Protesting

[Dalek]

I'm starting this topic because of something that happened today. The city theather got merged with the opera by the new director. The new foundation has a new name that everyone seems to find upsetting and worth protesting about, because it doesn't sound good and also they are angry, because that would remove the theather's identity and some other reasons that were actually worth protesting about, but got left behind by the protesters, who seemed to be to angry about the thether/opera's new name.

So some people on facebook organised a protest where the basic idea was to dress idiotically and walk around the city's center yelling "We want the theather back" and singing old songs that were completely irrelevant, and whose lyrics had nothing to do with theather and known for basically being famous.

Now, peaceful protest have a history of not working here, because of politicians being to busy with their monney-making/people exploiting schemes to even bother with a bunch of guys who decided to walk around, carry signs and yell. The thought of a strike or a riot never seems to come to mind tough. So it's always peaceful protest that involve doing shit symbolically, like symbolically drinking cold water to show the people at the government that your wage is too low. So this protest was another parade of fail. Since the facebook event had declared that you should be dressed funny(I think because it symbolised something) a shit load of kids, dressed idiotically, showed up just for the oppurtunity to wear make-up, look retarded and yell along with all the other "protesters". The other people who came were some artsy-fartsy people, and a bunch of hipsters. In the same day a movie festival opened and the protesters passed by the opening about 30 minutes before it starting and noone thought of staying there to get media attention or maybe even trying to sabotage the opening.

I was with some friends and after asking around the protesters and none of them being able to tell us what the protest is really about we decided to mock them. Luckily I had a bunch of paper and a broad-tip marker in my bag so we made signs saying "HUNGER", "We're hungry" and "It's cold". We held em high and walked around with the protesters, following them everywhere, distracting people from the protest, distracting the protesters and basically causing chaos in whichever ways we thought of. When our actions really turned into an open mockery and people starting to laugh at the protesters they started sending in threaths to us, theb a lot of hipsters I know were telling me they hate me and/or that they are mad at me( I'm dying for their love) and we almost got chased away from the protest + lots of lulz. We appeared a few more times near them, holding up signs and basically mocking them, and they got some broad media coverage. And then everyone told me that getting media coverege is important and that the protest had done what it had to do.

The problem is that every protest around here gets media attention and that still doesn't change shit.

I just wanted to share my thoughts on protesting, and I'm also curious to know what you guys think. What is the most effective way of protesting, do you support riots or strikes and basically what do you think is the best way to change thins?

[Juana]

Strikes and boycotts. Preferably serious boycotts, like the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery.

Marches and stuff stopped working long ago; they're ubiquitous and now they have so little meaning since everybody and their damn brother uses them for everything. They mean nothing and the government figured out how to deal with them anyway. Don't do anything stupid, and it'll just be another note in the paper. Do something stupid (like, ya know, fire hose or sic police dogs on the marchers), and it'll bring serious attention to them and their cause.

[the last yatto]

Perform shakespeare instead of picketing

[the last yatto]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7968812.stm

Or this play

[Cain]

I would suggest instead of just doing "something stupid", you take a leaf out of the book of the Thai Red Shirts.  That is, before they started training the paramilitaries, though if you can get a veteran special ops guy to command your protestors I wouldn't deny him the opportunity.

Your protest needs to disrupt some kind of significant economic activity.  You would never be allowed to protest in these areas, if your country requires a permit, but you shouldn't bother applying for them anyway, since if you are successful the cops will be getting orders to bust you no matter what the law says.

By area of significant economic activity, I mean airports, stock exchanges, major banks and so on.  Make it cost, and you'll have all the attention you want, and a useful bargaining chip into the deal.

[Telarus]

The Daily show reports that 300 'Banksy Cultists' snuck into the stock exchange last night last weekend. When traders went to work today, they encountered a bizarre mash-up of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and something out of Breton's anti-colonial Surrealist campaigns. Tense reports of naive traders who actually licked the hastily erected fruit-motif wallpapers titled 'The Snozzberries taste like Snozzberries' grew to panic levels when it became apparent that the wall-paper had been dosed with an unknown chemical agent that caused hallucinations (now revealed to be LSD). When the CDC arrived amid blaring Lady Gaga routines, they were at a loss at what to do with the elephant in the lobby blocking their access to the more extremely affected day-traders, who by this point had holed up in the executive offices and were demanding "a literal Ton of Cherry Garcia Ice-cream and 23 pounds of Black Alamut Hashish", threatening to "destroy this fiction-based Illuminati economy by miring every shipment of toilet paper in the county in weeks worth of red-tape" if their demands were not met. Third Outer Head of the Bavarian Illuinati, Stephen Colbert of the infamous Colbert Report was reported as commenting, "We'll, I'm sure the young Wall Street urbanites who ignored my 'March to Keep Fear Alive' last October are now seriously reconsidering their non-actions."