Microblog Memes

As an old Canadian socialist with the lumps to prove it, I agree. There is so much performance, and so little action. I spend time on reddit, trying to get keyboard warriors to understand that posting an opinion will not magically cause the fascist Administration to collapse and get a lot of "The media refuses to cover us!" bullpuckey. There are thousands of newsrooms in the USA that are not owned by billionaire tech bros or MAGA devotees (see, for example https://www.trustworthymedia.org/ › list-of-independent-media ) and most social media is still wide open to pictures and facts about your actions. If you are acting, let the independent media -- most but not all of whom are progressive, check first -- know and post your pictures (faces blurred if need be) and stories everywhere you can reach people.

Meantime, buy Canadian, buy local, or don't buy at all, at least it's something!

I don't buy anything on most days normally. Days isn't going to do anything and stop telling yourself it will.

Stop it entirely or as much as you possibly can. Never order from Amazon again. Where you do need to buy stuff buy as little as possible. Stop visiting pubs and restaurants. If your goal is to damage the US economy. Avoid as much as you possibly can that goes towards it.

My favorite restaurant is not a chain, I'm a regular there, and they have a once a month special on one of these days. I would rather support them on one of these days than buy nothing.

To be fair any excuse to eat there is good. Greek food is awesome.

The problem I've found with the "Buy nothing days" is that it's not really encouraging buying less. With the possible exception of a few in the moment things, it's really just pushing purchasing to the day before or the day after. Someone seeing economic data for that specific day might notice something, but even just factor in the day before and the day after and it's not going to make much of a difference. It didn't cost the corpos anything, so they won't even notice.

Look at what the right is doing. They go after targets with disproportionate force to force change. "Don't buy anything" is easy for a day and hard for long. "Refuse to purchase anheiser Busch products because they caved to bigots" is less difficult and leaves a message.

imho the chapter on "Tactics" in Alinski's Rules for Radicals provides a lot of ideas on how to avoid performative activism.

I grew up in a protest to save my neighborhood from being demolished for a highway.

What the news reported was the protests in front of city hall to finally convince them to move the highway.

What you didn't see was the incredible legwork getting dozens of local businesses to support us. Getting bake sales in schools to fund billboards. Doing social disobedience by blocking traffic and having people arrested. Disrupting city hall over and over and over. This was my life for months.

And it finally worked.

What is not usually mentioned is the psychological effect protests have on the people attending. The feeling of being one of many who care about an issue gives people hope and energy to keep tring to change it.

What do you mean by "ground level infrastructure?" Like educating people? A forum for communication? Everyone is on social media and social media is censoring that stuff. Civil rights era people eere in churches because those were the social venues of the day.

I see it as good practice and normalizing not shopping at those places

Rule number 1 of protesting is always that if the protest can be suffered or ignored, then it will be.

Yep. The best way to affect change is to make yourself a threat to power if your demands aren't appeased. Protests by themselves aren't effective in doing so.

hah ! that's almost a cargo cult

This is why I stopped showing up to protests after 10+ years of showing up to protests. I will attend the next (first) protest that happens outside a mansion or gated community however, even with my health problems.

Great thought that made me shuffle in my seat a bit.