Food for thought : 50501

[rcjordan]

https://old.reddit.com/r/50501/comments/1kdsv89/food_for_thought/

[rcjordan]

Dave says ^{(emphasis mine)}:

yup, we are entering a different dynamic. 

A protest was a way to show elected officials and the public what you wanted with a clear objective.

But in this new world order the goal is just to become un-governable.

And there might be a strategy for non-whites to stay home, cuz Black people getting shot, or being accused of rioting does not bother anyone enough

Kent State was the third shooting on a campus- but the first with white kids.

[ergophobe]

>> Kent State

I remember watching a documentary where an activist at one of the black campuses where there had been a shooting was talking about what a seismic event Kent State was. This was not very long after a student was shot on their campus and roughly, the story goes, someone barged into the room and yelled, "They're shooting white kids now!!" and they all knew that the protest movement had won at that moment.

Of course, we have a president now who was completely comfortable with shooting protesters of any color and was only stopped by Mark Esper. I don't think there are any Mark Espers in the administration now.

Still, that doesn't seem to matter as much as the tactics of the protesters. When people are turning over cars looting stores, lots of people think that it makes sense to shoot at them. When they are marching peacefully and singing We Shall Overcome, you have to have a system of deep indoctrination (i.e. Jim Crow and racism) to make people think that shooting people (even with firehoses) makes sense.

Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan studied protest movements form 1900 to 2006 and found nonviolent movements were twice as likely to succeed ("Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict").

Chenoweth:

I think it really boils down to four different things. The first is a large and diverse participation that's sustained...

The second thing is that [the movement] needs to elicit loyalty shifts among security forces in particular, but also other elites...

The third thing is that the campaigns need to be able to have more than just protests; there needs to be a lot of variation in the methods they use.

The fourth thing is that when campaigns are repressed... they don't either descend into chaos or opt for using violence themselves. If campaigns allow their repression to throw the movement into total disarray or they use it as a pretext to militarize their campaign, then they're essentially co-signing what the regime wants — for the resisters to play on its own playing field. And they're probably going to get totally crushed.

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/02/why-nonviolent-resistance-beats-violent-force-in-effecting-social-political-change/

[rcjordan]

>co-signing what the regime wants

Debbie, Dave, & I believe that the administration is deliberately trying to provoke a "turning over cars, looting stores" event -or two or three- so it can invoke martial law.  That's why Dave says that there's "a strategy for non-whites to stay home".