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  • Regarding the calls for non-violence, I don't want to put anyone down or say anyone's doing anything wrong. Good job being out there and trying. I would also like to point out

    1. Dr. King was NOT spoken of as a paragon of non-violence by conservative contemporaries. It was very common to refer to Dr. King's protests as riots and in terms of inciting violence, even if the violence being invited, much as today, was police on protestor violence. If Dr. King had bowed to the cries that he was sparking violence, we never would have gone anywhere. There was a huge acceptance washing campaign by conservative America after the civil rights wins.
    2. In the 2014 Maidan protests in Ukraine, protestors were getting cut down by police snipers during peaceful, unarmed marches. The police snipers were shooting people who were running out with stretchers to get the people who'd been shot. When they finally got sick of it and announced that they were going to come back tomorrow and do an armed march, the cops suddenly remembered that they all had dentist appointments in Belarus that day and skipped town. Nobody got shot during the armed march. See: https://youtu.be/yzNxLzFfR5w . So, it's not so much that you have to use violence, but the state is a lot more likely to hesitate about kicking your shit in if they know you can be violent back and believe that you're willing to do so. Ask any conservative what an acceptable protest is, and it's likely to be something like "shouting into your closet"; as far as they're concerned, peaceful marches ARE ALREADY violent if anyone notices them or they disrupt anything at all. Our cops don't give a shit if you're peaceful, they shoot reporters with rubber bullets and force people to grab billy clubs so they can beat the fuck out of them. We're past that. It's time to remind the state that there is alternative to peaceful protest if they really want to go that route.

    • When they finally got sick of it and announced that they were going to come back tomorrow and do an armed march, the cops suddenly remembered that they all had dentist appointments in Belarus that day and skipped town.

      Sure, but that was in lily-white Ukraine where the people doing the protests were aligned with Western European geopolitical interests and looking to overthrow an ally of the Putin Regime. So, of course the history we write about it is going to valorize the Ukrainians and paint the effort as trivial and the opposition as spineless.

      What happened when Iraqis started showing up in armed protests outside of the US-occupied Green Zone? Or the Yemini Houthis began arming protesters against the Saudi-allied national government? Or the West Bank protesters began throwing rocks at Israeli tanks? Or the Ferguson BLM protesters or Hong Kong democracy protesters or Syrian Green Revolution protesters started showing up to tussle with police?

      Hell, even taken in the best possible light, the Maidan revolution ended in... what? A country split in half by a Russian military occupation.

      This isn't to detract from the virtues of armed resistance. But people love to harp on the eventual, occasional victories and hate to reminisce on the far more prolific depressing failures. It's easy to talk about Vietnamese insurgents triumphing in 1974 when you forget the revolution kicked off in earnest in 1940.

      "Just show up with guns and the police will crawl away on their bellies and you'll win" is as painfully naive as the "Just show up with flowers and the police will put down their riot gear and greet you with hugs and songs".

      Nothing about this is easy or guaranteed. Nobody is getting to the end of this without shedding blood. If you show up with a weapon to a protest, you better be prepared to have weapons used on you in turn. Don't go in thinking you can bluff your way to a glorious revolution.

    • I guess you're referring to me.

      The protests in LA were mostly peaceful, what do you think would have been the outcome if the protesters weren't? Trump is itching to declare marshall law and take over California, why do you think he's sending so many national guardsmen and marines? Be prepared for defense, but don't start shit.

      • No, I was speaking generally. I've seen several calls for non-violence, though the only people I've seen get hurt so far are those who've been hurt by the police. I wanted to share that there is space between not being violent and being prepared or demonstrating the capacity for violence.

      • Lol, TACO was already polling terribly before his sugarbaby broke up with him. All I know is if people in California want to be free from fascists & the oligarchy, they better plan on getting rid of their own politicians as well. It's the lameass Democratic establishment that helped Trump get reelected. Also, the reason the majority of Americans support Trump's stance overall on illegal immigration is cause Democrats are just as guilty as Republicans in letting corporations buy up all the current urban housing & turning everyone into renters, while you drive an hour outside any major city & there are open fields for 10s of miles between each house. That is where the wealth is getting transferred to & where a majority of the Trump donors & voters sre. You want to want to see shit get crazy, then have the protestors go up to the Central Valley to setup makeshift communities on those thousand+ acres farms, tell them they're going to have to start sharing cause things are getting too fucking crowded in LA, and that they're taking all the water as well.

  • Can I interest you all in a link?

    YSK - That there is a lot of trolling and brigading starting to happen around the LA peaceful protests to start violence. Here is a roadmap from 2015 on how they do it.

    Once we isolate key people, we look for people we know are in their upstream -- people that they read posts from, but who themselves are less influential. (This uses the same social media graph built before.) We then either start flame wars with bots to derail the conversations that are influencing influential people (think nonsense reddit posts about conspiracies that sound like Markov chains of nonsense other people have said), or else send off specific tasks for sockpuppets (changing this wording of an idea here; cause an ideological split there; etc).

    The goal is to keep opinions we don't want fragmented and from coalescing in to a single voice for long enough that the memes we do want can, at which points they've gotten a head start on going viral and tend to capture a larger-than-otherwise share of media attention.

    (All of the stuff above is basically the "standard" for online PR (usually farmed out to an LLC with a generic name working for the marketing firm contracted by the big firm; deniability is a word frequently said), once you're above a certain size.)

    https://archive.is/PoUMo

    Lemmy thread: https://sh.itjust.works/post/39873361

  • Friday's protests would have been more or less ordinary compared to the many other stories across the country, of communities coming together denouncing raids and demanding release of immigrants detained for various reasons.

    What made this one special is that Trump raised the stakes when he decided to call the National Guard against it. The newsworthy headlines were:

    • The arrest of SEIU leader David Huerta
    • The burnt Waymos
    • Journalists shot by the PD
    • Newsom and Trump's exchanges

    Whereas the grafitti and individual confrontations within the crowd didn't get much attention, so those sorts of actions didn't serve a purpose besides turning attitudes negatively. Chances the people doing that were provocateurs or people that wanted chaos more than to support the cause of immigrants or resistance of fascism.

    Thought experiment: if protestors were more violent in LA this weekend such that a couple cops had died, would that have been any better?

    I don't like cops but I say no, it would have been much worse. Media got so sad over those poor autonomous cars, that a dead cop would have been the only headline coming out of that, resulting in more of a crackdown from the city and more of a copaganda stance from the mayor and Governor. Trump would bring tanks and stuff down Alameda, we're all worse off. Showing up but staying peaceful is a call on Trump's bluff.

  • The Panthers used to march armed as defense. They were tactical and knew their rights. We have to show as much restraint as possible in order to not let the narrative run away from us. This is going to be a long battle (we are what, 4 months into a 4-year window?) and we still have a ton of ground to cover. Bullets should be the absolute last ditch effort, but it must be made clear that as soon as cops decide that rubber bullets need to go away and the live ammo comes out, it’s chaos.

    • Chasing ICE out with rocks and pockets of people are effective and make it harder for the police to kettle people
    • Working together essentially as a modern day Underground Railroad to protect and hide folks ICE is looking for is also a tactic
    • There are a ton of US military in CA that you know are wondering what the hell they’re doing there. They might simply be there as a show of force, but assume the worst. We could adopt a flyer campaign that attempts to get a message into the hands of soldiers. Maybe make some of them come to their senses about the fact that their dipshit president has called them up illegally and is willing to make them all traitorous accessories that shred the constitution. This one is inspired by airborne leaflet propaganda tactics the US govt has used abroad. If we can weaken their resolve and sway a handful of numbers, that’s less boots that are a threat
    • Make roadways inaccessible for ICE vehicles. Drop massive rocks on the roads, barricades, dumpsters, whatever you can find. It might end up that they work on foot instead, but that means you’ve just made them more exposed (and given yourself a window to disable their transportation)
    • Cover cop and ICE cars in paint. Make it so they’re a pain in the ass to see out of and operate. Do the same with cops. Reduced visibility means they have to retreat.

    We have to be tactical and smart. We could be reckless and resort straight to the worst option available, but we know our enemy and how they function. Anger is a weapon when channeled properly. The police and the military are waiting for us to fire the first shot and then all bets are off. They will control the media and pull out all of the stops earlier than anticipated.

    Violence isn’t off the table by any stretch, but there are better ways to utilize it. Everyone can play a part and there are tons of guides out there.

  • Show. Up. Armed.

    "Captain! Captain! They're shooting at us! What do we do?!"

    "Shoot back!"

    Just kidding. If we show up open-carry, suddenly, cops are polite as hell. See how that works?

    "But they might KILL ME!" Yes. That is indeed their hope.

  • Protect Due Process!

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