This is not the way, because you alienate too many middle ground people, when you need to attract them.
You either need numbers, masses of people attending a concert in the park. Get a million . 2 million. ActivateJoe Public . Create disruption by filling the public realm with willing participants.
Or, you have to fire bomb to the offices and go to war.
Civil disobedience gets you in the news, and the media interview a bunch of members of the public, who are pissed about having their commute disrupted, and the public turn against you and they turned against the cause literally over night .
Xtinction Rebellion have made far more enemies than they have won friends.
XR is widely hated, but it is extremely successful in making people talk about the climate crisis. Actions such as blocking oil refineries, coal power plants and so forth certainly work and cause massive damage to large emitters. The problem is that the media does not report on it, so when you want to recruit, you do so by blocking streets.
The simple truth is that you need both. Large scale mobilization and some more radical action. It is very clear that large scale protests have not worked as well as needed.
I would disagree that it’s widely hated, I only hear the worst, most obnoxious assholes talking about how much they hate it. If anyone wants to say it’s “widely hated” they’ll need to give some numbers.
Also, anyone making a good faith effort to combat climate change in any way gets a pass from me, as long as we don’t yet know it’s actually counter-productive.
Anyone who actually cares about climate change would understand that there’s no measure too ridiculous. If throwing soup on a painting’s glass cover moves the needle on climate change even a millionth of a percent towards a solution then great, fucking do it. Even if it makes no difference at all fuck it, you’re trying, I support you. Fuck the paintings, they won’t matter if nobody’s left to look at or preserve them. That’s the point of that particular protest, to ask “Why do you care about this painting more than our climate?”
These people hate on activism despite never having any evidence that it’s counter-productive beyond “I reckon it is,” which just means they don’t like it. They don’t care about climate change or the human race, they’re just here to shit on activists because they’ve been taught to hate them by fossil fuel industry propaganda.
So these aren’t persuadable people, we shouldn’t care about what they have to say, fuck 'em.
This sub constantly shitting on everything that isn’t the “right way” has gotten really old. Can’t do individual action, better to focus on policies. Can’t change laws because lobbyists are more powerful, need to organize. And according to you, can’t organize because Karen, who didn’t give a shit to begin with, will think protesters are annoying. This specific effort is focused on Citibank and not general traffic disruption anyway. You’re more than welcome to organize your 2M people and try not to disrupt, I’ll support that too.
This is not the way, because you alienate too many middle ground people, when you need to attract them.
You either need numbers, masses of people attending a concert in the park. Get a million . 2 million. ActivateJoe Public . Create disruption by filling the public realm with willing participants.
Or, you have to fire bomb to the offices and go to war.
Civil disobedience gets you in the news, and the media interview a bunch of members of the public, who are pissed about having their commute disrupted, and the public turn against you and they turned against the cause literally over night .
Xtinction Rebellion have made far more enemies than they have won friends.
XR is widely hated, but it is extremely successful in making people talk about the climate crisis. Actions such as blocking oil refineries, coal power plants and so forth certainly work and cause massive damage to large emitters. The problem is that the media does not report on it, so when you want to recruit, you do so by blocking streets.
The simple truth is that you need both. Large scale mobilization and some more radical action. It is very clear that large scale protests have not worked as well as needed.
I would disagree that it’s widely hated, I only hear the worst, most obnoxious assholes talking about how much they hate it. If anyone wants to say it’s “widely hated” they’ll need to give some numbers.
Also, anyone making a good faith effort to combat climate change in any way gets a pass from me, as long as we don’t yet know it’s actually counter-productive.
Anyone who actually cares about climate change would understand that there’s no measure too ridiculous. If throwing soup on a painting’s glass cover moves the needle on climate change even a millionth of a percent towards a solution then great, fucking do it. Even if it makes no difference at all fuck it, you’re trying, I support you. Fuck the paintings, they won’t matter if nobody’s left to look at or preserve them. That’s the point of that particular protest, to ask “Why do you care about this painting more than our climate?”
These people hate on activism despite never having any evidence that it’s counter-productive beyond “I reckon it is,” which just means they don’t like it. They don’t care about climate change or the human race, they’re just here to shit on activists because they’ve been taught to hate them by fossil fuel industry propaganda.
So these aren’t persuadable people, we shouldn’t care about what they have to say, fuck 'em.
This sub constantly shitting on everything that isn’t the “right way” has gotten really old. Can’t do individual action, better to focus on policies. Can’t change laws because lobbyists are more powerful, need to organize. And according to you, can’t organize because Karen, who didn’t give a shit to begin with, will think protesters are annoying. This specific effort is focused on Citibank and not general traffic disruption anyway. You’re more than welcome to organize your 2M people and try not to disrupt, I’ll support that too.
Because this has worked so well for the past 4 decades, look, emissions are at an all time low!
We need a diversity of tactics.
I don’t want to help people I hate, even when they do have a point.