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- cross-posted to:
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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.
Most likely they are buying most of their products from Sysco Corporation. Small businesses are still not immune to large corporations. The could of course also be simply buying from a local Costco Business Center. The issue is that large corp owns and controls everything. It’s already too late but do what you can. Doing something is better than nothing.
imho the chapter on “Tactics” in Alinski’s Rules for Radicals provides a lot of ideas on how to avoid performative activism.
From the description
First published in 1971, Rules for Radicals is Saul Alinsky’s impassioned counsel to young radicals on how to effect constructive social change and know the difference between being a realistic radical and being a rhetorical one. […] Alinsky was able to combine, both in his person and his writing, the intensity of political engagement with an absolute insistence on rational political discourse and adherence to the American democratic tradition.
In today’s social climate with today’s regard for rational discourse & democratic tradition? Are we doomed?
Alinsky lived in a time of McCarthyism and Nixon and the Southern Strategy. I’m not an expert on the guy, but I don’t think he’d say we’re doomed.
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.
A one day boycott is about as effective at sending some kind of message as taking off a condom after the first thrust is at preventing a pregnancy.
Americans are seemingly incapable of doing anything other than virtue signalling online.
I say this as an American.
I moved over from corporate tech work to take a pay cut to do tech work at a non profit helping the homeless, to actually, literally do praxis.
No one, none of my friends, none of my family, nobody seemed to understand why I believed that ones actions should align with ones beliefs.
Americans are largely performative, self-obsessed narcissists.
I am beyond disgusted with this country.
I spent a decade telling people what is currently occuring is not only possible, but becoming increasingly inevitable.
90% of people told me I was mentally ill.
10% said yes they agree, but what can you do?
Fine. Fuck it.
There is nothing we can do I guess, as doing something would involve actual planning, risk and sacrifice, and we’re all a bunch of either vapid preening esoteric socialites, or murderously stupid death cultists.
Beam me up Scotty, no signs of intelligent life here.
People march in the street, they get ignored, they protest and get ignored. Nobody in power even cares about protests.
Literally nothing will happen until a mob starts “unelecting” this administration. So who is it going to be? Who is going to throw their life away for a bunch of strangers who don’t give a fuck about them? Who will throw their life away for a country or society that doesn’t give a fuck about them?
You realize you’re asking for Jesus Christ here
“There are no heroes left in man”
Luigi did it.
No he didn’t, the killer got away.
No one, none of my friends, none of my family, nobody seemed to understand why I believed that ones actions should align with ones beliefs.
When I was in high school, I wanted pursue college to do clean energy or agricultural research. Nobody who was in a position to help me fix my education track wanted to talk about anything but careers and income. I’ve just been watching everything get worse and they’ve just been enjoying their popcorn and circuses since then.
Here’s the thing: resistance movements don’t happen overnight except in the most extreme of circumstances, and since our transfer of power was (technically) peaceful, people aren’t feeling the kind of hurt that would drive them to protest just yet.
So, people who are wise enough to see what’s coming have to start small. Start with a small protest, then work your way up. Boycotts like this one are good for getting people to do something to start off. It might not do a whole lot at first, but they’ll start to add up as more and more people become aware of the movement.
Eventually, more drastic action can be taken, but getting people together and proving that they have the numbers to make a difference is vital, and unless a catastrophe happens, that process takes time.
Cool.
I’ve been doing such things, going to protests, volunteering for various advocacy/aid groups, helping to organize them, switched my entire career path etc., for nearly two decades…
…and what it looks like to me is… 80 to 90% of people treat what I do as an annoying ad they skip, as if me actually doing this in the real world, is indistinguishable from meaningless virtue signalling, and 10% of people are like you, coming in here and making a comment like that… for two decades.
I’ve been radicalized since getting simultaneous degrees in Econ and Poli Sci during the 07/08 financial crash, and since, have been doing everything I can to avert/mitigate this entirely predictable future we have now arrived at.
When was the last time you did something that actually had a positive effect on society?
At this point, I agree with Sergio Leone:
When I was young, I believed in three things: Marxism, the redemptive power of cinema, and dynamite.
Now I just believe in dynamite.
I see it as good practice and normalizing not shopping at those places
But people think it’s activism to not shop when it should literally just be the default. Get out of the consumerism mindset.
That’s fair
It’s wild how much everyone looks like a sucker and a mark once you’ve been out of the consumer mindset for a few years. You start to see between the lines a lot more and realize how much dumb shit is pushed on people. Buying a new phone every two years made a lot of sense when they doubled processing power and functionality. New flagships though? Forget that, why the hell would I want an AI powered advertisement and tracking machine in my pocket? The non AI powered tracking machine that’s 4 years old in my pocket is fucked up enough lol.
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!
Your link is lib media, it is exactly them who will keep them in line and sell real progressives out.
If not blatantly collaborate with the regime.
Scratch a liberal…This second hand comment is just repeating your mistaken assumption that this futile-non event is “doing something good”.
And tell little Erika to touch some grass. The battles are not fought online where she undoubtably spends too much time thinking she’s changing the world with her opinions.
And that’s where you encounter this meaningless word ‘leftist’ used by the americans. WTF does that mean, do they know?
Is it the useless “lib/democrat/progressives” (or whatever other silly term they use) spaces where they hang out and decide they’re going to change their avatar to defeat fascism?
Or does it mean real socialist spaces where Erika would get immediately called out on her BS, which made her complain they’re not thankful for her revolutionary actions.
I bet it’s that.
These are scary spaces to them and way out of their Overton window.
There they would read words like organising and praxis. Actuall effective stuff.
But that is way too ambitious for the US pacified apathic neutered mind.
That would require effort and commitment.
wikipedia/cargo_cult
hah ! that’s almost a cargo cult
Not almost. It is. Cargo cult activism.
Great thought that made me shuffle in my seat a bit.
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.
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.
While at the same time not doing anything meaningful involving actual work
Progressives have weaponized procrastination against themselves
If you completely trust everyone in your coalition it is not a coalition.
Man this is something I struggle with outside of politics too
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.
Can’t let people know where their power lies. If enough people believe in the ritual magic of peaceful, ignorable protests, then they will justify violence against protestors who actually put real pressure for change and the system can just overlook acts of violence against protestors rather than having to actually commit them itself.
Fight the power. ✊🏿
Mad props
It’s easy to imagine yourself as a hero with a molotov cocktail. Not as much fun walking door to door with a petition.
Martin Luther Kings peaceful protests were only half the equation to Malcom X arming black communities. You need to speak softly and carry a big stick.
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.
Ground level infrastructure meaning the ability to get people out to do anything from marching to rioting to picketing to canvassing to voting. The Civil Rights movement wouldn’t have gotten anywhere if it hadn’t actually mobilized people and thus made people aware of / afraid of organized resistance. The Black Panthers deserve a lot of credit as well for being the armed hard core of the movement.
We’d get a lot more of what we want peacefully if oligarchs were afraid we’d rally and fuck up their businesses bottom lines AND that they might get assassinated by radicals.
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.
