An artist’s rendering of Free-State activist Charles Robinson speaking to the Lecompton Territorial Legislature. Courtesy of the Internet Archive.
Free-Staters boycott the territorial elections that result in the second territorial legislature at Lecompton, Kansas. The Free-Staters complain that the options given on the referendum ask voters to choose between making Kansas a slave state or merely banning the new importation of slaves. The latter option would sanction slavery for slaves who are already in Kansas
Welp, it was from a blog about Chinese business or something. Reverse Image search says it’s North Korea. I’ve fixed my lazy post above. TYVM for calling my foolishness to our attention.
We know everything you know. We went to the same schools, the same churches, the same institutional learning facilities. Even red diaper babies gotta think this shit through. Whatever else, none of us are naive.
Then we get ignorant unthinking centrists trying to explain SchoolBoxRock, or whatev, to us like we are 5yos.
How about the other way? What’s “Your vote counts. If you don’t vote, you can’t complain”?
Google Translate gives:
Ваш голос засчитывается. Если вы не голосуете, вы не можете жаловаться.
Vash golos zaschityvayetsya. Yesli vy ne golosuyete, vy ne mozhete zhalovat’sya.
That’s what I got: Ваш голос засчитывается. Если вы не голосуете, вы не можете жаловаться (your voice/vote countsl If you don’t vote, you cannot camplain about it.
Propaganda is highly idiomatic. In English, “for the further flower” is just going to make people laugh. I gotta imagine that some political watch word in language X will machine translate to fighting words in language Y.
Our bordertown local has being bilingual (English, Spanish) in our mission statement, which we haven’t often met. But I counsel that except for the simple stuff like directions/etc, we need a native speaker to proof our communications.
I mean it’s not a ton but I donated to Jamaal Bowman, he won. Donated to Jessica Cisneros, she lost. Didn’t hear about Julie Oliver til the general but I donated and I’m text banking for her down the stretch. Donated to Bernie and was hoping to volunteer for him in PA, but he didn’t make it that far.
I agree, but a lack of leaders who can rise to the top of a movement is a problem either way. But we’ve gotten some good ones through and I’m sure there are many more out there.
I haven’t lived in the same district for more than about 3 years at any point in my adult life, which has limited my ability to really get involved on a local level. I’d like to find ways to do that if I’m settled in long enough.
For sure, but there are organizational structures in place now that help with that. Also, insurgent campaigns have built in opportunities as well. AOC had to overcome some systemic challenges, but she also capitalized on the situation in a few ways.
Yeah I don’t necessarily share this view. I’m not sure of the entirety of the non-climate reasons, but I assume they involve the widening wealth and income gaps and the way they influence the system. I think those will swing back hard one way or another through politics.
On climate change, it’s going to likely get really bad but I’m not as gloomy as some. I think there’s a decent chance humanity manages to do enough to kick the can a few years here or there, innovate, etc. I suspect we’ll lose some cities to the sea in the next 100 years, but I also think there’s a decent chance of a miraculous discovery or invention along the way because the closer we get the more great minds and resources will be on it.
Yeah I mean I’m very big on turning protests into political power via organizing and GOTV. It takes a few years usually, (like in Ferguson) but it should always be the plan imo. Protest, get what concessions you can, build toward the next election and come back for the rest.
I get that, and it’s possible both are correct about the feebleness of the other strategy but fail to see it in their own.
I guess I just see it like this. Until we change minds, win elections, and cut police budgets… There’s going to be no shortage of cops, tear gas, riot shields, etc, etc. So the question is can protesters cause enough disruption to force change? I think it’s very hard to get to that scale for long enough. You’re basically trying to be a big thorn in their side, but strategically I don’t see how it can win all the concessions you want in the long run.
On the other hand, protesters generating media coverage, changing perceptions, moving the Overton window, organizing, and winning elections… We’ve seen that happen.
Like as far as I’m concerned if there’s not a good candidate running in the Dem primary for city council in your district in the next cycle, you should go for it. Figure out how many votes you need, use your organizing to knock doors and meet people and register new voters, let the opponent think you’re just some protester who doesn’t know what he’s doing, and show up with a bunch of new voters and win.
What’s more, you should have friends in other districts and basically run/campaign as a ticket with joint rallies/events.
The main reason I say run in the primary is that the number of votes you’d need to win would be lower than in the general. You can make the lower turnout your friend by bringing your own coalition they don’t see coming.
Of course that doesn’t have to preclude protesting in the mean time, during or after. But you’re not going to overthrow the city or the police force with physical force. If you pull it off, you’re going to do it at the ballot box, and then be the ones that have the guts to stand up to their political intimidation.
Tldr; if you can turn people out to the streets, you can turn people out to knock doors and to the polls. That doesn’t mean I think protesting is useless, I just think it is most powerful when it builds into tangible political power.
Short version: logically gaming it out step by step strategically on each path.
Protesting can get change by causing discomfort and disruption, but there is basically a calculation by the establishment. They don’t want to do something perceived as an overreaction that costs them power (like Tiananman Square at an extreme end of the possibilities), so they are willing to concede something to end the protest and avoid a misstep.
However once they give X, if the protests resume, they’re now dealing with new calculus. They know you’ll keep starting over, so they’re less incentivized to acquiesce. They also have the PR win of “We gave X but the radicals are back at it again, so Y additional force is warranted.”
I don’t see how this progression can lead to enough change. That means ultimately you need to change minds and win power, which means what you’re really fighting to do is change the Overton window by creating awareness.
My impression of history in America based on my level of knowledge is that protests have tended to lead to major action a few years down the line, once awareness went up and Overton windows shifted and politics changed. Whether that’s via new candidates winning or candidates shifting to stay within the windows would be interesting to see, but either way it happened through political action that arose after protesting changed people’s minds.
I suppose the exception to all of that would be organized labor and strikes, but given that:
A) We’re talking largely about civil rights and
B) Most people are either too comfortable or too afraid of being uncomfortable to strike
I don’t see how you could get a big enough one to accomplish major goals. In order for people to strike they either need resources so it’s safe to forego income, or for their status quo to be bad enough that foregoing income is worth the gamble.
I appreciate your response. I’ve read your posts with poker hand analysis, and I trust your ability to logically find GTO lines, when playing poker.
I know it’s not always possible for us to explain ourselves fully in this medium. You made a claim that of the options at our disposal, the “only realistic one is voting in primaries in huge numbers over a period of several cycles.” But based on what you shared, honestly I am not convinced that your level of knowledge or understanding regarding methods outside of the electoral process is at a level that warrants your level of certainty.
I had intentionally not mentioned protesting(to be fair it could fall under civil disobedience), because I’ll agree with you that protesting has obvious limitations.
In your post, I think you miss the mark in your interpretation of history wherein you assign credit for social change in a way that leads to your preferred conclusion, and here’s where I wish I had your meme skills…imagine this image[below] is labeled: “Politician winning the 40 hour work week”. Champagne Dude would be labeled the politician, and on the higher placed podium spots would be the Unions and every day people who organized, took action, and fought for the rights and privileges we now have. That shit wasn’t gifted to us by any elected official, they were the ones ordering the cops and troops and pinkertons to harass and kill us as we struggled.
Yes! Organizing the work place, where people spend half of their day, is powerful. Organizing in the spaces where the goods that are produced and services are provided; in the spaces where students and teachers interact and learning takes place; in the spaces where research and progress is made; in the spaces where our productive output and profits are being siphoned off by the same parasitic class that has control of the politicians. That indeed is more powerful than protesting or filling out a ballot every year or two.
We already know that mass popular movements and organized working people can accomplish major goals, because that’s how we’ve won the battles thus far.
I know that you think sabo was trolling with the pro-voting posters up-thread. I think he was making part of broader and more powerful point, that I’ll tie in here.
Sabo found pro-voting propaganda posters published by the ruling governments of: 1950’s Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and, North Korea. We here in the US and other parts of the world have similar iconography that is enthusiastically promoted by our government. In the US, we have TV commercials encouraging voting, celebrities lionizing voting, and reverential statements from politicians encouraging us to [Obama voice]: let your voice be heard and vote.
Have you ever seen any US government published posters or tv commercials encouraging people to organize themselves, unionize, and fight for better working conditions, UHC, and higher pay? Nope.
Do they hand out stickers that say “I Unionized” and give those people props? Nope.
Does our government encourage work place organizing, class consciousness, and solidarity? Nope.
Why is that?
Yet, the USA, USSR, the 3rd Reich and North Korea governments all had pro-voting posters: across eras, nations, and economic systems, the rulers are fine promoting voting. Funny that.
Perhaps the powers that be are just a tad bit more afraid of people organizing the workplace and their communities than they are of people voting.
[Quick aside: it’s kind of hilarious that anyone thought sabo had found multiple propaganda posters, from multiple eras and countries, some with only a handful of words on them, and that every one of them translated to the exact same English phrase. The point is bigger than the individual words on the posters. It’s how those posters are being used that is important.]
The predictable reply of “Well, erm, none actually…I am 100% confident in my abilities to derive everything from first principles” is the highlight of this thread so far. What a douche.
The NSDAP poster he published was pre-Nazi Germany. There were sham elections during the 3rd Reich. Why someone wants to draw parallels between elections with predetermined results to current US elections is beyond me.
Regarding the 1932 election the poster was actually from I bet some of those who abstained regretted not showing up to the polls that day.
I stay out of the jal/cuse shitfest generally, but yeah the “I have independently confirmed it by thinking about it”, completely unironically, was a bit much for me.
