Rebellion or something.

[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.

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.

It's the same here in New England. Summer just sucks in general. I think the difference is, that we actually have 4 seasons here: 5 months of winter, 1 month of spring, half of the time, it rains, 5 months of summer, 1 month of autumn, and again, half rain. We don't mind marching in the rain. We just don't like marching in Wicked Fahkin Summah. Which, usually happens the last week of June.

You know, except for those crazy people who set traditions like, lets sit out in the sun playing with fire and drinking beer all day during the hottest month of the year because some dead guys wrote an angry letter to some king, and then throw fire in the sky when we're all dehydrated and the sun goes down.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

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.

And you don't have a tangible idea of how prevalent that discontent is until you see it in the street.

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.

That's a false dichotomy. I see that you don't want to address points made about the utility of protests and are back to the unexamined assumption that protests do nothing in and of themselves.

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.

Sounds like a bad case of SGitR, and impatience.

What is the root of the problem and how should people be attacking it?

[Doktor Howl]

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.

It's the second one.  A huge portion of our state is retired, and they're law & order types.

[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.

And you don't have a tangible idea of how prevalent that discontent is until you see it in the street.

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.

That's a false dichotomy. I see that you don't want to address points made about the utility of protests and are back to the unexamined assumption that protests do nothing in and of themselves.

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.

Sounds like a bad case of SGitR, and impatience.

What is the root of the problem and how should people be attacking it?

Hardly SGitr, as many, many of my posts will note.

Take the london Riots/Protest. Widespread discontent about police corruption and racism. Very few "protestors" able to articulate anything like that, if indeed that was their actual grievance. Or how about EDL/White pride/ Westboro/ Anti-Westboro? All directly attack X IS bad but little rational mention of why X is bad, or how to resolve X.

How about war protests? Did that "No blood for Oil" chant (Pick a decade) stop blood being exchanged for Oil? No. Or Rarely, at best.

ETA- There is something on a knock-on effect worth noting in regards to recent attitudes to Syria. I'm not sure if it's an indication that the population is war-weary or actually changing in a positive regard. I unfortunately suspect it's probably more of the former. Consistent Hawk is not a good election strategy.

Quote from: Junkenstein on Yesterday at 09:55:31 pm
Quote
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.

And you don't have a tangible idea of how prevalent that discontent is until you see it in the street.

You actually need to see people in the street before you can have social change? Really? I'd suggest many powerful social changes have taken place without anyone even really knowing, let alone taking to the street about it. How many protests can you recall offhand about changes to Banking (de)regulation? None. It's not a visceral, moral issue until recently when the jam ran out.

That's a false dichotomy. I see that you don't want to address points made about the utility of protests and are back to the unexamined assumption that protests do nothing in and of themselves.

Consider Occupy. What has that achieved in and of its self beyond raising the general level of awareness? I don't see any massive reforms or changes to the system as a result. A protest does nothing in and of itself. It's a shout of "NO". That really needs to be followed by "Try this instead" or you just seem to keep shouting "NO" a lot.

I see you don't want to address anything else I raised, which is odd as it all involved protests being much more effective with Martyrs.

[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.

It's the second one.  A huge portion of our state is retired, and they're law & order types.

I hadn't considered that. Ageing populations tend to get more conservative anyway, which explains a lot about how things have developed in the UK over the past few decades.

That said, I still think it's some kind of feedback loop. The majority establish laws favourable to their world view and inclusion isn't that high on the list in many societies beyond lip service. Controls create discontent which is used to create further controls which etc. etc...

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Occupy is a special case insomuch as it didn't have a message to be on-message about. There was an intended message, constructed by Adbusters, which wasn't really as prominent as it should have been, and other messages that it was associated with (like forgiving student loans, support for other kinds of banking reforms, and so on) came out of the protests after they were underway. There was a lot of shit that came out of particular localized version of Occupy that weren't picked up by the rest, in some cases because they were stupid (the one in New Haven I went by almost daily, and there were a lot of things specifically about chemtrails but none about forgiving student loans, because that camp was made up almost entirely of Yale students, who are generally from extremely wealthy families).

[Bruno]

Occupy is a special case insomuch as it didn't have a message to be on-message about. There was an intended message, constructed by Adbusters, which wasn't really as prominent as it should have been, and other messages that it was associated with (like forgiving student loans, support for other kinds of banking reforms, and so on) came out of the protests after they were underway. There was a lot of shit that came out of particular localized version of Occupy that weren't picked up by the rest, in some cases because they were stupid (the one in New Haven I went by almost daily, and there were a lot of things specifically about chemtrails but none about forgiving student loans, because that camp was made up almost entirely of Yale students, who are generally from extremely wealthy families).

Yale students believe in chemtrails?

[Doktor Howl]

Occupy is a special case insomuch as it didn't have a message to be on-message about. There was an intended message, constructed by Adbusters, which wasn't really as prominent as it should have been, and other messages that it was associated with (like forgiving student loans, support for other kinds of banking reforms, and so on) came out of the protests after they were underway. There was a lot of shit that came out of particular localized version of Occupy that weren't picked up by the rest, in some cases because they were stupid (the one in New Haven I went by almost daily, and there were a lot of things specifically about chemtrails but none about forgiving student loans, because that camp was made up almost entirely of Yale students, who are generally from extremely wealthy families).

Yale students believe in chemtrails?

They believe in supply-side economics, so why not?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Consider Occupy. What has that achieved in and of its self beyond raising the general level of awareness? I don't see any massive reforms or changes to the system as a result. A protest does nothing in and of itself. It's a shout of "NO". That really needs to be followed by "Try this instead" or you just seem to keep shouting "NO" a lot.

I see you don't want to address anything else I raised, which is odd as it all involved protests being much more effective with Martyrs.

YOU KEEP IGNORING THE LINKS I POST AND EXAMPLES I GIVE ABOUT REFORMS IN OREGON THAT STEMMED DIRECTLY FROM THE OCCUPY PROTESTS

WHY IS THAT?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Occupy is a special case insomuch as it didn't have a message to be on-message about. There was an intended message, constructed by Adbusters, which wasn't really as prominent as it should have been, and other messages that it was associated with (like forgiving student loans, support for other kinds of banking reforms, and so on) came out of the protests after they were underway. There was a lot of shit that came out of particular localized version of Occupy that weren't picked up by the rest, in some cases because they were stupid (the one in New Haven I went by almost daily, and there were a lot of things specifically about chemtrails but none about forgiving student loans, because that camp was made up almost entirely of Yale students, who are generally from extremely wealthy families).

Yale students believe in chemtrails?

They believe in supply-side economics, so why not?

[Junkenstein]

Consider Occupy. What has that achieved in and of its self beyond raising the general level of awareness? I don't see any massive reforms or changes to the system as a result. A protest does nothing in and of itself. It's a shout of "NO". That really needs to be followed by "Try this instead" or you just seem to keep shouting "NO" a lot.

I see you don't want to address anything else I raised, which is odd as it all involved protests being much more effective with Martyrs.

YOU KEEP IGNORING THE LINKS I POST AND EXAMPLES I GIVE ABOUT REFORMS IN OREGON THAT STEMMED DIRECTLY FROM THE OCCUPY PROTESTS

WHY IS THAT?

Because I am dumb? I've got years of evidence supporting that theory. Will re-read thread.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

Consider Occupy. What has that achieved in and of its self beyond raising the general level of awareness? I don't see any massive reforms or changes to the system as a result. A protest does nothing in and of itself. It's a shout of "NO". That really needs to be followed by "Try this instead" or you just seem to keep shouting "NO" a lot.

I see you don't want to address anything else I raised, which is odd as it all involved protests being much more effective with Martyrs.

YOU KEEP IGNORING THE LINKS I POST AND EXAMPLES I GIVE ABOUT REFORMS IN OREGON THAT STEMMED DIRECTLY FROM THE OCCUPY PROTESTS

WHY IS THAT?

OOH! OOH! I KNOW! PICK ME!

[Doktor Howl]

Consider Occupy. What has that achieved in and of its self beyond raising the general level of awareness? I don't see any massive reforms or changes to the system as a result. A protest does nothing in and of itself. It's a shout of "NO". That really needs to be followed by "Try this instead" or you just seem to keep shouting "NO" a lot.

I see you don't want to address anything else I raised, which is odd as it all involved protests being much more effective with Martyrs.

YOU KEEP IGNORING THE LINKS I POST AND EXAMPLES I GIVE ABOUT REFORMS IN OREGON THAT STEMMED DIRECTLY FROM THE OCCUPY PROTESTS

WHY IS THAT?

Because I am dumb? I've got years of evidence supporting that theory. Will re-read thread.

It's when you have years of evidence supporting a theory that you should, you know, be far more eager to read counter-examples.  That's, of course, if you're trying to see reality and not putting on a nice comfortable uniform.

You may be right.  You may be mistaken.  But if you stop looking, you're wrong.  Even if you happen to be factually correct.

[Junkenstein]

Consider Occupy. What has that achieved in and of its self beyond raising the general level of awareness? I don't see any massive reforms or changes to the system as a result. A protest does nothing in and of itself. It's a shout of "NO". That really needs to be followed by "Try this instead" or you just seem to keep shouting "NO" a lot.

I see you don't want to address anything else I raised, which is odd as it all involved protests being much more effective with Martyrs.

YOU KEEP IGNORING THE LINKS I POST AND EXAMPLES I GIVE ABOUT REFORMS IN OREGON THAT STEMMED DIRECTLY FROM THE OCCUPY PROTESTS

WHY IS THAT?

Because I am dumb? I've got years of evidence supporting that theory. Will re-read thread.

It's when you have years of evidence supporting a theory that you should, you know, be far more eager to read counter-examples.  That's, of course, if you're trying to see reality and not putting on a nice comfortable uniform.

You may be right.  You may be mistaken.  But if you stop looking, you're wrong.  Even if you happen to be factually correct.

Agreed, most emphatically. I'll try and look at this fresh and see what changes. I seem to have missed some important shit or at least have a bias I've not fully considered.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Consider Occupy. What has that achieved in and of its self beyond raising the general level of awareness? I don't see any massive reforms or changes to the system as a result. A protest does nothing in and of itself. It's a shout of "NO". That really needs to be followed by "Try this instead" or you just seem to keep shouting "NO" a lot.

I see you don't want to address anything else I raised, which is odd as it all involved protests being much more effective with Martyrs.

YOU KEEP IGNORING THE LINKS I POST AND EXAMPLES I GIVE ABOUT REFORMS IN OREGON THAT STEMMED DIRECTLY FROM THE OCCUPY PROTESTS

WHY IS THAT?

Because I am dumb? I've got years of evidence supporting that theory. Will re-read thread.

Well... your "evidence" seems to be a lack of change as a result of protest, and if you can't see/refuse to acknowledge change that results from protest, you get stuck in a self-reinforcing bubble.

What I've seen you do so far is dismiss any change that occurs after protests as "going to happen anyway", which indicates to me that your mind is made up and there is no evidence you would accept. In Oregon, in the wake of the Occupy protests (which included not only the Occupy movement itself, but a wave of other activism triggered by Occupy) we are seeing changes such as a State law requiring lenders to attend (and pay for) mediation with homeowners they are foreclosing on, a pilot "pay-it-forward" program for attending the first four years of college at no charge, instead paying 3% of your income after graduation, and a bill that was just approved, to investigate the most fiscally efficient way of managing Oregon's health care... which all evidence indicates will be to move to a single-payer system.

Now, you can argue that all those things would have happened ANYWAY, but the evidence is that lawmakers became receptive to what would previously have been considered "radical" measures because the protests demonstrated to them that their constituents demanded reform. At least two of the bills in question were brainstormed by people directly involved in the protests. The college bill was brainstormed by college students at PSU who were also involved in the protests.

This is social change, happening verifiably right in front of my eyes. I can SEE IT HAPPEN. The whole process, from stem to stern.

Is Oregon different from the whole rest of the US? Sure, we like to say it is... fuck, our unofficial slogan is "it's different here". But I look around at other states who are also moving in directions with new policies that would have been considered radical five years ago, and I can't help thinking we aren't all that different after all.