this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024

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Why does it seem the majority of protests in the US are to oppose something while so many protests in other countries are looking to influence improving something? (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

17 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I want tonpreface that I use exclusively Lemmy for my source for all news. I have no real social media accounts, will never be caught dead watching network or local news on TV (idc if im 37 its cartoons of gtfo lol). I use duckduckgo, Firefox for search and browser ever since I was tasked at work to keep a pulse on seo rankings. Id give cancer permission take my testicles befor ingive any fuckin company's ai permission to my data. If any of my hardware or software is using "AI" it is not at the front end or a configurable setting. What I'm building to is that I feel I put in more effort than most to not have the news I am fed influenced by anything more than what is happening in the world right now and the decisions news outlets make to report on.

Now we have that established, I can elaborate on my question. When I see reports of protesting in the US (live outside of Buffalo, NY obligatory Go Bills!), I see primarily protests in opposition to an event or thing. I get the literal definition of protest, I'm speaking of the mission people are protesting under. Protesting police brutality, protesting oil line, fuck the insurection that doesnt fall under this example but there have been other actual protests against election results (see Buffalo ~~shithead~~ I mean mayor, Byron Brown's most recent election).

Why are the so few:

Protest for improved living conditions. Protesting for higher wages (ok I admit I forgot about this one till now. I do see unions protesting for this) Protesting for lower tuition costs. Not loan forgiveness but legitimate improvements to the corrupt financial structure allowing shit like Alabama's highest paid public office position is Nick fuckin Sabin. Protest for better medical billing regulations.

Is it just the way news headlines and articles are written domestically vs globally? Is it a vernacular thing where US English grammatical structure dictates a protest must be against and never for? Or is it cultural thing where American laziness has evolved into something horrible needs to happen for action to happen (We don't become known as one of the fattest countries thanks our love of working hard). On the same note different page, is it that protest I see for better living conditions don't have the luxury to protest against something? Whether it be a question of freedom of speech, governing corruption or other similar issues.

ORRRRR do you think I am off base here and there actually isn't a difference between domestic and other counties protests?

top 17 comments

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

It's all just framing, no? You could frame all of your examples of protesting to "improve something" as protesting against something, and vice versa.

Protesting for improved living conditions is just protesting against poor living conditions. Protesting for higher wages is protesting against low wages. Protesting for lower tuition costs is protesting against high tuition.

Protests by definition are an action objecting to a thing. What are you seeing happen in other countries that's so different to what's happening here, when you don't selectively frame it as "for" a cause rather than "against" a thing?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

I agree. There were protests nearby for improving the situation in Palestine/Gaza, but you could argue those protests were just as much against giving more aid to Israel.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago

Even the phrase "improving the situation in Gaza" can be ambiguous.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

I get the framing thing but that isn't addressing why US protests are: something bad is happening -> protest And other countries seem to be more of a collective agreement that something needs to improve.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

I'm agreeing with @[email protected] that it sounds like this is just a framing thing.

Example:

Problem framing = "The rent is too damn high!"

Improvement framing = "Cost of rent needs to be made more affordable for renters"

Those are saying the same thing, but one is framed as a problem while the other is framed as an improvement is needed.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

But still you guys aren't hearing my issue or I'm not explaining it properly. Why does it take so much to ignite protests in America when other countries are more prone to protest? What does it take for Americans to come together and to want more from their community leaders. It's a ~~showerthought~~ showerquestion not an objective ~~statement~~ question, so it's evolving and I do regret that I posted it with the question of if it were a framing difference because it I'd not on topic for what my overall question was about . That's on me, my b.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Why does it take so much to ignite protests in America when other countries are more prone to protest?

Individualist vs collectivist cultural differences? Lack of a good social safety net is likely another reason. When are you going to protest? People are crazy busy just working enough hours to feed and house themselves and their families. Maybe you can plan your protesting between in the 30 minutes before you need to pick up your kid from school/daycare before you take them home and start cooking dinner for them. Are you going to skip work to protest? You could lose your job and then you can't feed and house your family.

I'd also say that here in the USA protest need massive involvement by the populace to even get noticed. Very rarely does a single issue resonate with a large enough group of people to get critical mass for outside attention.

What does it take for Americans to come together and to want more from their community leaders.

I can't name a single person in my area I'd consider a "community leader".

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

The geography is also a huge contributor. To protest something on a national scale needs significantly greater buy-in from the country as a whole than protesting something on a national scale in a European country. We have a huge amount of land area over here and with the exception of major cities, we're very spread out.

Spain is one of the larger European countries, and is about 500k sq. km, as an example. The US is about 9.1 million sq. km.

Protests happen on local scales but they don't make national news, only the really massive ones do, and those require a lot of coordination and time investment from the participants just to show up.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago

Just to add to your point, as far as I can find, the entire European Union is only about 4.3 million sq. km.

If Spain were added as a 51st US State it would be the 3rd largest, between Texas and California. Same with France (largest in the EU), but it's much closer to overtaking 2nd place. I had no idea those countries were so large.

Still, we have 50 of those country sized areas.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 weeks ago

Why do things need to improve, generally speaking?

[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 weeks ago

I think you're just framing issues to match the claim you're making. For example, an anti-bad-cop protest could be "protesting against cops violating civil rights" or just as well "protesting to bring justice to the victim's family". The former is a negative, the latter is a positive.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Have you seen what the French do when politicians suggest something they dont like?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 weeks ago

Nothing actually. As can be seen with the current situation.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 weeks ago

Reading OP’s comments it sounds like they are getting at in America, from their perspective, protests don’t start until things are really bad, while in the EU protests, again in their perspective, are more proactive or at the early stages of things going wrong.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 weeks ago

Have you SEEN what our politicians are trying to push on us???

We say no.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago

As for the difference, there's a lot more Learned Helplessness in the Republic of Gilead than there is in, say, northern Europe. 🤷‍♂️

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

This is solely a hypothesis, and it's backed by informal and subjective impressions, but:

From online interactions with them, I think that Anglos are specially prone to fall for nirvana fallacy, where a solution is discarded as useless because it is not complete or perfect. That might encourage them to frame the problems in a negative way, as it won't beg the question "what's your proposed solution?", thus being easier to gather agreement and support.

If that hypothesis is correct, I predict that English speakers in Canada should follow a similar pattern as the ones in USA, while the French speakers would follow a pattern more similar to Europe and/or the rest of Latin America.