this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2024
834 points (97.2% liked)
Political Memes
5402 readers
3376 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Politicians just ignore protests, especially if they're peaceful, so they don't directly cause change.
The purpose of a protest is to get media coverage for an issue, because that may convince viewers to vote a certain way. Those votes - or at least the threat of voting someone out of office - is what actually causes change.
Revolutions are a different story. They can change things much faster than voting, but they're volatile and can easily end up worse than before. The people leading a revolution are usually not the people you want to lead a revolution (e.g. the Jan 6 insurrection in the US).
Protests are don't do much if they don't carry revolutionary threat. The Civil Rights Movement only worked because there was genuine revolutionary pressure.
The civil rights movement worked, because the did "non violence" and got a bunch of pictures into the news, of them getting beaten. This lead to empathy and votes.
The revolution and violence part was something completely separate and on the whole mostly counterproductive/irrelevant.
This is ahistorical. The civil disobediance was extremely disruptive and errupted in riots regularly. This is coupled with the Black Panther Party practicing open millitancy. There was genuine threat to the status quo, and this forced concessions. It isn't a coincidence that the US state has attempted to whitewash MLK Jr.'s historical legacy.
The state did not bend merely because it was the right thing to do, they bent because if they did not, they standed to lose more.