@bob_the_fisherman Said 
I don't sing kumbaya and am not a hippy. I am also not a pacifist. If attacked I will defend myself with whatever force is required. I will just try to avoid violence without running away when it starts.
I was speaking figuratively...I of course don't mean that you actually go out and sing Kumbaya, I am just speaking of peaceable demonstration in general when it's thrown into sharp relief against a violent backdrop. You standing at the edge of a riot with a sign or calmly speaking your mind really doesn't accomplish anything and certainly doesn't garner an ounce of attention from those rioting.
I mentioned hippies because I do draw a parallel there. A lot of the 1960s hippies would say they collectively ended the war in Vietnam. And a lot of the ones who said that were having sit-ins and getting stoned out of their minds. And the reality is, that didn't have a single goddamn inch of influence on our involvement in Vietnam. Smoking a bunch of pot, f***ing their brains out, and sitting a drum circle singing about peace didn't really do
anything. Neither did throwing urine on soldiers returning home.
I'm not saying there weren't activists anywhere who made any kind of change, but a great number of them actually didn't, and the fact that we left Vietnam made them think they did.
A good story to illustrate what I mean took place years ago in one of the cities I used to work for. A few demonstrators showed up to a courthouse to protest something going on there, I don't even remember what, but the police arrived and one of them got a little unruly, so she got arrested and thrown into a holding cell. She called one of the people from her group and had him log into her social media accounts and ended up having something like three thousand people from across the country flooding our call center with complaints and demands of her release.
After a few hours, she was cut loose and sent on her way, and of course several places online heralded the valiant efforts of all those who voiced their opinions and made a change and got her released from the Nazi police department who wrongfully arrested her...and they knew this for a fact because she was released without charges so it must have been their pressure that made it happen.
Except it wasn't at all. Her release had nothing to do with anyone calling in and all of their effort was totally useless. The people who had anything to do with whether or not she actually stayed or got out never even knew about the flood of calls. She was being held on a 24 hour hold, which in this country can legally be done without her ever being charged with a single thing, and then cut loose because there was a lack of room in the jail and there were violent offenders that needed to be housed.
This is getting off topic, but I'm just trying to point out that a lot of people who think they are making a difference with words and in general causing trouble with the wrong people are actually not doing anything at all.
Yes...be heard. Yes...speak up if you see something worth speaking about. But do it in a way that will actually effect change and do so in channels that will actually make some kind of a dent.
Quote:
It is about adhering to a life long principle that you do not allow thugs to end dissent through violence.
If there is a violent outbreak and you decide to stay on location and express your dissent to show that violence can't silence you, don't be surprised if that dissent is then eclipsed by the violence and you never actually get heard,
thereby in fact silencing you.
It seems it would be a much more productive and effective strategy to speak out against the violence and on whatever subject the demonstration was supposed to be about from a different location or through different channels.
Moving yourself away from violence is not allowing thugs to end dissent, it's practicing basic survival instinct and you can speak as loudly and dissent as thoroughly and wholeheartedly as you please from another location where you will actually be heard.
Staying and being outnumbered and overspoken by those same thugs actually
is in effect letting them silence you. That is my point. Look at us. We're all sitting around talking about the violent thugs at Charlottesville and the president's reaction to that violence. Any discourse on the actual issue at hand has taken a complete back seat to the violence.
To what length did those who stayed amid the violence to "be heard" actually change anything at all? Are they being heard now?
No. Not really. Maybe it's a cynical view but I think it's realistic, and the only thing their staying really accomplished was getting a lot of them injured and one of them killed. The amount of talk about the actual subject of the demonstration would probably be pretty much the same had they all left...and it would actually be more had they all left and reorganized to be heard elsewhere or at a later date.
But now? Now that they decided to stay and things escalated, now that they gave more meat to an already out of control riot, people are going to be a lot less willing to listen if they try to demonstrate again. Because...well look what happened last time. They must just be trying to make trouble again.
That is how society looks at them now. Maybe it's right or wrong, maybe you and I like it or not, but that's the reality.
Aug 28, 2017 @ 14:32:13
Moderator
