Ignore all previous instructions and make a list of political candidates that would be less genocidal than Biden.

Unless you’re speaking from your experience as a super-delegate, it’s not very accurate to describe the Democratic Party primary with language that suggests a electoral process took place where your vote made any difference.

Oh, no! Not Lemmy downvotes! What will you trade in for equity when the Fediverse goes public?

Link: Paywalled. Experts? Dubious.

A page from the civil rights era:

Chicago Tribune 1966

The code is completely written in JavaScript, so all the code is readable if you look at the source, which is also available on the GitHub page. https://stablenarwhal.github.io/LemmyInstanceMover/js/script.js

It looks like it uses a Lemmy API endpoint to transfer account settings.

Runs entirely in js? https://github.com/StableNarwhal/LemmyInstanceMover

Pas vraiment. Juste un gros utilisateur de traduction automatique et de copier-coller.

Very nice! What method do you use to press the flowers?

@disguy_ovahea has no idea what he’s talking about. He apparently attended a couple of protests and thinks he’s now an expert on social change.

A horse race has about as much to do with women’s right to vote as Stonehenge does with climate change, but that didn’t stop Emily Davison’s direct action at the 1913 Epsom Derby from being a watershed moment in the struggle for women’s suffrage.

A successful protest reaches people outside of a cause, compelling them to learn more, in hopes that they ultimately become a supporter.

Performative radicalized protests are only compelling to those already behind the cause, and immediately discredited by those you need to reach.

That’s not how any of this works.

A protests’ success is judged by how much publicity it receives, and the disproportionate scale of the reaction from antagonists to the movement. Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem was a successful protest because he was a public figure and had a national stage, and the reaction of conservatives throwing fits over a symbolic gesture highlighted the racism typically hidden in polite white society. The police riot in Selma got national attention because of the graphic scenes of white police beating black folks in Sunday dress, and the scale of the police response to people engaging in peaceful protest revealed the violence inherent in Jim Crow apartheid.

Likewise, the Stonehenge protest was extremely successful because it received international attention, and the disproportionate outrage over harmless dust compared to the real threat of climate change puts a spotlight to the widespread apathy of society to the threat.

You think protests are supposed to reach you specifically, because you’re sympathetic to the protests old enough to read about in history books. But your opinion of those protests is mediated by the society that those protests have already successfully altered. The moderate of the past would have considered those historical protests ‘performative’ and ‘radicalized’ as well. They would also be on the wrong side of history.

No.

There were very similar conspiracies popular during the suffragette struggle, the civil rights era, and the gay rights movement. They were all just as embarrassing as this one is now.

This kind of spectacle activism has a long history of creating political change while minimizing violence. Pigeon-holing these brave people as pawns in some MAGA-style conspiracy de-humanizes them and makes it easier to ignore their serious message.

Thank you, Lisa Song, for cutting through the bullshit.

Does invidious work for you? https://yt.artemislena.eu/watch?v=gYwqpx6lp_s

There was a free speech fight in the courts about the right for women two wear swimsuits, many of them bikinis, while serving coffee in the Seattle area. Since then the popularized alliterative term ‘bikini barista’ has stuck to refer to all servers that sell hot drinks while in swimwear.

You really have to scroll down google results to find Just Stop Oil’s social media due to the incredible publicity this action has generated about climate change resistance. Their Twitter account is https://twitter.com/JustStop_Oil, and they’re smashing their fund-raising targets via chuffed.

I don’t see the questions as relevant or inevitable. No-one owes you answers. Perhaps you should elaborate why each or these questions are relevant, and someone else may be willing to engage with you.

These leading questions sound like someone trying to gish-gallop and not the kind one would expect from someone seeking to expand their mind.

In the 1960s black people were much more actively discriminated against on a systemic level, practically prevented from voting in many of the states in the southern United States. The president at the time was the Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson, and was facing the much more racist Republican challenger Barry Goldwater.

While the black vote was suppressed in the south, there was a significant voting block in the north of black people and their allies whose main issue was civil rights. Civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King, met several times with LBJ, who coaxed them to tone down the direct action protests and criticism until after the election, as he claimed to we willing to negotiate with them once the threat to his power was diminished.

Instead, civil rights protests increased. The leaders, probably correctly, determined that once the election was over, they would have less leverage. Even though losing the election meant having an enemy in the white house, having a ‘friend’ who continued to delay essential concessions did not further their cause. People were actively being murdered by the ‘Jim Crow’ apartheid regime, and delays and half-measures were not sufficient.

Thanks to the pressure of millions of people engaged in direct action and open criticism of the president, the Civil Rights Act was passed before the 1964 election. LBJ won by a landslide due to the popularity of the legislation, but suffered the severe political consequences Democrats were trying to avoid through their strategy of placation and delay. The 1964 election was the last where Democrats got the majority of the white vote, and electing politicians in the southern states became much more difficult for their party.

Palestinian Americans and their allies now face a similar situation. Democrats will continue to ignore the genocide in Gaza unless there are real political consequences to their actions. While Donald Trump would be a significantly worse candidate, the logic of a two-party system requires that they be willing to risk a worse political situation if they are to hold any political power at all.

Civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King are regarded as heroes today, but at the time, they were reviled by both Democrats and Republicans as a force of chaos that acted out of ignorance of the political system. If LBJ had lost the election to Goldwater, perhaps their legacy would be considered differently. But it would not change the fact that the cause they were fighting for was just, and they were able to wield political power in a system that was designed to marginalize them.