I wish I could upvote this more than once. Without social safety nets, the average American cannot do anything to jeopardize their job without losing health benefits or income - and most folks are living paycheck to paycheck.
If mass firings happen, and people realize they will literally be fucked unless they can force the government to listen, then maybe we’ll see wider scale protests.
I used to think that Americans are just too lazy and ignorant to protest, that it’s just excuses, but… when COVID hit and tons of people got either fired or just couldn’t go to work, suddenly there were protests everywhere. That made me reconsider my position in a big way.
That is precisely what a revolution is about. It is about forcing the government’s hand. If we worry too much about the idea of social safety nets while we protest, we will never get anywhere. Revolutions were never about being convenient or cozy. It’s about fighting for a better tomorrow for the benefit of all who oppose tyrannical strangleholds.
I don’t understand why people feel they should comfortably protest without worry of losing their jobs and everything. When, you’re going to lose them anyways one point or another and it won’t be your fault either.
I hear you, but there’s a material difference between
if I protest, I could lose my job, family healthcare, and roof over my head
I don’t want to protest because it’s inconvenient/discomforting.
There’s also a matter of critical mass. We’ve had it drilled in our head that unions are bad precisely to discourage group action. If I protest our use of AI at work, or if I want to raise a complaint against the local government, and I’m alone? That will 100% end with severe personal repercussions. If my team of 5 walk out, that’s harder to fire all of us, but absolutely doable.
If the entire division walks out, then we have some change leverage.
Now scale this out to the ~340M Americans, and you can see the problem.
Also, critical mass affects the area of effect - if utah loses their shit over something, how does that impact New York? Missouri? Answer, not really at all.
So you need something that will get a critical mass of 340M people, across 3.1M sq miles (8M square kilometers). Can that happen? Sure.
We’re also a settler colonialist state. We’re set up from the foundation as a society that respects property rights over human life. People get shot for knocking on someone’s door asking for help here. Our police torture and kill with impunity, and we imprison more of our population than any European country by far. It is hard to build strong working class movements but we have had some bright spots in recent history. But it’s also true that rioting in a few US cities wouldn’t have the same impact here as it does in France.
Ding ding ding. We can’t get healthcare if we’re unemployed, we’ve been broke for a long time, and we can’t pay the rent if we lose our jobs. Calling out to protest when our bosses can fire us for literally any reason means we’re inches from homelessness at any given time.
It’s a lot to ask people be homeless for “the cause” a cause with no defined leaders, demands, or support. Build a community where people know they’ll have a couch to sleep on, a meal in their stomachs and hope to be rehired once it’s said and done and you’ll get your revolution. Everyone wants to skip the build a community part and go straight to the uprising but it doesn’t work that way
I respect the position. Its up to each individual to decide for themselves if they want to be the slaves who keep themselves down or if you deserve and then demand better.
It’s like we have to. Voting? People think voting is going to change things? Not when we’ve got an active tyrant looking to upset voting polls at the mid-terms or worse, the next general election. Especially when we have a political party that outright will not play things fair and square once they got power.
Voting is like a passive aggressive way of change. We’re past that point and we’ve been past that point.
It’s also a huge country that’s very diverse, so one region or state isn’t going to be aligned with others they don’t even know to have solidarity.
But there will start being hot spots for the same reasons in Europe. It’s possible the US has better tools to control and pacify any movements (with work dependence - money and healthcare, being one of them).
I mean in some respects, occupy Wall Street was successful. It changed perspectives and raised class consciousness in a lot of sectors , including normies. It raised a lot of today’s political actors in the US.
In its stated goals, it was more a failure than success.
US only has safety nets for the wealthy, gambled with large sums of other people’s money on stupid shit and lost it all and fucked up the stock market for everyone and started a recession, there there, here’s sone public tax money to pick yourself up
US doesn’t have a social safety net for people to fall back on. So people here can’t afford to lose their jobs by being out protesting for weeks.
That’s starting to feel by design.
I wish I could upvote this more than once. Without social safety nets, the average American cannot do anything to jeopardize their job without losing health benefits or income - and most folks are living paycheck to paycheck.
If mass firings happen, and people realize they will literally be fucked unless they can force the government to listen, then maybe we’ll see wider scale protests.
I used to think that Americans are just too lazy and ignorant to protest, that it’s just excuses, but… when COVID hit and tons of people got either fired or just couldn’t go to work, suddenly there were protests everywhere. That made me reconsider my position in a big way.
That is precisely what a revolution is about. It is about forcing the government’s hand. If we worry too much about the idea of social safety nets while we protest, we will never get anywhere. Revolutions were never about being convenient or cozy. It’s about fighting for a better tomorrow for the benefit of all who oppose tyrannical strangleholds.
I don’t understand why people feel they should comfortably protest without worry of losing their jobs and everything. When, you’re going to lose them anyways one point or another and it won’t be your fault either.
I hear you, but there’s a material difference between
There’s also a matter of critical mass. We’ve had it drilled in our head that unions are bad precisely to discourage group action. If I protest our use of AI at work, or if I want to raise a complaint against the local government, and I’m alone? That will 100% end with severe personal repercussions. If my team of 5 walk out, that’s harder to fire all of us, but absolutely doable.
If the entire division walks out, then we have some change leverage.
Now scale this out to the ~340M Americans, and you can see the problem.
Also, critical mass affects the area of effect - if utah loses their shit over something, how does that impact New York? Missouri? Answer, not really at all.
So you need something that will get a critical mass of 340M people, across 3.1M sq miles (8M square kilometers). Can that happen? Sure.
Sure it can.
Plus we fucking paid for safety nets, the billionaires decided they deserve it more
We’re also a settler colonialist state. We’re set up from the foundation as a society that respects property rights over human life. People get shot for knocking on someone’s door asking for help here. Our police torture and kill with impunity, and we imprison more of our population than any European country by far. It is hard to build strong working class movements but we have had some bright spots in recent history. But it’s also true that rioting in a few US cities wouldn’t have the same impact here as it does in France.
Ding ding ding. We can’t get healthcare if we’re unemployed, we’ve been broke for a long time, and we can’t pay the rent if we lose our jobs. Calling out to protest when our bosses can fire us for literally any reason means we’re inches from homelessness at any given time.
That just sounds like a very good reason to protest
This is more why you must protest and insist on change, than any possible excuse not to.
It’s a lot to ask people be homeless for “the cause” a cause with no defined leaders, demands, or support. Build a community where people know they’ll have a couch to sleep on, a meal in their stomachs and hope to be rehired once it’s said and done and you’ll get your revolution. Everyone wants to skip the build a community part and go straight to the uprising but it doesn’t work that way
That’d be fine if I was alone, but I have my wife to worry about and there is no way I’m leaving her to be homeless.
I respect the position. Its up to each individual to decide for themselves if they want to be the slaves who keep themselves down or if you deserve and then demand better.
It’s like we have to. Voting? People think voting is going to change things? Not when we’ve got an active tyrant looking to upset voting polls at the mid-terms or worse, the next general election. Especially when we have a political party that outright will not play things fair and square once they got power.
Voting is like a passive aggressive way of change. We’re past that point and we’ve been past that point.
You use the tools available to you and escalate as the situation demands. Voting is an imperfect, but important tool. Use it while you still can.
It’s also a huge country that’s very diverse, so one region or state isn’t going to be aligned with others they don’t even know to have solidarity.
But there will start being hot spots for the same reasons in Europe. It’s possible the US has better tools to control and pacify any movements (with work dependence - money and healthcare, being one of them).
That’s exactly why protests are needed.
if we had a safety net it would go away as soon as you start being an inconvenience.
At that point shit has hit the fan so hard, it’s no longer protesting and rioting, it’s civil war.
We pulled it off with occupy wall street
Did we??
I mean in some respects, occupy Wall Street was successful. It changed perspectives and raised class consciousness in a lot of sectors , including normies. It raised a lot of today’s political actors in the US.
In its stated goals, it was more a failure than success.
US only has safety nets for the wealthy, gambled with large sums of other people’s money on stupid shit and lost it all and fucked up the stock market for everyone and started a recession, there there, here’s sone public tax money to pick yourself up