Al-Saqr posted:

Oh I'm all for wearing suits and stuff, I just know for a fact that people who view it as their deal breaker are loving liars who wouldn't do anything even if every protestor could scrounge up the money to by Armani suits for every single person protesting. Because underneath that suit a the end of the day is someone they don't view as worthy of having their human rights respected.

I mean, how many suits do people need to wear to convince you that sexually assaulting women or having a rabid anti-Semite in the white house is a bad thing, or are these guys really that dense and stupid.

Two Feet From Bread posted:

I was just in Greece and watched one of their job protests first hand. It was very well organised, grouped people by dress (suit, business casual, casual, political dress, exc) and age (very old all the way to small children). They all chanted the same message, started exactly at 6PM, and followed the predefined route with police escort the entire way and all roads were blocked off hours in advance by the police. So no motor traffic.

Overall, as someone from the outside looking in, it was very professional. They were very organized, didn't throw slurs or break stuff, and the grouping by age and attire really emphasised that this was a community effort and not some hurt feelings group. And the grouping really shoved it in everyone's face without being obnoxious about it. It added a lot of legitimacy and I didn't even know what they were protested for or what they were saying. But their actions got me interested enough to go ask some locals about the protest. After finding out what it was about the visual message they were sending resonated even more with their cause because it helped emphasize that they were protesting for a community problem and the way it was organized showed that all areas of the community supported finding a solution. I was impressed.

Your take away on this should be that a strong visual picture can and will sway openions before even the first word is heard. Having people dressed in suits (even goodwill ones) and business casual (slacks and a button up or polo), is a force multiplier because it shows that the entire community is there in support. If you need to run a donation box, then do it. Your goal is to get your message heard in a positive light; formal well planned out, polite, protests with pre approved routes, and police escort will take you further than a group of ragtag people holding signs of profanity and that Drumpf = Nazis. Rioting is unacceptable and should never happen. You should be ready to formally cancel the protest if it turns to destruction and violence. But these aren't new tactics. MLK Jr used this exact format during his walks. Just because you don't like suits doesn't mean you can't use them like a tool to further your goals.

Killer-of-Lawyers posted:

Save the molitovs for the National Guard, jeeze.

Kilroy posted:

People talk about the MLK / Malcolm X dichotomy a lot but they too often seem to use it as evidence of "we need more / less organization and more / less violence or threat of it". The whole point of doing a protest in the way I'm suggesting is so that you have it as a point in your favor when the hammer comes down as it certainly will. If you were already acting like an rear end in a top hat when it does, no one is going to care.

Two Feet From Bread posted:

A Wizard of Goatse posted:

A production manager in Hollywood should probably not try to pass himself off as the Lorax of the poor and disenfranchised, who he apparently presumes to be something like Dickensian street urchins. I am reasonably positive that guy owns several suits, and simply imagines it suits his Internet persona to pretend he doesn't.

Svartvit posted:

As "someone from the outside looking in", who followed the protests in LA live, they were meek and uneventful. Compared to Greece it was like watching a kindergarten excursion. I'm pretty sure that I at one point saw hundreds of people standing around a police officer, listening to him talk. Wowzers! What happened to US protest culture?

Svartvit posted:

As "someone from the outside looking in", who followed the protests in LA live, they were meek and uneventful. Compared to Greece it was like watching a kindergarten excursion. I'm pretty sure that I at one point saw hundreds of people standing around a police officer, listening to him talk. Wowzers! What happened to US protest culture?

A Wizard of Goatse posted:

A production manager in Hollywood should probably not try to pass himself off as the Lorax of the poor and disenfranchised, who he apparently presumes to be something like Dickensian street urchins. I am reasonably positive that guy owns several suits, and simply imagines it suits his Internet persona to pretend he doesn't.

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

As soon as every protestor is wearing a suit it will just change to "heh, some protest, looks like the only people that showed up are suit wearing millennials on their daddy's dime." There isn't really any combination of clothes that doesn't give people a wish to discount things a way to discount them.

ToxicSlurpee posted:

The single most terrifying thing to an administration is a diverse protest. If a protest is all one demographic you can write it off as "pfft, uppity (whatever they are) just don't realize how good they have it." If you can get enough groups on your side then you can squish opposition pretty easily.

But when you suddenly have a poor black guy standing shoulder to shoulder with an upper middle class white professional guy and they're shouting the same message it's time to pay the gently caress attention because things are very, very bad. The thing to take from this particular election, and the last 8 years, is that Americans overall are just sick and god damned tired of how things are going. Trump tapped into that to get himself elected but the problem there is that if he doesn't change anything, or makes things worse, now he's suddenly part of the establishment that he swore to take down.

Aside from that the abhorrent things that racists have been doing over the course of the last year (hate crimes are way, way up) were inspired by his rhetoric. The massive protests cropping up are basically people screaming loudly "we aren't putting up with this poo poo." I really think this is part of why Trump and Friends are toning down some of the promises and platform. Not only is Trump the least popular president elect ever Congress has single-digit approval ratings. Washington just plain can't keep doing what they're doing. Now the Republicans can't even blame Democrats for everything because they're in charge.

Veyrall posted:

Once again, is anything happening in Mississippi, Louisiana or Alabama? I will drive wherever, just tell me.

Veyrall posted:

Thank you

Zapf Dingbat posted:

Apropos, you in Mobile? Last time I went to Socialist Alternative a few years ago... I don't know, felt like some college antics. Maybe I'm rushing to judgement.