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Protesting is most effective as something more akin to a military parade of labor. It's what you do when you have done all of the other organizing and power building to be an actual threat and you want to show everyone else that you are to be taken seriously. They should be used to threaten an action, not be the action in and of itself.

EDIT: Roderic Day actually had a good tweet thread today based off the follow thread I will condense below:

::: spoiler summary

The protest as we know it is a kind of zombie tactic. The Red Scare and Cold War destruction of the Left created a knowledge gap, and activists who emerged afterward could only recreate the appearance of organizing without the content. We've been marching and losing ever since.

In many other countries they still use the word "demonstration," not "protest" because a march or rally is supposed to demonstrate that the people are organized and willing to take action (typically strike, but also riot or take up arms) to get what they want.

The implied threat is the whole point, it's what gives the protest power. Politicians or bosses who think the threat is real may give in to demands to avoid greater disruption. But if they know there's no threat they can and do simply ignore it and let the cops clear the streets.

Some might suggest that a protest is demonstrating anger and the threat is to lose voters, but Democrats know that's an empty threat after so many cycles of "vote blue no matter who."

If the point is to create so much disruption that it's more costly to ignore or fight you than it is to meet your demands-which can actually be effective!-then protests at expected places and times, against expected targets, and that quickly fall to police aren't strategic.

If you want to see tactics that work look to the labor movement. The labor movement has been the strongest continuously organized force of working people in the US, which means it has been able to preserve much of the knowledge that the Left otherwise lost.

Whether labor organizing is your priority or not, check out union organizing trainings that are being offered by many unions. There are concrete skills that can deliver measurable results. We don't have to be sloppy and base our plans on hopes and prayers.

Labor movement skills like structure tests, power analysis, escalation plans, and even just how to talk to someone you don't know about organizing are all skills that are regularly taught in union trainings. Don't let the protest treadmill grind you down, organize!

I don't think the protests will accomplish much in the end. Protests in the US largely serve as networking opportunities for various groups. This isn't a totally bad thing (someone who doesn't know what org to join can always go to a protest and see which org they vibe with the best).

The problem for protests in the US is that:

1. They are not very militant.

2. They do not have broad support.

You can see how pigs feel about protests. They actually don't hate protests. In fact, they absolutely love that shit because they get overtime pay on top of beating the shit out of some protestors.

The only exception is the George Floyd uprising. The protests then were far more militant and had far more broad support. Remember, the majority of USians polled actually though that precinct deserved to be burned to the ground. That's when the pigs started quitting because that overtime pay was no longer worth the bullshit they had to face. And I'm not talking about most of the George Floyd uprising which was neutered by effective counterinsurgency from the Democrats. I'm talking about the earlier stages when they burned that police precinct to the ground. I remember seeing footage on Day 3 of someone opening fire on pigmobiles as in someone took out their pistol and opened fire on pigmobiles passing by. That was how militant the protests were. Before the Democrats completely doused the flames, people were burning police precincts and were already started to inch towards taking up arms.

Now the George Floyd uprising in the end failed to accomplish any of its political aims. The proliferation of Cop City and increase in police funding are a testament to its failure. But my question is if an uprising as militant and with as broad support as the George Floyd uprising failed in its political aims, what makes you think these protests will do anything?

In the time I was there, one speaker did harp really hard on the path forward being to vote except not for democrats or republicans. That 1/3 of people who didn’t vote could be galvanized to vote for some unidentified third party candidate provided that we all table, organize, talk to neighbors, etc. That certainly gave me pause. The other speakers were great though, especially this Jewish leader who threw absolute banger after banger about the US military complex driving both parities to support genocide because its profitable

maybe we need to establish a neutral marxist academy or something idk lol

The People's Forum in NYC. They have a lot of great educational courses

oh no don't approach the fence! democrats cheering at our passivity and cowardice is actually helping our cause!

Don't blame me, I scolded Ilhan Omar for wearing sunglasses.

There's some more discussion here if you want to take a look: https://hexbear.net/post/3280630