Why do you think the cops have tanks now
I was gonna say, we get shot for protesting now…probably gotta change that part first.
People got shot before too. Lots of people. The fight for worker’s rights was long and bloody.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-union_violence_in_the_United_States
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_violence_in_the_United_States
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/theminewars-labor-wars-us/
I misspoke…er…typed, we get shot and have no real way to defend ourselves being wildly outgunned by police. Thanks for that PBS article btw. I hadn’t heard of a lot of these happenings, and I’m still reading through it.
Now? The pinkertons never left, and they started ages ago. Protesters got shot then too.
Strikers were bombed back in the day by aircrafts. Unionization was won through enduring warfare yet we just gave it away. Shows how powerful unionization is that the elites are completely terrified of it, and that they have surpressed the history of it so few will know how much blood was shed to get it.
“Governments don’t want a population capable of critical thinking, they want obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation.”
― George Carlin
He was really wrong about voting though. If it didn’t matter, the fascist GOP wouldn’t be fighting so hard to prevent people from voting.
Working from inside a system that has been corrupt from the beginning doesn’t work
Many parts of the system were designed to disenfranchise various groups. One of the most effective of those parts is the message that your vote doesn’t matter.
Refuse to be disenfranchised. GO VOTE.
Voting alone might not but it’s an important part of the process. You should agitate and organize, but also go vote and get your friends to go with you.
He wasn’t wrong. During this time the parties although different and Republicans being shitter, were much closer together. They were both pro corporate with differences on social issues.
Today… The Republicans have gone full batshit trying to overthrow democracy. I guarantee you, if George was alive he’d be saying VOTE and vote for Democrats until we’ve gotten rid of the dangerous fascists.
They’re not the only ones who forgot. It’s crazy how many people I know who shun the idea of any form of action beyond general protest in the face of corruption. I always ask them how they think change is going to happen when we have protest after protest and nothing to show for them, but they never have an answer. Things are going to get a lot worse before people realize we need to fight for our rights, and being angry on the internet - or even in person with a sign - is no longer enough to make a change.
When violence is used to maintain the status quo, announcing up front that you’re unwilling to use violence in response tells those in power that they need not listen to you.
The sad thing is that we don’t even need to use violence. We have the power to bring this country to a halt with nothing more than a well organized revolt.
Just stay home and play board games for a week, don’t spend any money.
Things would change quick fast and in a hurry if a hundred million people all just took the end of July off.
Perhaps the whitewashed, watered down MLK would beg to differ. He’s been reduced to like three quotes for people to slap on their Facebook profiles; for companies to paste on their messaging in February; to be trotted out once a year like Weekend at Bernie’s so people can feel the warm fuzzies inside and ignore actual, real-world racism and violence that is happening right now.
It’s like anytime someone mentions anything above a megaphone and a cardboard sign there’s always one of you that comes out of the woodwork and is like “MLK… Checkmate 😎”. As another commenter said, MLK was not the civil rights movement of his time. The reason he is the poster child for that movement in that era is specifically because his personal convictions about non-violent protest are safe for the system as it is.
Slavery can still exist, albeit in a different form. (Not chattel slavery) Racism can still exist, albeit in different forms. People who are victims of these systems are dismissed out-of-pocket because that’s the goal: the system never wanted to change, and by making MLK the summation of “the civil rights movement” in the eye of the public, they infused passivity into the discourse. They tell you to make your signs, and get your megaphones, and write your blog posts because that’s what is safe for the system to continue on as it has always been.
MLK’s nonviolence was a strategy, not a moral position. I think you need to do more research on MLK.
People who think you can solve all problems by stating that you are in the moral right, instead of fighting for what you believe in, really show their true colors of being woefully ignorant to how history has always worked. This end of history neoliberal narrative has truly rotted peoples brains and made them unable to intellectually understand how to stand up for themselves.
So what are we supposed to do? Take up arms and start shooting?
There is no alternative to peaceful protest.
They got wise to that and called in the police and military to help them.
“A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.” over the bodies of tyrants
But thats the thing. Those who sit at the shade, will grow spoiled, fat and freedy and will enslave others to plant more trees from which they themselves will benefit from. “Hard times create great men. Great men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men creat hard times.”.
Nah, too unreliable - the worst of the lot hired private armies to assault and murder strikers.
I feel like it’s the working class who forgot.
The rich are well aware, which is why they put so much energy into making us think that isn’t an option.
I wonder if them gunning down union protesters would be suddenly legal if needed.