Yup, which is why nobody has done it since 1/6. 😉

There is also the gun factor. Self defense is not generally accepted as a reason to own a gun in France, so there is no self defense carry. That automatically makes the cops less likely to react suddenly and violently.

Burn one billionaire or politician and you'll see some movement.

They don't learn that part during their tankie training

I’m going to print this out and post it next to all the No Kings posters. 😆

It's a Tankie thing. They call everyone a liberal.

they still do that. if they accuse you of drug abuse, and you are too poor to hire a lawyer you get sent to a forced labor camp (private prison)

sorry but that's an amazing photo. i hope it's a photo, i ain't look too close

Look at Luigi Maggione.

i mean they only charged 1.5k-ish people. i was watching from california, there were obviously more but nowhere near 100k. i think official counts were somewhere closer to 5k.

Spent nearly a decade doing data analysis for the corrections system. Just one small part, but we interfaced with many others in different parts of government, academics, and NGOs, spinning our wheels discussing how to implement progressive reform, reform we have had mountains of hard evidence corrects a lot of problems, especially reducing recidivism. The big hurdle wasn't corrupt politicians, or privatization of the prison system (not saying those weren't major problems, just different ones) the big issue was that the average person is vicious, and wants to sit in their house, seeing "bad" people on a screen, get destroyed by the system. A HUGE portion of the population have a vicarious blood lust for seeing people get punished, the harsher, the better. This allows for the punitive system we have, which makes it an open field for other predatory practices. Suggesting anything to the counter will not get anyone elected, and will stir backlash from throngs of morons asking why we should do anything less than just execute criminals on the spot.

Those who don't either are a minority that grew up differently, or had this unjust bloodlust targeted at them, or someone they care about.

Like I think Protests like No Kings and 50501 were great protests to get over the first hump of organization. Still is I suppose for those late to the party. However when they didn't evolve to armed protestors, then evolve further when people like Pretti made the news dying in broad daylight, documented from multiple angles. It ultimately became a resting place that misdirected our energy into pointless busy work.

It was a great first couple of steps, but everybody started getting comfortable staying there even as the government, and namely The Republicans and ICE kept escalating. Always fearing their escalation, that inevitably kept happening even without The Insurrection Act.

Our due process was the social contract that stopped us from just taking power from them, letting them represent our country, earn a salary, without the need for citizen violence to enforce order. They broke that contract. And they keep breaking it everyday. They are no longer protected by the contract. They do not deserve to benefit from the same contract they wipe their ass with.

To put it bluntly, people should have already organized and prepped already. What happens as midterms head towards election day, and the aftermath is likely to be violent either way. I really do not see Republicans giving up power willingly. Though I hope to be wrong, and everything just gets better without the need for bloody violence. I just don't see it happening currently. Even if The Dems win, there will be violence.

If a chipotle is destroyed how would we ever replace it?!?!!

So there's this concept "agent provocateur".

It means the guy from the opposite side who throws the first stone as if he were on side he disagrees with.

The one who throws the first stone is the villain.

The reason why 60's era civil rights demonstrations were so successful is that no white person was able (or probably willing) to infiltrate the African American side to throw the first stone.

In a modern protest, plenty of people without any identifying group support any side, so someone just has to turn around throw a bottle onto their own side to start the violence.

I'm pretty sure I remember that actually happening, because my shithead dad was angry about it.

The only kind of protest that works in US is a silent protest. A prime example is the railway workers protest. They "derailed" the economy by billions of dollars and Byron signed an executive order to force them back to work. So face jail time or get back to work. Don't want to? Well straight to jail. Then with the thirteenth amendment you'll be back to work with a national guard member watching over you. If you think that's not likely to happen, you're new when it comes to US politics. Read about the expansion of the Patriot act the beloved Obama signed, I voted for him and canvassed, and protested McCain, that turned out well.

Yes, almost certainly

In my twenties I held this belief some what. I was a big peaceful protest guy. To be fair my justification back then was I didn't like how it seemed to be the reasoning why cops are militarizing. Many of the protests at the time just seemed to devolve once when alt right figures infiltrated and turned it into a riot, and many of these protests where set up on Facebook groups by people not even in our country. Many of them organized events right next to eachother at the same time. Just none of it seemed productive.

Either things have changed or my opinions matured because I feel like we should be in the streets over every little issue. And I wana see cop cars flipped over and on fire these days. The country feels slightly more unified then it used to, so I have slightly more faith that things would turn out more productive. There's core issues like flock that reach across the isle and people firmly established they don't like it, and has resulted in minor change.

The BLM protests where unmarked vehicles dropped off pallets full of bricks repeatedly? The ones where mysterious masked men in body armor would show up and start breaking windows then leave? The protests where police would force the protestors onto bridges or into intersections then tell them to disperse while blocking all exits, then fired 'less than lethal' projectiles at them?
Yeah the BLM protestors were not violent whatsoever, despite the efforts to make them so and the media narrative.

Of you just look at history at when the American system has reacted to protests with violence its always when it threatens the bottom line. So you would imagine this is the most impactful way to make a statement. Or just end up in the worst prison imaginable.

Oil pipelines, logistic networks, strikes. We have instilled dictactors and killed civilians in other countries to make sure we keep getting bananas because they had a strike. The only people who ever actually do anything are eco terrorists who threaten things like oil pipelines and there's a reason you never hear about them.

So you can poke the bear where it hurts but you have to be on a very special position to get away with it.

The 2020 BLM protests were hardly some small, isolated incident involving a little property damage. The unrest caused more than $2 billion in insured property losses across the United States, making it the costliest civil-disorder event in U.S. insurance history at the time. The unrest spread across more than 20 states and affected communities nationwide. Whatever your political position, pretending the damage was trivial or that this was some minor, localized event is simply ignoring the facts. That doesn't mean every protester was violent or that every demonstration was destructive, but the scale and financial cost of the unrest were substantial.

Despite the scale of the 2020 BLM protests, the long-term results were mixed at best. They generated enormous public attention and prompted some policy changes, but they did not fundamentally transform the American political system or eliminate the racial inequalities that motivated the movement. In many respects, the country remains deeply divided, and racial hostility has become increasingly visible in our political discourse. Under the current administration, rhetoric surrounding race and immigration has only intensified those divisions. For all the protests, all the disruption, and all the money lost to property damage, the question remains: how much has actually changed for the better?

This is exactly why memes like this are counterproductive. Rather than encourage an honest discussion about what happened, what it cost, and what the consequences were, they reduce complicated events to simplistic narratives designed to provoke anger and deepen divisions. Presenting misleading information to reinforce an existing political bias is propaganda, regardless of which side does it. It is the same kind of divisive political messaging that the current administration routinely uses to mobilize its supporters and discredit its opponents. When we substitute outrage and misinformation for facts, we make meaningful discussion impossible. That is a significant part of how we arrived at our current political climate, and continuing to circulate this material without questioning its accuracy only makes the problem worse.

Two billion across the whole country isn't all that much, especially considering how bonkers property evaluations are.

Measuring BLM in terms of insured property damage is probably a poor way to approach a movement addressing systemic bias and social awareness. It at least runs afoul of something to:

reduce complicated events to simplistic narratives

The impacts of BLM have been met with counteraction, which is neither new or unexpected, and no meme is going to be able to fully address a complicated anything.

There's a difference between burning corporate Chipotle and small businesses and personal home property.

Thank you and spot on. There was zero change, hell its honestly worse now than it was because Republicans regained power.

What did we get? Hundreds if not thousands of wounded, and frankly tortured people from police brutality and zero change for the better.

The media and politicians are bought by billionaires and prevent any real change no matter how much you protest.

Vote them out.

Americana’s will only do shit that doesn’t inconvenience them. Which pretty much rules out any and all meaningful protest. They’ll gather in streets, sure. But the moment it comes at a cost- they’re far too busy.

This happens because they slept. And it got worse because they refused to wake up.

Relevant Stanhope

Petite bourgeois are still the bourgeois.

Lives matter more than your fucking property.

Nah it’s a leftist thing.

Liberals are centrists who maintain the status quo and at best ask for “reforms” without substantially wanting to change the underlying system.

They think improvements like ranked choice voting would make capitalism magically end poverty and inequality. That if a few more people benefit from social programs, that you can overlook the others still suffering because it’s “better”.

"won't someone please think of the property values!"

One sounds like leftists, the other sounds like right wingers.

Leftists would support BLM and not care about property damage. And no right winger is going to want America to revolt against Trump.

Tell that to the entire American working-class movement of the early 1900s that gave us our right to unionize. They had those same problems but it didn't stop them. Why? Because they fucking organized their communities to provide that safety net for each other without relying on a third party entity to do it for them.

The problem with America these days is no one knows how or wants to be part of a community with each other. We are so fucking endeared to the capitalist system that people can't fucking imagine doing anything without it.

There is no such thing as "anarcho-capitalist"

Anarchism is fundamentally oppositional to capitalism.

Due to the systematic erosion of any safety systems, I sort of need my property to live.

The petite bourgeois are not working class.

someone on another platform mentioned that thier french friends likened to american protests, if nothing is on fire, its not really a protest, its just virtue signalling.

Then find a community and organize some mutual aid networks to replace those safety nets instead of selling your humanity to be an owning-class pig.

That capital you claim private ownership over does not rightfully belong to you to make profit off of, it belongs to the community to use as it sees fit and distribute to those in need of it.

My problem with rioting is it often seems to be the working class shitting on their own doorstep.. surely the most effective rioting would be to target parliament buildings, political party offices, banks and the properties of the very wealthy? Just my twopenn'orth.

Hate to break it to you but the same is true in France. Media coverage here has focused almost exclusively on small shops being looted. The human brain has a much easier time focusing on individual tragedies rather than systemic issues, and the government and its cronies (and the local versions of fox news) are taking full advantage of that bias.

What a dogshit ass take. Small business owners are hardly "selling their humanity to be a owning-class pig". Most people just try to get by in the system they're born into. Many small businesses aren't beholden to some franchise and are pivotal to bringing their small community together.

Like, what fucking system do you live in were you don't work and only provide for those around you? Are you farming your own produce to disperse among your community or do you work some bullshit ass job like the rest of the world so you can virtue signal on Lemmy to feel better about your situation? My bet is on the latter.

Get fucking real.

Confidently wrong. There are different kinds of anarchism, and yours might be fundamentally oppositional to capitalism. But to deny the existence of anarcho-capitalists is counterproductive, because they exist, and they're a serious threat to be aware of.

The idea is that in an anarchist society, there's no governing body to regulate businesses, and so they get to do whatever they want. It results in a neofeudal corporate oligarchy, a la Curtis Yarvin. You can argue that it's not really anarchistic if it results in oppressive systems. They might argue that it's only anarchy if there's nothing stopping them from oppressing you.

The point is, anarchy is a big umbrella, and just because you might be anarcho-syndicalist or something else doesn't mean that your version of anarchy is the only version of anarchy.

Arguing over what constitutes "the true anarchy" is pointless. Critique anarcho-capitalism to your heart's desire, but to deny that it exists implies that there's nothing to critique.

A century of dedicated propaganda and class division will do that. And our police are better armed now, and the federal government is very openly on their side.

oh wow....

I am a leftist. I'm telling you they call everyone liberals. They even call Trump a liberal.

Liberals are moderate conservatives, a.k.a. Establishment Democrats. And then you have the GOP, which consists of extreme right Fascists, so far right they're practically the antisis of liberal. There is no dominant centrist or leftist party in the United States. The closest we have in office are AOC and Bernie, and even they're just barely to the left of center in my eyes.

Ranked choice voting won't solve everything, but it's a step in the right direction. It's worth giving it a chance.

The federal government has always openly been on their side. That's nothing new. The state has always been the enemy of the working class.

Them being armed isn't an excuse to not take action. It just means we have to take precautions and adapt our tactics to deal with it. They aren't invincible.

What utter horseshit.

Their choice to become part of the system that is actively oppressing people just to save their own skin is so lacking in solidarity.

Find your class consciousness and stop making excuses for people who exploit others.

I don't care if that the system we all live in, the goal is to change that fucking system and break it, not give up and become part of it.

Also, yes, I do run a community garden and, yes, all of its produce I give away for free, no questions asked. Thanks for asking. It's called "mutual aid". You should look into it.

Lastly, those of us who work for a living are not the same as those who own the businesses that exploit our needs for profit, small business or otherwise. They are not pivotal to the community. What is pivotal are things like mutual aid programs and direct action initiatives that help people without profiting off of them.