public doesn't change its mind unless it has been shamed.

Pride parades showed America that Gays were actually people, and that they were actually kind of cool in their outrageous flamboyance in some of the parades.  Then you show them the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard.  The effect isn't very much different than the civil rights movement, where the Blacks were shown marching and calmly demanding their rights, contrasted with yahoos and bull cops beating on them.

And too, it should be noted, that the Stonewall riots were seen as a galvinizing moment. Had they just gone on and burnt everything to the ground, that would have been bad, yes. But had the big momentary flare of that possibility not occurred, how many people would have never been privy to the fact that there was a movement of people out there just as pissed as them?

I do think that ultimately it is a long game, but you do need step-stones...and sometimes those step-stones are, well, messy.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

There seems to be an issue with states that have effective grievance procedures do not tend to need or have many protests for this reason. Which kind of gets me thinking that pretty much every protest is somehow wrong by focusing on the issue and not how to change the system to provide "compensation" of some sort and ensure further lapses don't happen.

I think you're putting the cart before the horse.

Don't people need to agree on what the issues are before they can organize to plan and implement changes?

And in order plan and implement changes, don't you need to know if you have significant support? I think that's one of the crucial aspects of protests that a lot of people completely miss. If you feel alone in your grievance, how likely are you to try and implement anything?

Knowing that many other people share your concerns is inspiring and leads to people looking for ways to make changes because they feel like it's possible. The whiny pessimism that Vex displayed is a great example of the viewpoint that leads people to not even looking for ways to change the status quo, because they don't think it's possible.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Yes.

Protests here have already led to significant changes, in part because lawmakers KNEW, thanks to the visibility of support, they had constituent support for bills that would have just five or ten years ago been dismissed as too socialistic. 

The flip side is also true: Portland will never, ever be fluoridated short of Federal intervention, and it's looking like more GMO will be outlawed due to consumer pressure, which may or may not be a good thing, depending. Sometimes protests lead to totally stupid laws, or to good things being rejected. But hey, that's democracy for you.

[Junkenstein]

Don't people need to agree on what the issues are before they can organize to plan and implement changes?

(somewhat disconnected thoughts, forgive or ignore. Or other.)
That kind of shoves me back to the "Need Martyr" mindset. From what I've seen, most protests are against something being wrong. Fundamentally wrong. X(over5?seems high)/10 people see it and feel negative. Discontent registers from all levels not just the street. The million man march had the backing of more than a million men. It also had a number of horrific incidents and martyrs to galvanise the changes.

Women's civil rights in the UK were seen as a terrorist threat for many years. Again, the martyr galvanised the movement and allowed the public discourse. As it affected half the population, the result was then somewhat inevitable in some ways.

A lot of the protest in the middle east seem to be getting shit done, for better or worse. No shortage of martyr figures here either.

I wonder what the situation of Occupy would be like if there were a few(More? can recall none) dead college kids.

I would suggest that it is considerably easier today to communicate grievances to peers than ever before in human history. As such, it's much easier to organise protests at the expense of actually doing something to cause/force/discuss change.

A Pride parade in San Francisco is no longer a protest or even a real declaration of pride. Take that to Texas and it's a whole new conversation. 

I may be somewhat jaded. I've been in my share of marches, rallies and various discontent against X. Rarely have I seen these people attack anything that could be considered the root of the problem.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

It's probably harder to be optimistic in places which have less activism and are less progressive, since you can't actually see the effects of political activism happening in front of you short-term, though. It does raise the question of whether places like Arizona are less progressive because they lack activism, or whether they lacks activism because they're less progressive, though.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Pride parades here are no longer protests, but speaking as a person with a gay child, they fucking well are so displays of pride.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

It's probably harder to be optimistic in places which have less activism and are less progressive, since you can't actually see the effects of political activism happening in front of you short-term, though. It does raise the question of whether places like Arizona are less progressive because they lack activism, or whether they lacks activism because they're less progressive, though.

In Arizona's case, we are less progressive because fuck going outside right now. Seriously, I would rather be hauled off to an internment camp than be irradiated by that god damn Thing in the sky, just to register an in-person complaint with Governor Leatherface or her trusty sidekick Sheriff Joe that will be immediately tossed in the wastebin anyway.

[Junkenstein]

It's probably harder to be optimistic in places which have less activism and are less progressive, since you can't actually see the effects of political activism happening in front of you short-term, though. It does raise the question of whether places like Arizona are less progressive because they lack activism, or whether they lacks activism because they're less progressive, though.

I'd suspect it's both feeding into each other in a cycle. That's why you get some places becoming more regressive. Crazy picks up steam fast, and it's much more vocal than reform.

Pride parades here are no longer protests, but speaking as a person with a gay child, they fucking well are so displays of pride.

I'll gladly stand corrected. My experience of Pride parades is minimal. One, in fact. I saw many emotions but pride was not one of then. This was Brighton however, so that may explain something.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

I suspect that we can all agree that protests are a form of PR, and that the mechanism of action by which protests foment change is not inherently different from other PR mechanisms like advertising or like the publicization of symbolic acts (Corporation X spends a million dollars on a hospital in the Congo and spends six million dollars telling everyone about it). Protests affect mindshare, but are not inherently directly effective, and they are weak to barriers in information flow (with the exception that heavy-handed censorship makes them more powerful due to the Streisand effect). Protests can be manufactured, and in some cases that's a good thing for the sake of effectiveness (because they aren't sabotaged from within by people who refuse to stay 'on-message'), but they have a populist angle the same way that the Anonymous brand does (and because of this, people perform protests for causes they genuinely believe in for free).

Regarding "what's wrong with wanting to belong to a subculture", the subculture as a mixed-bag has been discussed in BIP and elsewhere. The tl;dr version as I see it (and I may be bringing in points I've seen elsewhere; I don't intend to misrepresent it, but I haven't read it in years) is: belonging to a subculture is fine but a little bit dangerous; it's easy to identify with a subculture and begin to react to threats upon it as threats upon you, or to defend it when it is indefensible; it's easy to buy into ideas that are floating around in the subculture you frequent and reject ones from outside regardless of whether the ideas in question are true or useful; subcultures, since they merge signs and signifiers with ideas, make it easy for people to pidgeonhole you or to predict you based on broad strokes, and while this is not necessarily useful -- while the predictions are not necessarily correct -- it leads to assumptions that are very hard to change; while subcultures and their internal symbolism are useful for communicating with other people within the same subculture, they are alienating to outsiders, and that is part of their function -- if you don't want that, you then need to throw off some of the symbols and code-switch, because group identification hinders communication.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

It's probably harder to be optimistic in places which have less activism and are less progressive, since you can't actually see the effects of political activism happening in front of you short-term, though. It does raise the question of whether places like Arizona are less progressive because they lack activism, or whether they lacks activism because they're less progressive, though.

That's probably the most interesting question I've heard in a while.