Canada’s already banned facepaint and masks, with 2 years in prison. Legislators forgot about having it on the books, so they passed another law banning masks from “violent” protests (two years in prison).
I prefer my papercraft, cardboard mask. It’s called Low Poly, and it’s creepy as heck. Almost as creepy as the riot cops themselves.
What was won there?
Gosh, no one’s ever done witty criticisms of Thatcher, ever. Nothing that Brand is saying is new or particularly articulate or interesting, but because he’s a rock star looking young white guy, people just can’t wait to lick his balls. When non-white people (or women) make the same points, they’re scorned for being uppity and irrationally angry, and when boring academics do it, no one pays attention, but when young white guys do it, they’re admired for being “edgy” and "anti-establishment " (LOLOLOLOLOLOL.) What a pile of bullshit.
It went with the lukewarm criticism comparing people to 80’s relic hippies.
There were actually rather specific protests in the 80s against the new arms race started when detente was coming to an end. That included not only activists from the 60s (some hippies, some new left folks), but also many left/anarchist leaning punks who were teens and young adults. It wasn’t at all a vague set of causes and it was very much transnational in nature, even across the iron curtain.
Ad hominems will get you nowhere. Not with me anyway. Take your projections about ball-licking and such elsewhere plz.
Not intentionally turning yourself into the (easily ignored) faceless masses and instead showing wide diversity in your movement that shows those around you that you are their neighbor and determined facial expressions that proclaim that this isn’t going away and you’re not just out here for a good time?
Limit yourself to one issue (enemy really) to protest so that you don’t dilute the power of your protest and gives the media and lawmakers a single consistent message about what needs to change?
Having a single respectable person that can act as a speaker for the movement that the media can talk to?
Build relationships with other organizers in other movements so you can leverage their members in your protests (and vice-versa) and make yourself seem more powerful to your adversaries?
What’s funny is the fundamental tactics for getting a movement to succeed were written for progressive radicals by Saul Alinsky back in the 70s. It also seems to be completely ignored by everyone except oddly enough, the tea party who has used it to great success. Maybe it is because conservatives kept publicly claiming everyone but them was using it that made progressives ignore it, but Rules for Radicals really is still relevant today.
Huh, I heard it was Gene Sharp, here and elsewhere:
Pick a topic and stay on it. I am so goddamn tired of liberal “It’s all good man. Who am i to say that your favorite butt hurt isn’t welcome here?” grab bag approach to protests. I mostly agree with you protestors, why do make it so hard to love you?
Stop Domestic Spying!
US Out of Afghanistan!
End Factory Farms!
More Bike Lanes!
End The War on Rainbows!
Unicorn Blowjobs for All!
But you can’t smash the corporatist state, without your officially licensed Warner Brothers merchandise!
Brand used to date alt-Christian folk singer turned mindless pop queen Katy Perry -
you can tell the worth of a man by the company he keeps.
The sparkling wit and righteous erudition of his
“Thatcher send-off” reads like any other wordy, Guardian commentary.
This self-absorbed fragment is especially telling:
“As I scan the statements of my memory bank for early deposits (it’d be a kid’s memory bank account at a neurological NatWest where you’re encouraged to become a greedy little capitalist with an escalating family of porcelain pigs”
If this is sparkling wit, then Katy Perry is Stephen Hawking
I’m not sure you actually understand what ad hominem means. I’ll take your response as a sign that you don’t actually have any points to refute mine.
I placed an ad hominem on Craig’s List once…
Man, the sock puppets are thick on the ground in this comment thread. Even got a generic “liberal-as-an-insult” thrown in there. Wonder what they’re so damn terrified of…
I’m not the hugest fan of Occupy, for various reasons that I’m not going to get into, but even I can see that the “they’re too muddied and don’t know what they want” is an utter fabrication by a willfully ignorant media. While the individual concerns highlighted by individual protesters are quite varied, there is nothing there that doesn’t fit into the general “Western democracy is not, and has never been, truly representative, and we should be looking at ways to reduce the influence of money and corruption in politics and make our voices heard as the people that are supposedly being represented” catch-all umbrella of Occupy.
The point being, I guess, is that the reason so many special interest groups have joined into the movement is that the gradual shift to the right in world politics and the concurrent growth in influence of corporate lobbying has meant that anyone who isn’t saying “shit on the poor; it’s their own fault they’re terrible human beings” has been left without a voice. Occupy isn’t supposed to be a single-issue protest group, it’s an attempt to open a dialogue and say “what is wrong with our current society and how can we improve things so that more than 1% of the population has some degree of political representation?”
Agreed, but… as I say, I like to know who I’m standing by. I’ll support anyone’s right to speak; I don’t want that to be taken as endorsing their opinions.
I agree with the idea of Occupy. I want to see the dialog open. I’m not sure whether Occupy per se was getting us there. That doesn’t mean I’m against it; I’m just having trouble being enthusiastic about it.
But these demonstrators are simultaneously protesting fracking and high fuel prices?
Whilst in the most basic sense these are connected and contradictory statements, there is no reason to expect this is true on the global scale. For example, fracking is used extensively in parts of Australia, but only to recover gas, not petroleum; whilst we charge a tax on petrol that many people think should be dropped (personally I’d like to see it re-coupled with inflation and raised to a much higher rate).
Western democracy is not, and has never been, truly representative, and we should be looking at ways to reduce the influence of money and corruption in politics and make our voices heard as the people that are supposedly being represented
This doesn’t fit into a headline! How will people ever understand!
Maybe we could make it into an acronym to make it a shoutable slogan? WDINAHNBTRAWSBLAWTRTIOMACIPAMOVHATPTASBR! Catchy, huh?
Better said here than I could do:
Without raising him to the status of anything above a fellow fallible human being, we ought to support Russell Brand’s call for replacing the political-economy cannibalizing the planet with an actual politics. While remaining critical of his shortcomings, and the power his celebrity visibility wields, we nevertheless ought to encourage and support the popularization of his call for a radically egalitarian redistribution of the cultural and physical wealth of the world.
That’s what I say when people wake me up. Can we get a platform where people protest that I should be left the fuck alone?
