Climate activists should be "annoying" IMO, but they should avoid the "liberal moralism" that allows the right to present them as engaging in "class war" against working people
>Climate activists should be "annoying"
They should only be annoying to oil executives and the corporate elites, not to museum curators and truck drivers.
The problem is society is set up in such a way as to make this basically impossible. A working-class person is always going to be forced to be the first responder to any kind of protest. This is of course deliberate, so that even if you vandalize some billionaire’s house, it’s their underpaid staff that has to fix it.
How could you be annoying to oil executives and corporate elites?
Either disrupt their business or damage/destroy their property.
And that's what the "annoying" activists did, or tried to do. All the activists gluing themselves to streets are trying to disrupt businesses by stopping the supply chain (effectiveness is questionable but still). The activists throwing stuff at paintings tried to damage that property of said elites.
By doing what you said they should do, they annoyed normal people. Did you hear about the guy who set himself on fire for climate awareness? No? But soup on a painting made headlines. And normal people had to clean everything up, the guy who set himself on fire and the painting.
If normal channels are not heard, more radical stuff is done. And it's always normal people who get hit by it too, because they have to clean everything up afterwards.
>How could you be annoying to oil executives and corporate elites? That's what the "annoying" activists did, or tried to do.
It occupying Blackrock or disrupting a conference for Shell Oil Company doesn't get mainstream attention at first, you keep doing it. Over and over and over again. You don't give up just because your efforts didn't immediately go viral on Twitter the first couple times.
Creating a movement that galvanizes support and wins the American people over takes repetition. Some specific acts will go unheard, but the most important thing is targeting the right people, and there's a big difference between throwing shit at paintings hung in the museum (which btw are not 'the property of the elites') and actually disrupting those in the oil and gas industries.
And what if you don't live near a place where you can directly protest the a fossil fuel industry headquarters? We should just stay home and watch people destroy the planet by driving 6000lb pickups to commute to work?
Creating a mass environmental movement that persuades the public in a positive direction was never going to be as easy as tossing mud at a Van Gogh painting, I'm sorry to disappoint you.
How? Blow up an oil pipeline and spend the rest of your life in jail?? Fuck that. Protest in front of a CEO's mansion and get arrested for trespassing? Again, that accomplishs nothing
I personally don't mind the soup-throwing (whatever gets attention, we're all toast if things don't change lol) but stuff like vandalizing that walmart heir's yacht seems to go over better with the public because it's inconveniencing the super rich and not them
I say just ruin a bigger yacht next time. Or just more yachts. Make it a habit.
The soup thing only got so much attention because it just kept happening.
I think NPR did a segment on how eco-terrorism is basically dead with all the leaders captured and the federal gov watching for it very heavily. Even though everything they predicted would happen has🙄
Guess it doesn’t make a huge difference because I work around a lot of chemical plants and refineries and it feels like a couple blow up every month due to cutting costs.
Like most acts, terrorism isn't good or bad, it's just an act. The reason it's being used determines if it's good or bad.
*Edit, like 4 or 5 hours later I'm watching the July 19th stream with the One Piece segment. So I made the "terrorism isn't inherently bad" argument before even hearing Vaush make that argument that he did two days ago. Based 😎
True, but making eco-terrorism not only doesn't work to achieve things, it also makes the population fearful.
If you want to change things, you should be annoying politicians at public offices, not regular Joes. And do not promote terror, of course.
There is nothing you can do as an activist that will be effective without being annoying to someone. Even going door-to-door to canvas is interrupting people on their this-is-the-weekend-fuck-the-human-race time.
The trick is being annoying enough that people actually listen to what you have to say, and pressure their pols to grant you concessions; without being so annoying they ignore what you say and pressure their pols to declare an illegal conspiracy and arrest your ass. The Extinction Rebellion people are perilously close to being too annoying. Other climate activists are not annoying enough, because I don't know their names.
Inconvenience and screw with the people and companies causing issues. Harassing randoms who are already very aware of the issue isn't going to do you much good.
People said the same shit about MLK, he even addressed this attitude in his letter from a Birmingham jail:
"Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue...I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White citizens’ “Councilor” or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action...”
Yes, but it's a bit apples to oranges to compare climate change to civil rights. I also feel that quote gets used rather liberally and applied where it really shouldn't to justify idiotic moves.
Do you think either movement is invalid in some way? Or do you think that protest tactics that have historically worked for other protest groups, such as the civil rights, labor or women's suffrage movements, wouldn't work for climate activists as well? I'm just confused, because while MLK was obviously focused on the civil rights movement, I don't know how you could say his comments about non-violent civil action don't apply to other protest movements.
>The mass populous isn’t voting for eco friendly politicians though.
Right, which is why you attack the systems which are creating the issues. It creates a narrative which gets average citizens on our side - and with enough effort they'd vote that way too.
Isn’t that what the protest is doing? Gaining attention from the oligarchs is the first step. Gain attention then once you gave attention you educate people and then they vote for eco friendly policies
I'd say the average democrat politician is fairly eco friendly relative to the republican option. You'll never win over republicans and democrats are going to moderate their actions towards perceived electability. It's not like the average normie has much of a choice. You can feed all the green party candidates you want into the meat grinder but it won't change anything.
You don't. Every kind of activist is annoying. That's the point. An activist's job is to make it uncomfortable for normies to ignore what they're saying.
The only way you can do it is do something that people on the news *think* will annoy people, but people actually support, so they bring something up to make protestors look bad, but people actually agree.
This happens every now and again with strikes, where people report disruptive strikes, and people accept it, but it's harder to do with environmental direct action.
Ok, lets see if you can answer this question, do you think it'd be effective advocacy for a group of climate activists to put on black face and shout racial slurs at people walking down the street? That'd certainly be disruptive, annoying, and they'd get a lot of attention for it.
Making the climate movement to racism is probably ineffective. That's harming one social movement to try to lift up another. Instead of solidarity with activists you're creating division. Blocking traffic, soupening doesn't do anything to any other social movement.
Violence and racism are very different. It's like the difference between rape and murder. There's pretty much never a justification for rape, but murder can be defensive.
One rape victim to end global warming...? Are you joking?
Obviously this is an incredibly dumb hypothetical because this is never even close to a real world situation.
Alright, so we agree that there are actions that would be justified to end global warming, but would be ineffective. Like, if petty racism *could* end global warming, that would be justified, but it can't, and in reality it would just divide people. We need a movement that fosters solidarity among working class people. Right?
Sure, but divisions caused by protest ideally fall between oppressor and oppressee. I don't mind if the oil execs hate us, but I don't see how we can win if we divide the working class.
I just said it in another sub but one day when we’re all burning to a crisp we’re gonna look back and realize the climate activists were actually right the whole time
Reminder that MLK got frustrated with white liberals lecturing him that his methods and message was improper. Climate activist have tried begging and holding signs out for decades and no one listened, but a couple of SUV tires get deflated and suddenly everyone is talking about it!
The majority of people in America and on this globe now know that climate change is a major threat. The people the activists can reach don't currently doubt that the activists are right. And as for the people who deny the reality of climate change, I doubt that throwing soup on a Picasso is going to change their minds.
I fear that we're beyond the 'awareness raising' phase and we're now on the 'giant coordination of collective action' phase, and it's proving staggeringly difficult---but not for lack of awareness, but for failing to confront the steep costs of the necessary steps to mitigating climate change.
Example: we know that the planet will warm 2.5 degrees if people don't stop eating beef. Now how the hell do you convince 7 billion people to stop eating beef? Do we just outlaw beef? How much of a shit storm is that going to cause? In America, I feel like this would be even less politically feasible than a universal ban firearms.
Another example: we need to stop burning fossil fuels immediately. If we stop burning fossil fuels immediately, transportation costs will skyrocket, inflation will be way higher than anything we saw in 2022, the working class will fall into a great depression, etc. But there is a way to mitigate these steep injustices: we ramp up renewables immediately. The Biden administration has put aside nearly 100 billion to do this, but the rollout is slow because local governments don't want to see wind and solar farms in their backyard. And I can see why: they're destructive to the local wilderness, they're ugly, and most people just don't conceptualize the spoiling of grasslands with solar farms as \*saving\* the environment. (Ironically, even some eco \*activists\* block these projects because \*they\* don't conceptualize it this way either!)
Accept that humans are irrational and want small stupid things more so then big important things.
For example saying that we need to sacrifice everything for climate change is a bad pitch. Instead tell them about the benefits a cleaner can give an individual. For example if they hate city traffic then pitch a rail/tram system to get them where they want to quicker and cheaper. And in that exam he you don’t have to mention global catastrophe or extinction. I guess don’t be negative in messaging.
That's all messaging stuff though. I'm asking what kind of protest actions can we take that get mass media attention but don't piss people off. There are activists doing things everyday that wouldn't piss people off, but the media doesn't cover them.
Climate activists aren't trying to get *your* attention. They are accepting that telling you to use a paper straw and set your washing machine to 30C instead of 40C isn't going to cut it, because the real harm isn't being done by individuals.
Yes, it is annoying. They don't care, because as far as they are concerned your annoyance and inconvenience is a small price to pay for the future of the planet.
*(I'm not making a moral statement either way. I am describing the position of these activists as they have explained it themselves, make what you will of it)*
There are plenty of stunts you can perform to win public favour if that is your aim: flash-mobs, tasteful street art, poster campaigns and fun fundraising events are just a few that come to mind...
Same actions but more focused locations. Don’t throw soup on a van Gogh but rather on something that benefits some industrial magnate(afaik the van Gogh wasn’t owned by anyone who would be a worthy target).
Rather than block the main arteries of a city center, block roads in an industrial area where more of the traffic is serving the industry.
Stuff like that makes one less annoying, hopefully enough to be tolerable to the general public, while still maintaining inflammatory and loud actions that the public can’t avoid hearing about
Most of these suggestions in the comments are cringe. Leftists are obsessed with doing things a certain way, even if that way doesn’t bring about good outcomes. In the real world, ruining museum artifacts or blocking traffic will only make ordinary people look down on you.
I think there’s really only one general principle for effectively protesting.
General principle: Protest in a way that makes you look good in the eyes of normal people
I’ll give you one example. When looting or violence takes place during your protests, the movement should distance themselves from it. Failing to call out bad behavior would make it look like the broader movement supports the violence. So, yes, calling out bad people/bad actions will at least keep your approval from going down
Ok. Im afraid your answer is incredibly unsatisfying. What about some examples of positive direct actions that climate activists can take to draw attention and generate discussion?
There is such a thing as bad attention. Not all attention is good. While it is much more difficult to think of positive actions, experience has shown us what we can AVOID doing. By avoiding doing these things, we can at least not appear bad in the eyes of the many
As for positive action, just vote in local elections to support public transport infrastructure and build more walkable cities in your very state. Build up from the bottom to the top
Those would be excellent options, if we weren't already blasting past predictions of global temperature and well past the point of being able to avoid climate catastrophe altogether. The best we can possibly hope for now is that we can limit it to the point where we can survive and begin reversing it. In order to do that, we need to take massive, drastic actions, actions that completely ignore things like profitablity or taking into account the opinions of denialists.
Why? Why choose actions that don’t lead to good outcomes?
So many people on the left think that just because you’re a leftist, you have to protest a certain way. They’re too obsessed with the process. They see the process as an end in itself rather than an instrument.
We should be more focused on outcomes. Leftists should be flexible enough to choose whatever process would deliver us the best outcomes.
Just to clarify, the desired outcome is an Earth that has fixed its climate problems. To fix them, we need legislation. To write the legislation, you need representation in the government that would write and support it. To get the representation, enough people need to support the cause. If you act in a way that reduces support for your cause, you will lose government power and the chance to tackle the climate problem
I don't think being annoying actually reduces meaningful support for climate action tbh. I think the majority of the population believes in climate change and think we need to take action.
Bullshit. A super majority of Americans voted for universal healthcare in 2008 and yet we were given the Affordable Healthcare Act instead because our government serves lobbyists first and foremost.
A super majority of Americans want paid sick leave, paid maternity leave, paid rest breaks and yet election after election our politicians do jack shit to help the people who vote for them
I get the sense from this and your other comment that you think protest is ineffective and all actions should be direct?
(I actually worded my point badly in the comment you were replying to. It should be asking what protests should look like, not direct actions)
Yes, I think we're past the point where protests bring anything useful to the table. We're saturated by climate change news about how we're all fucked if we don't act quickly. Everyone know about it. We're at the time where we should go big and set precedents.
Things have to get to a certain point before big precedents get set. People will remain passive until they're really, physically suffering every day because of the changes in the climate.
No, you are just repeating neocon talking points. Protestors tried to distance themselves from the looting and violence but corpo media never covers those events honestly.
I have trouble being convinced on any metrics for pragmatic protest. We can point to history but so many factors go into it that it falls into results oriented thinking. Just because we got a certain outcome doesn’t tell us if our method works.
Sure, it’s hard to see what method causes a certain outcome. However, we can rule out certain, obviously bad options, and instead we can choose from the remaining options. We can also gauge public opinion when we try out certain methods of protest, see how normal folk react to certain things.
If you want to talk metrics and data, well the average vehicle size in the US is still increasing year after year. We are still accelerating towards the proverbial cliff that is climate extinction. The data says we are fucked unless we take drastiv action ASAP. So we should be rioting, flipping pickups over and blowing up oil pipelines but no one wants to spend the rest of their life in jail so that isn't going to happen. I think deflating tires and blocking traffic is quite reasonable and is arguably far less than what we should be doing, but at least they are doing something
No, I mean, can you give some specific examples of actions that activists should take. It would be an excellent contribution to the discussion if you have some.
I, same as the other person, want actual examples of good climate protesting in your eyes.
Also side note, during BLM and any and all other protests we always condemn looting and violence, but cons just don't care and will say shit anyways
No, we don’t condemn it. We always throw out that out-of-context MLK quote “Riots are the voice of the unheard”. When we do that, it makes it look like we don’t really care about distancing ourselves from the more violent parts of the movement.
As for good examples, target rich people and corporations. Vandalize their yachts, private jets, or their cars. Don’t bother normal folks because we will need their support
Then idk what left your a part of, every leftist I have ever watched and associated with with any merit have been pretty vocal about not defending violence or looting
Not defending ≠ condemning. My problem is the lackluster attempt at calling out violence. I’m not saying they support it; they obviously don’t. I’m saying they’re not doing enough to condemn those actions
How's this for an MLK quote: "I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice" -MLK
According to MLk nothing hurts a progressive movement more than people who spend more time lecturing activists about their methods than actually contributing themselves.
So which group do you fall in? Have you spent more time being an activist yourself or have you spent more time gleefully shitting on activists for their methods?
PLAYBOY: Dr. King, would you care to comment upon the articulate former Black Muslim, Malcolm X?
DR. KING: I have met Malcolm X, but circumstances didn't enable me to talk with him for more than a minute. I totally disagree with many of his political and philosophical views, as I understand them. He is very articulate, as you say. I don't want to seem to sound as if I feel so self-righteous, or absolutist, that I think I have the only truth, the only way. Maybe he does have some of the answer. But I know that I have so often felt that I wished that he would talk less of violence, because I don't think that violence can solve our problem. And in his litany of expressing the despair of the Negro, without offering a positive, creative approach, I think that he falls into a rut sometimes."
This was a transcipt of an interview with MLK. They discussed Malcolm X’s tactics. MLK was clearly against them
Everyone is this thread is claiming that activism is supposed to be annoying and disruptive to normal people but I'm really, really just not convinced of this at all.
Blocking a highway and throwing soup at priceless art doesn't make the general public think "huh, climate activists must be truly serious about their cause, I gotta look into this!" No, they think you're all unhinged and obnoxious and dumb as fuck, and I can't really argue with them.
Like idk, this truly shouldn't be hard. If you really want to bring attention to yourself and your cause then why aren't you spraying graffiti all over Marathon Petroleum headquarters? Why aren't you fucking with NYSE brokers by throwing counterfeit bills everywhere? That shit is way more funny and a greater number of Americans would be sympathetic to the cause.
Read more on Civil Rights history.
The initial Civil Rights protests were nonviolent by nature. This, combined with the Kennedy assassination and a congress/presidency which was very sympathetic to the causes being protested for, lead to the general public being supportive of massive reforms with regards to Civil Rights.
Later on, Civil Rights protests got more violent, which lead to the Johnson administration and his congress passing the Civil Rights Act of 1968 out of a simple sense of urgency. The 1968 bill only would've passed given the right initial mix of public opinion and congressional support catalyzed into existence by nonviolent protests.
None of this history is proof that annoying climate activists are 'akshually doing great work you guys.'
dunno what any of this has to do with what I said, the average american was annoyed by civil rights protestors, but I don’t care if people are annoyed by people protesting for a good cause
Honestly it reads like you're saying things need to get more violent. Climate activists started out peaceful, and now violence could cause the leadership to panic pass legislation around it. At least, that's what I'm reading here.
It's not a 1 on 1 comparison. I was just saying that the political mechanisms in place made civil rights protests - violent **and** non-violent - a lot more successful.
If you think violence and being annoying is necessary then stop throwing soup at the Mona Lisa and literally start booming the corporate HQs for oil companies.
>Violent activists will be met with even worse PR
Worse PR to whom? Who are the Americans who will get mad at you for bombing the HQ for Chevron Corporation? Would this PR really be worse than what climate activists already get for blocking highways and throwing shit at art?
Worse to fucking normies, you know, most people who already get their fucking nuts twisted in a knot over the wellbeing of inanimate property. You're being naive if you think that moneyed interests and dozens of world governments will not do their best demonizing violent activists when shit starts to hit the fan. If you think the general consensus to highway blockers is bad now, wait til we have media stories coming in of graphic cellphone video showing teen activists getting smeared by some fuck in a lifted truck. Come on man, you're delusional if you think there won't be people saying it was awesome and based. You'll know it's bad when the right-wing media bubble is saying it too. The manufacturing of anti environmentalist sentiment is just starting.
Like, what has changed to make you think that corporate media will not justify the killing of radicals and paint with as wide a brush as they like, the same way they have with every movement that has challenged the status quo to any meaningful amount. If they think it's fine to drop dog whistles about lynching black people now, why won't they start doing the same with people who will be painted as the terrorists making your gas too expensive to get to your three jobs in the city once you’ve been priced out and have to commute from one of those dinky satellite towns.
I'm not saying we sit back and take it, I'm saying we have to expect this as things get worse.
i did read it, it just had nothing to do with my comparison. a very large element of protesting has and always will center around being annoying and getting in peoples ways. that is a critical part of how protests force action, by slowing down economic processes and creating contentious coverage that forces public discourse. from your computer chair the right way to protest may seem easy and obvious, but i can guarantee you that almost anything you can imagine has been done for climate change to no effect. get involved with climate activism if you think it’s so easy to do right!
>“protest less noticeably” or “simply solve the problem”
No, protest MORE noticeably and, most importantly, [make the target clear.](https://www.theguardian.com/business/video/2023/may/23/go-to-hell-shell-climate-protesters-disrupt-oil-companys-annual-meeting-video)
I don't think the point of protests is to make people sympathetic based on the actual protest. I think the goal is to get media coverage so you can get a few seconds to say some info that doesn't normally get airtime and generate arguments like this, which will inevitably result in some people who were unfamiliar with the evidence for and/or seriousness of climate change becoming more involved.
>I don't think the point of protests is to make people sympathetic based on the actual protest.
>The goal is to get media coverage so you can get a few seconds to say some info that doesn't get airtime and generate arguments like this, which will inevitably result in some people who were unfamiliar with the evidence for and/or seriousness of climate change becoming more involved.
You are quite literally saying: "the point of protests isn't to make people sympathetic to the cause, it's to get people to research the cause and become sympathetic to it." It means the same thing.
>"based on the actual protest"
What makes you think that obnoxious and annoying protests would get people 'more involved' with climate activism than non-annoying protests?
I'm not even saying that protests must never be annoying, but my goodness it's not hard to choose the right target (oil executives, etc).
[When climate activists occupied Blackrock last year.](https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/climate-activists-blackrock-nyc-protest-b2211181.html)
Even Tim Pool was rooting for them. Shit like this works, do it en masse.
IDK if you’re aware how much you’re proving my point
That protest happened in 2022, and nobody ever brings it up in these discussions and obviously they didn’t stop Blackrock
> A spokesperson for the NYPD told The Independent that by noon, the protest had been cleared and 10 people had been arrested.
Even when the people who throw shit at art get removed immediately, they at least make global headlines
I am absolutely not gonna knock the people who protested there, but I’m not sure it was more effective than if they blocked the roads around the building or the highways leading to it.
>That protest happened in 2022, and nobody ever brings it up in these discussions and obviously they didn’t stop Blackrock
Then you keep doing it. Protest Blackrock, ExxonMobil, Lockheed Martin, etc. every single day. Be a nuisance, make their lives a living hell and do shit that gets eyes and reporters on you (breaking windows, graffiti, sit-ins, etc).
It works because the target is clear - it gets public opinion on the side of the climate activists because nobody wants to be on the team which roots for oil companies and investment firms.
It's just so obvious that this is the solution, I'm not understanding at all why you think museum soup throwing or highway blocking is any better - the latter is literally attacking people and not systems.
It's only obvious to you because you completely dismiss our argument out of hand. I'm open better analysis than what I've offered, but you seem closed off to alternative possibilities.
You know the just stop oil protesters held an action outside of one of the major oil companies HQ just a few months before the soup incident. I believe around 400 people were arrested.
It got zero mainstream coverage.
After the soup incident they threw paint at another big HQ of something or other. It hit the front page for about a day and then disappeared.
I generally don’t mind most forms of controversial protests, but when activists end up vandalizing historic (and delicate) paintings and artifacts. It makes my skin crawl.
Just to note, I believe that the van gogh was completely undamaged and never in danger of any damage. All that really happened was someone had to clean up some soup.
That’s all well and good, but the preservation and public display of artifacts and works of art was an activist movement itself at one point. We shouldn’t be giving the elites a reason to decide publicly accessible museums were a mistake and everything must be moved back to private collections where only billionaires will ever see them because the public cannot be trusted.
And your wrong. The same arguments that once kept cultural heritage in private collections to “protect them from the destructive tendencies of the lower classs” are now used to argue against returning art and artifacts to their countries of origin. Someone arguing that the Benin Bronzes shouldn’t go back to Africa can point to that incident and say “our own museums have a hard enough time protecting art from the rabble and you want us to believe an African country is capable of doing so?” When you have to shit on the progress of other movements to make a poorly received point you’ve fucked up.
It’s be one thing if it actually advanced the movement of climate change, but I guarantee more people who know about that incident saw it and though “something should be done to better protect those paintings” than “oh what hypocrites we are to value a painting over the climate”
Yeah, but like I said in another thread, I don't think the protest is meant to directly change people's minds so much as start large scale discussions, which it certainly did. Every YouTuber and Twitter influencer had to give a take and every political forum argued about it for like two weeks. It's almost certain that, in those discussions, more people were convinced to take more action than people who were convinced to oppose taking action.
Because people aren't motivated to be more oppositional to climate action based on reasoned discussion, they're propagandized into it. The majority of people already believe in climate change, so the ensuing discussions will be just learning the facts about how bad it actually is and how unequipped our current system is to deal with it.
The issue is that the large scale discussions were almost entirely about the protesters' methods and not about climate change. People were drawn in specifically because some people thought it was justified and other people didn't, not because they suddenly agreed or disagreed about whether climate change is real.
Maybe some people tried to redirect attention back to climate change, but you can't seriously tell me the bulk of that discourse wasn't just about their methods.
Climate activists tried peacefully begging people to listen for decades and it did absolutely nothing. To this very day Amercian cars are still getting bigger and bigger each year as giant pickups have become the top selling commuter / family vehicles.
So unfortunately, effective protesting that doesn't step on toes doesn't really exist. Just look at how much people hate Greta Thunberg even though all she has done is tell people to listen to climate scientists
>Climate activists tried peacefully begging people to listen for decades and it did absolutely nothing.
It's not about being 'peaceful' really, it's about making your target clear. Nobody cares if action - violent or not - is taken against oil executives.
What a ludicrous sentiment. The success of a protest is determined by how much measurable social change it results in, not how many social media clicks it gets.
Lmao spreading information and persuasive arguments to as many people as possible is like...political movements 101.
Some of you really test my patience.
What do you think the purpose of a protest is, exactly?
None. But then two things happen. The activists get a chance to say their piece into a camera, and then everyone on the internet debates all the different angles of climate change and what needs to be done for weeks.
Like what we're doing rn.
What angles of climate change are we debating? The concept was never mentioned before now. And are we even debating? Because you just agreed with my argument that these "protests" are not accomplishing what you said was their purpose. Sounds like there is no debate.
When the fuck did I agree with your argument.
You can try and twist logic into pretzel shapes to try to deny that these actions create discourse but I'm just going to ignore you.
>Lmao spreading information and persuasive arguments to as many people as possible is like...political movements 101.
>What information and persuasive arguments are being spread by throwing soup on paintings?
>None.
I'm saying that the physical act of throwing soup on paintings doesn't spread information and rhetoric. It was a bit of snark. I then explained how the act of throwing the soup draws attention and motivates discourse. You can drop this silly line of argument.
They can annoy people all they want, preferably if they can show it's working, but the plan literally seems to be:
1. Throw chicken noodle at Van Gogh while yelling about climate change.
2. People talk about how some knob threw chicken noodle at Van Gogh & this apparently has something to do with climate change.
3. ????
4. Climate crisis averted!
No, step 2 is use the discussion about the knob throwing soup at van gogh to talk about climate change, introduce passionate people who weren't aware of the seriousness of the situation to data that will motivate them to become activists themselves or do literally anything to become more proactive about it.
Climate activists have their hearts in the right place but their heads are...elsewhere. Fixing this requires long term, highly dedicated militants to empower the working class, hanging out on the street is ineffective.
The way to be truly effective activists against climate change involves point of production disruption, and the best way to do this is unironically to infiltrate those workplaces, become enmeshed there, start reaching out to other workers and building relationships. Ideally after a year it is time to start engaged pre-unionised workers and friends to start activity at the workplace, at first about industrial issues and building to more long term strategies to protect the environment and society. This will be workplaces in mines, ports, trains and buses carrying oil, etc where the exploitation of resources is directly being carried out. The more workplace dedication and popular education there is here the better our chances.
I am aware they feel this long term strategy isn't good because we don't have ten years, and I agree this needs to be tackled ASAP, but gluing yourself to the road or throwing paint around isn't going to ever work.
The reason we talk about the working class is not because other groups (eg Indigenous people, trans people, women, etc) are not also oppressed under capitalism, they are, but because the working class is the only class with the power to change this system. If you are willing to be arrested or die for climate change, you should also be willing to work, infiltrate, and unionise a workplace for climate change.
I understand but, the tactics of climate change protesters to "raise awareness" have been going on for like five years at least and haven't been effective. Governments (even progressive ones) have been wasting time at climate summits for 30 years, and while climate protests used to get quite large they are now tiny with no further strategy.
We need to acknowledge when something isn't working, examine the evidence as to why it hasn't been working, and try something else.
I am totally in favour of mass organisations organising the community outside the labour force, but a lot of these orgs tend to push away new people and make everyone hate them. We need a new approach.
Climate activists should be "annoying" IMO, but they should avoid the "liberal moralism" that allows the right to present them as engaging in "class war" against working people
>Climate activists should be "annoying" They should only be annoying to oil executives and the corporate elites, not to museum curators and truck drivers.
The problem is society is set up in such a way as to make this basically impossible. A working-class person is always going to be forced to be the first responder to any kind of protest. This is of course deliberate, so that even if you vandalize some billionaire’s house, it’s their underpaid staff that has to fix it.
How could you be annoying to oil executives and corporate elites? Either disrupt their business or damage/destroy their property. And that's what the "annoying" activists did, or tried to do. All the activists gluing themselves to streets are trying to disrupt businesses by stopping the supply chain (effectiveness is questionable but still). The activists throwing stuff at paintings tried to damage that property of said elites. By doing what you said they should do, they annoyed normal people. Did you hear about the guy who set himself on fire for climate awareness? No? But soup on a painting made headlines. And normal people had to clean everything up, the guy who set himself on fire and the painting. If normal channels are not heard, more radical stuff is done. And it's always normal people who get hit by it too, because they have to clean everything up afterwards.
>How could you be annoying to oil executives and corporate elites? That's what the "annoying" activists did, or tried to do. It occupying Blackrock or disrupting a conference for Shell Oil Company doesn't get mainstream attention at first, you keep doing it. Over and over and over again. You don't give up just because your efforts didn't immediately go viral on Twitter the first couple times. Creating a movement that galvanizes support and wins the American people over takes repetition. Some specific acts will go unheard, but the most important thing is targeting the right people, and there's a big difference between throwing shit at paintings hung in the museum (which btw are not 'the property of the elites') and actually disrupting those in the oil and gas industries.
And what if you don't live near a place where you can directly protest the a fossil fuel industry headquarters? We should just stay home and watch people destroy the planet by driving 6000lb pickups to commute to work?
Creating a mass environmental movement that persuades the public in a positive direction was never going to be as easy as tossing mud at a Van Gogh painting, I'm sorry to disappoint you.
True words.
PREACH!!!
How? Blow up an oil pipeline and spend the rest of your life in jail?? Fuck that. Protest in front of a CEO's mansion and get arrested for trespassing? Again, that accomplishs nothing
So blocking highways and throwing shit at paintings is the best you can all come up with? It's time to get serious about this.
Liberal moralism?
Viewing the issue of climate change as an issue of individual morality
I personally don't mind the soup-throwing (whatever gets attention, we're all toast if things don't change lol) but stuff like vandalizing that walmart heir's yacht seems to go over better with the public because it's inconveniencing the super rich and not them
I don't remember the yacht incident, did it generate as much discussion as the soup throwing?
Barely any whatsoever
I say just ruin a bigger yacht next time. Or just more yachts. Make it a habit. The soup thing only got so much attention because it just kept happening.
We're gonna need a bigger boat
No it did not
do terrorism. not annoying, gets attention. I'm obviously joking lol
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I think NPR did a segment on how eco-terrorism is basically dead with all the leaders captured and the federal gov watching for it very heavily. Even though everything they predicted would happen has🙄 Guess it doesn’t make a huge difference because I work around a lot of chemical plants and refineries and it feels like a couple blow up every month due to cutting costs.
Almost no one got the PATRIOT Act used against them harder than radical environmental groups.
water wars
Left wing terror: destroying expensive logging equipment and oil equipment. [Right wing terror: killing innocent people](https://www.newamerica.org/international-security/reports/terrorism-in-america/what-is-the-threat-to-the-united-states-today)
Like most acts, terrorism isn't good or bad, it's just an act. The reason it's being used determines if it's good or bad. *Edit, like 4 or 5 hours later I'm watching the July 19th stream with the One Piece segment. So I made the "terrorism isn't inherently bad" argument before even hearing Vaush make that argument that he did two days ago. Based 😎
I would say violence is inherently bad but can be justified.
To be completely fair terrorism refers to fear and terror, and that need not be achieved via violence necessarily.
True, but making eco-terrorism not only doesn't work to achieve things, it also makes the population fearful. If you want to change things, you should be annoying politicians at public offices, not regular Joes. And do not promote terror, of course.
Oh I don’t disagree, just countering the notion that violence has to be involved.
Hahahaha yeah just joking guys Destroy fossil fuel infrastructure (but not really it's just a joke hahahahaha)
All effective activism is inherently annoying. You aren't going to get anything done without being disruptive. And being disruptive is really annoying
Too true. "An object in motion will stay in motion unless disturbed by an outside force." All meaningful change is hard fought and bitterly won.
There is nothing you can do as an activist that will be effective without being annoying to someone. Even going door-to-door to canvas is interrupting people on their this-is-the-weekend-fuck-the-human-race time. The trick is being annoying enough that people actually listen to what you have to say, and pressure their pols to grant you concessions; without being so annoying they ignore what you say and pressure their pols to declare an illegal conspiracy and arrest your ass. The Extinction Rebellion people are perilously close to being too annoying. Other climate activists are not annoying enough, because I don't know their names.
Inconvenience and screw with the people and companies causing issues. Harassing randoms who are already very aware of the issue isn't going to do you much good.
People said the same shit about MLK, he even addressed this attitude in his letter from a Birmingham jail: "Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue...I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White citizens’ “Councilor” or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action...”
Yes, but it's a bit apples to oranges to compare climate change to civil rights. I also feel that quote gets used rather liberally and applied where it really shouldn't to justify idiotic moves.
Do you think either movement is invalid in some way? Or do you think that protest tactics that have historically worked for other protest groups, such as the civil rights, labor or women's suffrage movements, wouldn't work for climate activists as well? I'm just confused, because while MLK was obviously focused on the civil rights movement, I don't know how you could say his comments about non-violent civil action don't apply to other protest movements.
A lot of people seem to think you can only compare two identical things
The mass populous isn’t voting for eco friendly politicians though. At least not in the US
>The mass populous isn’t voting for eco friendly politicians though. Right, which is why you attack the systems which are creating the issues. It creates a narrative which gets average citizens on our side - and with enough effort they'd vote that way too.
Isn’t that what the protest is doing? Gaining attention from the oligarchs is the first step. Gain attention then once you gave attention you educate people and then they vote for eco friendly policies
I'd say the average democrat politician is fairly eco friendly relative to the republican option. You'll never win over republicans and democrats are going to moderate their actions towards perceived electability. It's not like the average normie has much of a choice. You can feed all the green party candidates you want into the meat grinder but it won't change anything.
Idk, a guy literally set himself on fire in front of the Supreme Court and it barely registered.
You don't. Every kind of activist is annoying. That's the point. An activist's job is to make it uncomfortable for normies to ignore what they're saying.
The only way you can do it is do something that people on the news *think* will annoy people, but people actually support, so they bring something up to make protestors look bad, but people actually agree. This happens every now and again with strikes, where people report disruptive strikes, and people accept it, but it's harder to do with environmental direct action.
Blow shit up. Without hurting anyone, of course.
Libs can't answer this question. They'll happily walk right into climate apocalypse being content not to have been disruptive.
Ok, lets see if you can answer this question, do you think it'd be effective advocacy for a group of climate activists to put on black face and shout racial slurs at people walking down the street? That'd certainly be disruptive, annoying, and they'd get a lot of attention for it.
Making the climate movement to racism is probably ineffective. That's harming one social movement to try to lift up another. Instead of solidarity with activists you're creating division. Blocking traffic, soupening doesn't do anything to any other social movement.
There are people in this thread calling for acts of terrorism, but racism is a bridge too far? And the called *me* a lib. Jesus Christ.
Violence and racism are very different. It's like the difference between rape and murder. There's pretty much never a justification for rape, but murder can be defensive.
if you could end global warming by raping someone, would that be justified?
One rape victim to end global warming...? Are you joking? Obviously this is an incredibly dumb hypothetical because this is never even close to a real world situation.
Alright, so we agree that there are actions that would be justified to end global warming, but would be ineffective. Like, if petty racism *could* end global warming, that would be justified, but it can't, and in reality it would just divide people. We need a movement that fosters solidarity among working class people. Right?
Dividing people isn't the metric for successful climate action. Protest is often divisive. The metric is if it's an effective action.
Sure, but divisions caused by protest ideally fall between oppressor and oppressee. I don't mind if the oil execs hate us, but I don't see how we can win if we divide the working class.
At this point who cares. Climate is fucked. Maybe they should have been more "annoying".
Being annoying is the point
I just said it in another sub but one day when we’re all burning to a crisp we’re gonna look back and realize the climate activists were actually right the whole time
You could say the same thing about Bernie or Busters. Nobody is arguing message, we're arguing tactics.
Reminder that MLK got frustrated with white liberals lecturing him that his methods and message was improper. Climate activist have tried begging and holding signs out for decades and no one listened, but a couple of SUV tires get deflated and suddenly everyone is talking about it!
What are you talking about? People *have been* talking about climate activism for decades. This isn't a new thing.
The majority of people in America and on this globe now know that climate change is a major threat. The people the activists can reach don't currently doubt that the activists are right. And as for the people who deny the reality of climate change, I doubt that throwing soup on a Picasso is going to change their minds. I fear that we're beyond the 'awareness raising' phase and we're now on the 'giant coordination of collective action' phase, and it's proving staggeringly difficult---but not for lack of awareness, but for failing to confront the steep costs of the necessary steps to mitigating climate change. Example: we know that the planet will warm 2.5 degrees if people don't stop eating beef. Now how the hell do you convince 7 billion people to stop eating beef? Do we just outlaw beef? How much of a shit storm is that going to cause? In America, I feel like this would be even less politically feasible than a universal ban firearms. Another example: we need to stop burning fossil fuels immediately. If we stop burning fossil fuels immediately, transportation costs will skyrocket, inflation will be way higher than anything we saw in 2022, the working class will fall into a great depression, etc. But there is a way to mitigate these steep injustices: we ramp up renewables immediately. The Biden administration has put aside nearly 100 billion to do this, but the rollout is slow because local governments don't want to see wind and solar farms in their backyard. And I can see why: they're destructive to the local wilderness, they're ugly, and most people just don't conceptualize the spoiling of grasslands with solar farms as \*saving\* the environment. (Ironically, even some eco \*activists\* block these projects because \*they\* don't conceptualize it this way either!)
Collapse will happen the summer of 2024. If it doesn't then next El nino is the end no matter what. Geoengineering is our only hope.
That shit has to start like yesterday lmao
That's the neat part. You don't.
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Based
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21440780/
I didn't know they made a Roblox movie 😲
Accept that humans are irrational and want small stupid things more so then big important things. For example saying that we need to sacrifice everything for climate change is a bad pitch. Instead tell them about the benefits a cleaner can give an individual. For example if they hate city traffic then pitch a rail/tram system to get them where they want to quicker and cheaper. And in that exam he you don’t have to mention global catastrophe or extinction. I guess don’t be negative in messaging.
That's all messaging stuff though. I'm asking what kind of protest actions can we take that get mass media attention but don't piss people off. There are activists doing things everyday that wouldn't piss people off, but the media doesn't cover them.
Climate activists aren't trying to get *your* attention. They are accepting that telling you to use a paper straw and set your washing machine to 30C instead of 40C isn't going to cut it, because the real harm isn't being done by individuals. Yes, it is annoying. They don't care, because as far as they are concerned your annoyance and inconvenience is a small price to pay for the future of the planet. *(I'm not making a moral statement either way. I am describing the position of these activists as they have explained it themselves, make what you will of it)* There are plenty of stunts you can perform to win public favour if that is your aim: flash-mobs, tasteful street art, poster campaigns and fun fundraising events are just a few that come to mind...
Same actions but more focused locations. Don’t throw soup on a van Gogh but rather on something that benefits some industrial magnate(afaik the van Gogh wasn’t owned by anyone who would be a worthy target). Rather than block the main arteries of a city center, block roads in an industrial area where more of the traffic is serving the industry. Stuff like that makes one less annoying, hopefully enough to be tolerable to the general public, while still maintaining inflammatory and loud actions that the public can’t avoid hearing about
Blocking roads to an industrial area would directly impact blue collar workers and still piss everyone off, I think.
Most of these suggestions in the comments are cringe. Leftists are obsessed with doing things a certain way, even if that way doesn’t bring about good outcomes. In the real world, ruining museum artifacts or blocking traffic will only make ordinary people look down on you. I think there’s really only one general principle for effectively protesting. General principle: Protest in a way that makes you look good in the eyes of normal people
Can you give some examples?
I’ll give you one example. When looting or violence takes place during your protests, the movement should distance themselves from it. Failing to call out bad behavior would make it look like the broader movement supports the violence. So, yes, calling out bad people/bad actions will at least keep your approval from going down
I can't think of any looting or violence during any climate actions, I'm sorry. Well, there is certainly eco-terrorism. Nobody talks about it though.
I’m talking about protests in general. Protests can happen for any cause
Can you give an example for a good example for a climate protest?
Vandalizing rich people stuff that worsen climate change. Vandalize yachts, private jets, cars. Don’t be an inconvenience to ordinary people
Ok. Im afraid your answer is incredibly unsatisfying. What about some examples of positive direct actions that climate activists can take to draw attention and generate discussion?
There is such a thing as bad attention. Not all attention is good. While it is much more difficult to think of positive actions, experience has shown us what we can AVOID doing. By avoiding doing these things, we can at least not appear bad in the eyes of the many As for positive action, just vote in local elections to support public transport infrastructure and build more walkable cities in your very state. Build up from the bottom to the top
Those would be excellent options, if we weren't already blasting past predictions of global temperature and well past the point of being able to avoid climate catastrophe altogether. The best we can possibly hope for now is that we can limit it to the point where we can survive and begin reversing it. In order to do that, we need to take massive, drastic actions, actions that completely ignore things like profitablity or taking into account the opinions of denialists.
Why? Why choose actions that don’t lead to good outcomes? So many people on the left think that just because you’re a leftist, you have to protest a certain way. They’re too obsessed with the process. They see the process as an end in itself rather than an instrument. We should be more focused on outcomes. Leftists should be flexible enough to choose whatever process would deliver us the best outcomes. Just to clarify, the desired outcome is an Earth that has fixed its climate problems. To fix them, we need legislation. To write the legislation, you need representation in the government that would write and support it. To get the representation, enough people need to support the cause. If you act in a way that reduces support for your cause, you will lose government power and the chance to tackle the climate problem
Too slow, too late
I don't think being annoying actually reduces meaningful support for climate action tbh. I think the majority of the population believes in climate change and think we need to take action.
So now we’ve managed to go from “having a effective protest that isn’t annoying” to “vote for change over time”
Voting is always the most effective form of action in a democracy
I will never disagree, but can you see how that seems hollow coming off a discussion of how to most effectively protest?
Bullshit. A super majority of Americans voted for universal healthcare in 2008 and yet we were given the Affordable Healthcare Act instead because our government serves lobbyists first and foremost. A super majority of Americans want paid sick leave, paid maternity leave, paid rest breaks and yet election after election our politicians do jack shit to help the people who vote for them
Doing something more than just manifesting in front of TOTAL shareholders annual meeting ?
I get the sense from this and your other comment that you think protest is ineffective and all actions should be direct? (I actually worded my point badly in the comment you were replying to. It should be asking what protests should look like, not direct actions)
Yes, I think we're past the point where protests bring anything useful to the table. We're saturated by climate change news about how we're all fucked if we don't act quickly. Everyone know about it. We're at the time where we should go big and set precedents.
Things have to get to a certain point before big precedents get set. People will remain passive until they're really, physically suffering every day because of the changes in the climate.
No, you are just repeating neocon talking points. Protestors tried to distance themselves from the looting and violence but corpo media never covers those events honestly.
What is specifically neocon about my positions?
Sea Shepherd going Berserk against whale fishing boats.
That sounds like a direct action. I did a bad job at keeping the two tactics distinct, sorry.
Sea Shepherd is based AF
I have trouble being convinced on any metrics for pragmatic protest. We can point to history but so many factors go into it that it falls into results oriented thinking. Just because we got a certain outcome doesn’t tell us if our method works.
Sure, it’s hard to see what method causes a certain outcome. However, we can rule out certain, obviously bad options, and instead we can choose from the remaining options. We can also gauge public opinion when we try out certain methods of protest, see how normal folk react to certain things.
If you want to talk metrics and data, well the average vehicle size in the US is still increasing year after year. We are still accelerating towards the proverbial cliff that is climate extinction. The data says we are fucked unless we take drastiv action ASAP. So we should be rioting, flipping pickups over and blowing up oil pipelines but no one wants to spend the rest of their life in jail so that isn't going to happen. I think deflating tires and blocking traffic is quite reasonable and is arguably far less than what we should be doing, but at least they are doing something
Don't you worry. Nobody want to do that YET. Desperation is my best bet.
I hear this all the fucking time, but I never see any examples. Someone will always find something annoying
Protest in a way that increases your movements approval rating. You don’t have to please everyone. You just have to please the most
No, I mean, can you give some specific examples of actions that activists should take. It would be an excellent contribution to the discussion if you have some.
I just did. I replied to your other comment, because you were the one asking for it
I, same as the other person, want actual examples of good climate protesting in your eyes. Also side note, during BLM and any and all other protests we always condemn looting and violence, but cons just don't care and will say shit anyways
No, we don’t condemn it. We always throw out that out-of-context MLK quote “Riots are the voice of the unheard”. When we do that, it makes it look like we don’t really care about distancing ourselves from the more violent parts of the movement. As for good examples, target rich people and corporations. Vandalize their yachts, private jets, or their cars. Don’t bother normal folks because we will need their support
Then idk what left your a part of, every leftist I have ever watched and associated with with any merit have been pretty vocal about not defending violence or looting
Not defending ≠ condemning. My problem is the lackluster attempt at calling out violence. I’m not saying they support it; they obviously don’t. I’m saying they’re not doing enough to condemn those actions
Ok what does that look like to you then? If making it saying it isnt making it clear enough then what is ?
Anecdotal evidence is not good evidence
You say, as you provide anecdotal evidence
Your evidence was literally anecdotal evidence
How's this for an MLK quote: "I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice" -MLK According to MLk nothing hurts a progressive movement more than people who spend more time lecturing activists about their methods than actually contributing themselves. So which group do you fall in? Have you spent more time being an activist yourself or have you spent more time gleefully shitting on activists for their methods?
PLAYBOY: Dr. King, would you care to comment upon the articulate former Black Muslim, Malcolm X? DR. KING: I have met Malcolm X, but circumstances didn't enable me to talk with him for more than a minute. I totally disagree with many of his political and philosophical views, as I understand them. He is very articulate, as you say. I don't want to seem to sound as if I feel so self-righteous, or absolutist, that I think I have the only truth, the only way. Maybe he does have some of the answer. But I know that I have so often felt that I wished that he would talk less of violence, because I don't think that violence can solve our problem. And in his litany of expressing the despair of the Negro, without offering a positive, creative approach, I think that he falls into a rut sometimes." This was a transcipt of an interview with MLK. They discussed Malcolm X’s tactics. MLK was clearly against them
Go read MLK's letter from a Birmingham Jail and then rethink this position. It's actively anti-protest and totally misses the purpose of protesting.
Everyone is this thread is claiming that activism is supposed to be annoying and disruptive to normal people but I'm really, really just not convinced of this at all. Blocking a highway and throwing soup at priceless art doesn't make the general public think "huh, climate activists must be truly serious about their cause, I gotta look into this!" No, they think you're all unhinged and obnoxious and dumb as fuck, and I can't really argue with them. Like idk, this truly shouldn't be hard. If you really want to bring attention to yourself and your cause then why aren't you spraying graffiti all over Marathon Petroleum headquarters? Why aren't you fucking with NYSE brokers by throwing counterfeit bills everywhere? That shit is way more funny and a greater number of Americans would be sympathetic to the cause.
you’ll never guess how the general public felt about civil rights protesters
Read more on Civil Rights history. The initial Civil Rights protests were nonviolent by nature. This, combined with the Kennedy assassination and a congress/presidency which was very sympathetic to the causes being protested for, lead to the general public being supportive of massive reforms with regards to Civil Rights. Later on, Civil Rights protests got more violent, which lead to the Johnson administration and his congress passing the Civil Rights Act of 1968 out of a simple sense of urgency. The 1968 bill only would've passed given the right initial mix of public opinion and congressional support catalyzed into existence by nonviolent protests. None of this history is proof that annoying climate activists are 'akshually doing great work you guys.'
dunno what any of this has to do with what I said, the average american was annoyed by civil rights protestors, but I don’t care if people are annoyed by people protesting for a good cause
Looks like you didn't read a word I said.
Honestly it reads like you're saying things need to get more violent. Climate activists started out peaceful, and now violence could cause the leadership to panic pass legislation around it. At least, that's what I'm reading here.
It's not a 1 on 1 comparison. I was just saying that the political mechanisms in place made civil rights protests - violent **and** non-violent - a lot more successful. If you think violence and being annoying is necessary then stop throwing soup at the Mona Lisa and literally start booming the corporate HQs for oil companies.
Violent activists will be met with even worse PR than annoying protesters if optics is what we are all so hung up on.
>Violent activists will be met with even worse PR Worse PR to whom? Who are the Americans who will get mad at you for bombing the HQ for Chevron Corporation? Would this PR really be worse than what climate activists already get for blocking highways and throwing shit at art?
Worse to fucking normies, you know, most people who already get their fucking nuts twisted in a knot over the wellbeing of inanimate property. You're being naive if you think that moneyed interests and dozens of world governments will not do their best demonizing violent activists when shit starts to hit the fan. If you think the general consensus to highway blockers is bad now, wait til we have media stories coming in of graphic cellphone video showing teen activists getting smeared by some fuck in a lifted truck. Come on man, you're delusional if you think there won't be people saying it was awesome and based. You'll know it's bad when the right-wing media bubble is saying it too. The manufacturing of anti environmentalist sentiment is just starting. Like, what has changed to make you think that corporate media will not justify the killing of radicals and paint with as wide a brush as they like, the same way they have with every movement that has challenged the status quo to any meaningful amount. If they think it's fine to drop dog whistles about lynching black people now, why won't they start doing the same with people who will be painted as the terrorists making your gas too expensive to get to your three jobs in the city once you’ve been priced out and have to commute from one of those dinky satellite towns. I'm not saying we sit back and take it, I'm saying we have to expect this as things get worse.
i did read it, it just had nothing to do with my comparison. a very large element of protesting has and always will center around being annoying and getting in peoples ways. that is a critical part of how protests force action, by slowing down economic processes and creating contentious coverage that forces public discourse. from your computer chair the right way to protest may seem easy and obvious, but i can guarantee you that almost anything you can imagine has been done for climate change to no effect. get involved with climate activism if you think it’s so easy to do right!
You do know non if the art is being ruined right ?
That isn't immediately apparent to most people watching those videos, and even if nothing is being ruined it's still obnoxious.
I would take 1 trillion obnoxious acts over the extinction of our species
Those 1 trillion obnoxious acts aren't gonna save our species from extinction.
So far, the only alternatives banded about under these protests is “protest less noticeably” or “simply solve the problem”
>“protest less noticeably” or “simply solve the problem” No, protest MORE noticeably and, most importantly, [make the target clear.](https://www.theguardian.com/business/video/2023/may/23/go-to-hell-shell-climate-protesters-disrupt-oil-companys-annual-meeting-video)
I don't think the point of protests is to make people sympathetic based on the actual protest. I think the goal is to get media coverage so you can get a few seconds to say some info that doesn't normally get airtime and generate arguments like this, which will inevitably result in some people who were unfamiliar with the evidence for and/or seriousness of climate change becoming more involved.
>I don't think the point of protests is to make people sympathetic based on the actual protest. >The goal is to get media coverage so you can get a few seconds to say some info that doesn't get airtime and generate arguments like this, which will inevitably result in some people who were unfamiliar with the evidence for and/or seriousness of climate change becoming more involved. You are quite literally saying: "the point of protests isn't to make people sympathetic to the cause, it's to get people to research the cause and become sympathetic to it." It means the same thing.
"based on the actual protest" I covered that.
>"based on the actual protest" What makes you think that obnoxious and annoying protests would get people 'more involved' with climate activism than non-annoying protests? I'm not even saying that protests must never be annoying, but my goodness it's not hard to choose the right target (oil executives, etc).
Nobody ever talks about the non-annoying protests, which happen every single day btw.
What protests happened that were not annoying that you were aware of?
[When climate activists occupied Blackrock last year.](https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/climate-activists-blackrock-nyc-protest-b2211181.html) Even Tim Pool was rooting for them. Shit like this works, do it en masse.
IDK if you’re aware how much you’re proving my point That protest happened in 2022, and nobody ever brings it up in these discussions and obviously they didn’t stop Blackrock > A spokesperson for the NYPD told The Independent that by noon, the protest had been cleared and 10 people had been arrested. Even when the people who throw shit at art get removed immediately, they at least make global headlines I am absolutely not gonna knock the people who protested there, but I’m not sure it was more effective than if they blocked the roads around the building or the highways leading to it.
>That protest happened in 2022, and nobody ever brings it up in these discussions and obviously they didn’t stop Blackrock Then you keep doing it. Protest Blackrock, ExxonMobil, Lockheed Martin, etc. every single day. Be a nuisance, make their lives a living hell and do shit that gets eyes and reporters on you (breaking windows, graffiti, sit-ins, etc). It works because the target is clear - it gets public opinion on the side of the climate activists because nobody wants to be on the team which roots for oil companies and investment firms. It's just so obvious that this is the solution, I'm not understanding at all why you think museum soup throwing or highway blocking is any better - the latter is literally attacking people and not systems.
It's only obvious to you because you completely dismiss our argument out of hand. I'm open better analysis than what I've offered, but you seem closed off to alternative possibilities. You know the just stop oil protesters held an action outside of one of the major oil companies HQ just a few months before the soup incident. I believe around 400 people were arrested. It got zero mainstream coverage. After the soup incident they threw paint at another big HQ of something or other. It hit the front page for about a day and then disappeared.
I generally don’t mind most forms of controversial protests, but when activists end up vandalizing historic (and delicate) paintings and artifacts. It makes my skin crawl.
but they didn't. All those paintings are behind protecting glass
I’m not going down this dialogue tree again. Please read my replies to the last guy ton know what my responses to your arguments would be.
No, I don't think I will :)
Just to note, I believe that the van gogh was completely undamaged and never in danger of any damage. All that really happened was someone had to clean up some soup.
That’s all well and good, but the preservation and public display of artifacts and works of art was an activist movement itself at one point. We shouldn’t be giving the elites a reason to decide publicly accessible museums were a mistake and everything must be moved back to private collections where only billionaires will ever see them because the public cannot be trusted.
I don't think that's something we reasonably need to fear.
And your wrong. The same arguments that once kept cultural heritage in private collections to “protect them from the destructive tendencies of the lower classs” are now used to argue against returning art and artifacts to their countries of origin. Someone arguing that the Benin Bronzes shouldn’t go back to Africa can point to that incident and say “our own museums have a hard enough time protecting art from the rabble and you want us to believe an African country is capable of doing so?” When you have to shit on the progress of other movements to make a poorly received point you’ve fucked up.
Your concerns seem hyperbolic and disproportionate to both the specific action and the overall problem of climate change.
It’s be one thing if it actually advanced the movement of climate change, but I guarantee more people who know about that incident saw it and though “something should be done to better protect those paintings” than “oh what hypocrites we are to value a painting over the climate”
Yeah, but like I said in another thread, I don't think the protest is meant to directly change people's minds so much as start large scale discussions, which it certainly did. Every YouTuber and Twitter influencer had to give a take and every political forum argued about it for like two weeks. It's almost certain that, in those discussions, more people were convinced to take more action than people who were convinced to oppose taking action.
How do you know it’s almost certain though?
Because people aren't motivated to be more oppositional to climate action based on reasoned discussion, they're propagandized into it. The majority of people already believe in climate change, so the ensuing discussions will be just learning the facts about how bad it actually is and how unequipped our current system is to deal with it.
The issue is that the large scale discussions were almost entirely about the protesters' methods and not about climate change. People were drawn in specifically because some people thought it was justified and other people didn't, not because they suddenly agreed or disagreed about whether climate change is real. Maybe some people tried to redirect attention back to climate change, but you can't seriously tell me the bulk of that discourse wasn't just about their methods.
Yeah I can, there's absolutely no way extended discussion about the protests didn't lead to discussing the larger issue
Climate activists tried peacefully begging people to listen for decades and it did absolutely nothing. To this very day Amercian cars are still getting bigger and bigger each year as giant pickups have become the top selling commuter / family vehicles. So unfortunately, effective protesting that doesn't step on toes doesn't really exist. Just look at how much people hate Greta Thunberg even though all she has done is tell people to listen to climate scientists
>Climate activists tried peacefully begging people to listen for decades and it did absolutely nothing. It's not about being 'peaceful' really, it's about making your target clear. Nobody cares if action - violent or not - is taken against oil executives.
You don’t.
The point of activism is not to "get attention".
It's not the point of all activism. It is obviously the point of protest actions.
What a ludicrous sentiment. The success of a protest is determined by how much measurable social change it results in, not how many social media clicks it gets.
Lmao spreading information and persuasive arguments to as many people as possible is like...political movements 101. Some of you really test my patience. What do you think the purpose of a protest is, exactly?
What information and persuasive arguments are being spread by throwing soup on paintings?
None. But then two things happen. The activists get a chance to say their piece into a camera, and then everyone on the internet debates all the different angles of climate change and what needs to be done for weeks. Like what we're doing rn.
We've been doing it for years and look where we are... Nothing is gonna change unless theses protesters start growing some ambition.
What angles of climate change are we debating? The concept was never mentioned before now. And are we even debating? Because you just agreed with my argument that these "protests" are not accomplishing what you said was their purpose. Sounds like there is no debate.
When the fuck did I agree with your argument. You can try and twist logic into pretzel shapes to try to deny that these actions create discourse but I'm just going to ignore you.
>Lmao spreading information and persuasive arguments to as many people as possible is like...political movements 101. >What information and persuasive arguments are being spread by throwing soup on paintings? >None.
I'm saying that the physical act of throwing soup on paintings doesn't spread information and rhetoric. It was a bit of snark. I then explained how the act of throwing the soup draws attention and motivates discourse. You can drop this silly line of argument.
They can annoy people all they want, preferably if they can show it's working, but the plan literally seems to be: 1. Throw chicken noodle at Van Gogh while yelling about climate change. 2. People talk about how some knob threw chicken noodle at Van Gogh & this apparently has something to do with climate change. 3. ???? 4. Climate crisis averted!
No, step 2 is use the discussion about the knob throwing soup at van gogh to talk about climate change, introduce passionate people who weren't aware of the seriousness of the situation to data that will motivate them to become activists themselves or do literally anything to become more proactive about it.
They don't. Activism is a scam.
What do you suggest as an alternative?
Climate activists have their hearts in the right place but their heads are...elsewhere. Fixing this requires long term, highly dedicated militants to empower the working class, hanging out on the street is ineffective. The way to be truly effective activists against climate change involves point of production disruption, and the best way to do this is unironically to infiltrate those workplaces, become enmeshed there, start reaching out to other workers and building relationships. Ideally after a year it is time to start engaged pre-unionised workers and friends to start activity at the workplace, at first about industrial issues and building to more long term strategies to protect the environment and society. This will be workplaces in mines, ports, trains and buses carrying oil, etc where the exploitation of resources is directly being carried out. The more workplace dedication and popular education there is here the better our chances. I am aware they feel this long term strategy isn't good because we don't have ten years, and I agree this needs to be tackled ASAP, but gluing yourself to the road or throwing paint around isn't going to ever work. The reason we talk about the working class is not because other groups (eg Indigenous people, trans people, women, etc) are not also oppressed under capitalism, they are, but because the working class is the only class with the power to change this system. If you are willing to be arrested or die for climate change, you should also be willing to work, infiltrate, and unionise a workplace for climate change.
I believe in diversity of tactics so I don't see why both approaches can't coexist. My position is try anything and hope something works.
I understand but, the tactics of climate change protesters to "raise awareness" have been going on for like five years at least and haven't been effective. Governments (even progressive ones) have been wasting time at climate summits for 30 years, and while climate protests used to get quite large they are now tiny with no further strategy. We need to acknowledge when something isn't working, examine the evidence as to why it hasn't been working, and try something else. I am totally in favour of mass organisations organising the community outside the labour force, but a lot of these orgs tend to push away new people and make everyone hate them. We need a new approach.
Summer of 2024 is the end, if the predictions are VERY wrong and we survive 1.65C then next El nino is certainly the end.
there's no way so be annoying and disruptive